Situating 'Joyland' in Contemporary Pakistani Cinema
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:00 pm
- Venue
- SOAS University of London
- Room
- RB01 (Main Building)
- Event type
- Seminar
About this event
The success of Saim Sadiq’s 2022 debut film Joyland on the international circuit is remarkable for many reasons, not least because for most viewers outside South Asia, it is the first and only Pakistani film they have ever seen.
This talk will begin from the unusual position the film has in both Pakistani cinema history and global cinema history. By way of exploring its aesthetic language, the talk will show how the film indicates a new relationship between global majority and global minority cultures in the wake of postcolonial frameworks.
About the speaker
Mehak Faisal Khan is an Assistant Professor of Global Anglophone Literature in the English Department and in Gender Studies at the University of Notre Dame, where she is also a fellow at the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, and on the board of the Literatures of Annihilation, Exile, and Resistance series. She received her PhD in English and Critical Theory from UC Berkeley.
Her current book project, Ajeeb Aesthetics, mobilizes a theory of the strange, wondrous, queer and uncanny, rooted in the aesthetic and affective categories of contemporary Pakistani culture, as a site from which to rethink global aesthetics. She has been a Co-Chief Editor at Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences, and is a founding editor of Tasavvur, the first pan-South Asian speculative fiction magazine.
Image credit: Ahmed via Unsplash
