Dr Zebunnisa Hamid

Zebunnisa Hamid has recently completed her PhD on New Pakistani Cinema from the Centre of Film Studies at SOAS. She did her BA in Politics and Journalism & Mass Communication from New York University (NYU) and her MA in Journalism from Goldsmiths College before moving into film. Prior to joining SOAS, she taught in the media department at Beaconhouse National University (BNU) in Lahore, Pakistan, where she also got her MPhil in Mass Communication.

Her interests range from film and television to journalism, not only from a research and academic perspective, but also from a practical aspect. She has trained as a film editor at the Edit Centre in New York where she worked on different film projects as a student and teaching assistant in the Art of Film Editing course. Her interest in film as a practice was further highlighted through her involvement as a production consultant on Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012).

In her research on film, she is particularly interested in locating and understanding the connections New Pakistani Cinema has and is forming within the local, regional and global, and showing how such links create greater understanding of lesser known, smaller cinemas in general as well. She is currently working on her book on New Pakistani Cinema.

In her MPhil, she undertook a historical and comparative study of film in South Asia, with a focus on the birth, rise and decline of the old Pakistani film industry.

Her PhD thesis explores the emergence of what she refers to as a New Pakistani Cinema, especially in regards to the development of the industry, the emerging imaginaries and transnational characteristics of the new cinema. Her current work and her PhD thesis not only look at the new films being made in Pakistan, but also engage with the various themes emerging from within the current evolution of cinema in the country and the developments taking place today. This includes the increase in the production of Pakistani films, the introduction of new filmmakers; the evolution of the traditional cinema into the digital multiplex, and the local cinema’s relationship with television, Bollywood and other foreign cinemas.