Dr Zakir Hossain Raju

I am interested in the cultural texts, especially the cinematic ones, and their relationships with postcolonial nationhood and identity formation in non-Western contexts. By placing textual analyses of various texts within such contexts and opposing the empiricist-teleological trend of research, I articulate engaged cultural histories and geographies of Asian film and media industries in between the national and the transnational.  

I started investigating the roles of a ‘national’ film industry in constructing nationhood and identity by looking at the relationship between cinema and modernity in Bangladesh within colonial and postcolonial predicaments. I delineated the political and economic forces and the cultural institutions active in shaping Bangladesh cinema, one of the least studied Asian national cinemas. This is the larger of the two Bengali-language film industries (the other one is based in Calcutta in India) that annually produces more than 90 feature films for a Bengali-speaking ‘national’ audience in Bangladesh. However, except myself, no other scholar informed by contemporary methodology studied Bangladesh cinema. My forthcoming book Bangladesh Cinema and National Identity: In Search of the Modern? (Routledge, 2009) is going to be the first major academic publication on Bangladesh cinema.  

My recent interest is to study various forms of transnational media and cultural translation that are permeating national borders in contemporary Asia. In order to locate cultural appropriations of various kinds, I delved into the areas like the indigenization of cinema in early twentieth century South Asia, the remaking of ‘Western’ genre in Asia, the digital filmmaking of the Malaysian Chinese filmmakers, the reception of Hindi-language, ‘Hindu’ film and television among Bangladeshi, Bengali-Muslim audiences, and the emigration of Bangladeshi film melodramas to a ‘Hindu’ audience in India. I also developed interest in the media portrayal of religion, such as Islam, and shifted research focus on to the representation of Muslim identity as well as the interconnections between Islam and popular culture in Malaysian and Bangladeshi contexts.

Like my research, my education and career path also passed through various transitions. After completing a BA (Hons) and MA in Mass Communication at the University of Dhaka in the early 1990s, I went on making films. I directed five documentary films on the issues ranging from elections and democratic movement to women’s rights and media image of women. I also shot a documentary in Tokyo on intercultural, Japanese-Bangladeshi families. In the late 1990s I moved from film practice to theoretical study of cinema when I started a doctorate in Cinema Studies at La Trobe University, Melbourne that I completed in 2004.

I began my teaching career at Monash University, Melbourne in 1997-98 and then went on lecturing at La Trobe University, RMIT University and University of Dhaka during 1998-2000. I joined Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB) in 2000 as an Assistant Professor in Media and Communication where I became an Associate Professor in 2006. I served as a Visiting Scholar at the Australian National University, Canberra in 1999 and as a Visiting Fellow at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur in 2007 with an ASIA (Asian Studies in Asia) Fellowship awarded by the Asian Scholarship Foundation (ASF).  My 2007-2008 research project ‘Urban Visual Culture as Transnational Public Spheres in Bangladesh and Malaysia’ was funded by the Forum for Urban and Regional Studies (FURS), University of Essex, UK. A new research project ‘Digital Cinema Across Asia’ that I am going to conduct in 2008-09 with professor Kim Soyoung (Korean National University of Arts, Seoul) also received a collaborative research grant from the Asian Scholarship Foundation (ASF).

Among other things, I received a University of Dhaka Gold Medal, and a Commendation of the Jury award in International Anthropological Film Festival in Romania for my film Beyond the Borders. I was invited to serve as a jury member in Melbourne International Film Festival in 1998 and Vesoul International Film Festival in France in 2008.

Academic publications

Forthcoming        Bangladesh Cinema and National Identity: In Search of the Modern? London: Routledge.

                           Film in Bangladesh: Texts and Contexts, New Delhi and Colombo: Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema.

                           ‘Appropriation of Cinema in (Post)Colonial South Asia: Indigenizing Film as Transnational to Vernacular Public Spheres’, Special Issue on ‘Cinema and the Public Sphere’, Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (CSSAAME).

                           ‘Islam, Cinema and Globalization in Bangladesh: For or Against?’ in Deana Heath and Chandana Mathur (eds.) Communalism and Globalization in South Asia. London: Routledge.

                           ‘Independent Cinema as Transnational Cultural Institutions: Focus on Bangladeshi and Malaysian Art Film Discourses’, in Special Issue on ‘Cinema and the Muslim World’, Third Text.

2008                   ‘Filmic Imaginations of the Malaysian Chinese: Mahua  Cinema as a Transnational Chinese Cinema’ in Special Issue on Transnational Chinese Cinemas Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 67-79.

                           ‘Bollywood in Bangladesh: Transcultural Consumption in Globalizing South Asia’ in Media Consumption and Everyday Culture in Asia, ed. Youna Kim, New York: Routledge (pp. 155-166).

