The Epistemic Archeology of Ashish Avikunthak: Cinema and Religiosity of Everyday Life
Author(s): Erin O'Donnell (Editor), Šarunas Paunksnis
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
- Publication Date: November 27, 2025
- Language: English
- Print length: 278 pages
- ISBN-10: B0BW3DS9DB
- ISBN-13: 9798765105610
Book Description
This book explores the diverse aspects of Ashish Avikunthak’s cinema, which challenges Western knowledge systems and cinematic practices, as well as ideological hegemonies of present-day India. For thirty years, Indian filmmaker Ashish Avikunthak has been making self-financed films that have robustly resisted capital and market logic. Starting from his early 16mm short films Etcetera (1997) and Kalighat Fetish (1999) to longer feature length works that he has been making since the past decade–Rati Chakravyuh (2013), Aapothkalin Trikalika (2016), Vrindavani Vairagya (2017), to the most recent Vidhvastha (2022) with several more projects in various stages of production. His body of work now amounts to seven short films and nine feature length works. This collection of essays rigorously interrogates, contextualizes, theorizes, and interprets his work in relation to some of the key preoccupations of this filmmaker, which include Tantric practice, alternative ways of filmmaking, as well as posing a cinematic challenge to oppressive epistemes. Furthermore, the current global assertion of authoritarianism and one-dimensional interpretations of cultural history and practice provide a timely and essential historical moment in which to dialogue with Avikunthak’s films. Why? Because Avikunthak’s cinema consciously contests totalizing historical and artistic narratives, and constructs frameworks of existential uncertainty and fragmentation that force us to reflect on the increasing political, economic, social, and climate chaos that is infusing and shaping our early 21st century global ontology.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Ashish Avikunthak’s productivity is staggeringly ambitious, consistently captivating, and aesthetically audacious. It might easily be compared to that of Harun Farocki, Werner Herzog, or perhaps even Jean-Luc Godard. This penetrating volume offers a much-needed exploration of Avikunthak’s radical cinematic practice, exploring how his films challenge dominant epistemes and subvert aesthetic conventions. The insightful essays in this book adroitly situate the intellectual and philosophical depth of his work within urgent debates on history, identity, and resistance. Essential reading for those interested in avant-garde cinema, postcolonial thought, and the transformative power of art in turbulent times.” ―Charles Musser, Professor of Film and Media Studies, Yale University, USA
“This is a very important book about a very important filmmaker, particularly at this moment or historical juncture. This is the first book I have ever seen on Avikunthak’s films, and the fact that it includes long-time collaborators, one of the film-maker’s videographers, and an interview are all real gifts. This is one of those cutting-edge books that will grow in importance with time.” ―Jeffrey J. Kripal, J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought, Rice University, USA, and author of How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else (2024)
“The book is interesting and compelling. Avikunthak continues to develop interesting cinematic ideas, and he has made a decisive intervention in ongoing debates about cinema’s future. He fully merits the sort of attention this book provides.” ―Richard I. Suchenski, Founder of Film Secession, Associate Professor of Film and Electronic Arts and Director of the Center for Moving Image Arts, Bard College, USA
About the Author
Erin O’Donnell is Associate Professor in the History & Geography Department at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania, USA. Her main research interests include the history of 19th-early 21st-century visual culture – particularly photography and film – of India (specifically West Bengal/Kolkata) and Bangladesh. She is currently completing a manuscript for Bloomsbury about the cinema of Indian/Bengali filmmaker, Ritwik Ghatak.
Šarunas Paunksnis is Professor at the Institute of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, Kaunas University of Technology in Kaunas, Lithuania. His main research areas include but are not limited to media theory, Indian cinema, postcolonial theory, globalization, cultural theory and digital humanities. He studied and did his research at SOAS University of London, Columbia University in New York, US, Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, India, among other places. He has edited and published a book titled Dislocating Globality: Deterritorialization, Difference and Resistance (2016), and in 2019 Oxford University Press has published his book Dark Fear, Eerie Cities: New Hindi Cinema in Neoliberal India.
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