Description
Book SynopsisIn 1980s India, the Ramsay Brothers and other filmmakers produced a wave of horror movies about soul-sucking witches, knife-wielding psychopaths, and dark-caped vampires.Seeing Thingsis about the sudden cuts, botched makeup effects, continuity errors, and celluloid damage found in these movies. Kartik Nair reads such failures as clues to the conditions in which the films were made, censored, and seen, offering a view from below of the world's largest film culture. By combining close analysis with extensive archival research and original interviews,Seeing Thingsreveals thespectral materialities informing the genre's haunted houses, grotesque bodies, and graphic violence.
Table of ContentsContents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Accidental Exposures
1. Paper Cuts: Inside the Bureaucratic Encounter with Darwaza
2. Celluloid Splatter: The Graphic Violence of Jaani Dushman
3. Unsettling Design: Built Atmosphere in Purana Mandir
4. Making Monsters: Veerana and the Craft of Excess
5. Hidden Circuits: Kabrastan from Film to Videotape
Epilogue: An Archive of Failures
Notes
Bibliography
Index
