Method and Meaning

Independent filmmakers have crafted non-standard methods and artistic vocabularies to realise a form of “independence” that frequently runs counter to commodity relations which position cultural production in terms of consumption and cultural producers as industry professionals. I argue that as a practice, independent Indian documentary has developed an artisanal mode of production that is deprofessionalised in contrast to the focus on professional specialisation and standardisation of creative processes in industrial modes of media production. This is a critical feature as it permits a radical re-imagination of documentary as signifying practice existing in the everyday that produces a system of references to interpret social process and actors, dismissed by mainstream media representation.