Cinema and the mask of capital: Labour debates in the Malayalam film industry

Abstract

Labour discourses in the film industry are often couched in the language of ‘welfare’ and an effort to maintain harmony among different filmmaking sectors. But such arrangements do not proffer equal participation or bargaining rights to everyone in the industry. Focusing on the Malayalam language film industry based in Kerala, this article examines how the film industry’s apprenticeship and unpaid labour arrangements affect below-the-line labour and less influential job profiles on a film set. In corollary, I also explore how labour and bargaining rights are conceptualized differently by film organizations based on their ideological positions. Using a mixed-methods approach, including media ethnography and interviews with members of different trade guilds who form part of Malayalam cinema’s professional, technical and service sectors, I demonstrate how structural inequalities in the film industry are overlooked while the cine-worker’s agency is co-opted by a neoliberal system that masquerades as welfare.