Transnational Cultures of Malabar Home Films from South-West Asia Faith and Frames

1. Faith in the Frame: An Introduction to Malabar Home Films  2. Media Technologies: New Frontiers of Religious Mediation  3. Faith in Flux: Fragmentations and the Quest for Authority in Kerala Islam  4. Islamic Home Films and Cultural Circuits between Kerala and the Middle East  5. Migrant Imaginaries and the Aesthetics of Distance and Desire  6. Liminal Cartographies of the Islamic Popular

Biography

T. T. Sreekumar is Professor in the Department of Communication, School of Interdisciplinary Studies, at The English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad, India.

Bindu Menon is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, India.

'Transnational Cultures of Malabar Home films expands our understanding of South Asian filmmaking by looking beyond commercial entertainment and state-sponsored documentary, produced for so-called national audiences, and beyond independent filmmaking, produced for elite and international ones, to consider amateur and artisanal modes of filmmaking that function as part of religious and social life. T. T. Sreekumar and Bindu Menon show how Malabar home cinema has been shaped by Kerala’s precolonial and postcolonial histories, which differ from other parts of India through distinct relationships to film, migration, and religion. They bring into focus a transcultural space between South Asia and the Arabian Peninsula that is produced through waves of migration and longstanding cultural exchanges by looking deeper than financial remittances, cases of abuse by sponsors under the kafala (sponsorship) system, and, more frequently, unethical practices by Indian recruitment agencies. The book offers fresh insights into complex and contradictory ideas of "home" and "nation" that are too often overshadowed by volatile political forces, offering a model that contributes to the ongoing collective effort to decolonize South Asian film studies from often unmarked, upper-caste, secular, Indian perspectives—and also a model for migration and religion studies to understand what quantitative data fails to register.'

- Dale Hudson, New York University, Abu Dhabi, co-editor of Reorienting the Middle East: Film and Digital Media Where the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean Meet (2024).