                           Contributing Editor, Bioscope: Journal of South Asian Screen Studies (Sage, India), editors: Ravi Vasudevan, Lalitha Gopalan and Moinak Biswas.

2007                   ‘Madrasa and Muslim Identity on Screen: Nation, Islam and Bangladeshi Art Cinema in Global Stage’ in Jamal Malik (ed.) Madrasas in South Asia: Teaching Terror? London: Routledge (pp. 125-141).

                           ‘Reading Dost-Dushman: Popular Cinema, Cultural Translation and Remaking ‘Western’ in Bangladesh’, Proceedings of Trans: Asian Screen Culture Institute (TASCI) Annual Conference, Seoul: Korean National University of Arts.

                           ‘Homeland: A Film about Hyphens and Questions’, Osian’s Cinemaya: Journal of Asian Cinema 1: 4.

2006                   ‘Native Resistance: Popular Cinema and Nationalist Discourse in Bangladesh,’ in Anne Ciecko (ed.) Contemporary Asian Cinema: Popular Culture in a Global Frame, Oxford: Berg Publishers (pp. 120-132).

2005                   ‘Approaches to Film Research in Bangladesh,’ Communication 4: 2, Dhaka: University of Dhaka.

2003                   ‘Understanding Popular Cinema: Opposing Popular Practices,’ in Professor Abdus Selim (ed.) Film for the People, Bangladesh International Film Festival program book.

                           ‘The Concept of National Cinema and the Question of ‘Nation’, Drishyaroop: Journal of Visual Art and Culture, Dhaka, vol. 1, no. 1.

2002                   ‘Cinema in Bangladesh: A Defiant Survivor’ in Aruna Vasudev et al (eds.), Being and Becoming: The Cinemas of Asia, Delhi and London: Macmillan (pp.1-25).

                           ‘Bangladesh Film History: A Re-reading’, in Professor Sitara Parvin and Dr Geeti Ara Nasreen et al (eds.), Reader on Media and Society, Dhaka: Srabon Pub.

                           ‘A Coming of Age: The Clay Bird’, Cinemaya: Asian Film Journal (Issue 56-7, Autumn-Winter).

2000                   ‘National Cinema and the Beginning of Film History in/of Bangladesh,’ Screening the Past 11, special issue on Film/Culture Adaptation in Asia, http://www.latrobe.edu.au/www/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fr1100/rzfr11d.htm (refereed electronic journal published from Dept. of Media Studies, La Trobe University, Melbourne).

                           Guest Editor (with Prof. Ina Bertrand), Special Issue on ‘Film/Culture Adaptation in Asia’, Screening the Past 11

1994                   ‘Use of Video as Alternative Communication Medium in Rural Bangladesh’ in Niriksha: Media Journal, No. 43, published by Bangladesh Press Institute, Dhaka (co-authored with Jayanta Sheikh).

                           ‘Cinema in Bangladesh: An Overview,’ Cinemaya: Asian Film Journal, 24 (1994): 50-54.

1993                   Bangladesh Liberation War in Mass Media [in Bengali], Dhaka: Dibya Prokash.

1992                   ‘Current Movement of Bangladesh Films and Face in the Millions’, Fukuoka International Film Festival Program Book (Fukuoka, Japan).

1990                   Understanding Cinema [in Bengali], Dhaka: Chalachitram Film Society. 

Documentary Film Production (Script and Direction)

1998                            Beijing Conference and Women in Bangladesh (25 min.)

1996                            Images under the Shadows (53 min.)

                                    Screenings

                                    Bangladesh Film Festival, London 2004

Centre for Cross-cultural Research, Australian National University, Canberra 1999

Catholic Education Office Melbourne’s ‘Asia in Focus’ Festival, State Film Theatre, Melbourne 1999

Hawaii International Film Festival USA 1997

Pusan International Film Festival Korea 1997

Singapore International Film Festival Singapore 1997

1995                            Beyond the Borders (58 min.)

                                    Screenings

Catholic Education Office Melbourne’s ‘Asia in Focus’ Festival, State Film Theatre, Melbourne 1999

Commonwealth Film Festival, Malaysia 1998

                                    Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival Japan 1995

                                    Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC) 1995

1993                            Tale of a Woman (25 min.)

Screenings     

                                    San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival 1995

Fringe Documentary Film and Video Festival Scotland 1993

Bangladesh Film Festival, London 2004

1991                            Face in the Millions (24 min.)

Screenings     

                                    Hawaii International Film Festival USA 1991

                                   Independent Short Film Festival Augsburg, Germany 1991

                                  ‘Focus on Asia’- International Film Festival Fukuoka, Japan 1992

                                  Festival of South Asian Documentaries, Colombo 1992