Cornell Professor Challenges Perceptions of the India-Pakistan Border Through Experimental Film
PHILADELPHIA, PA – A new cinematic approach is challenging conventional understandings of the India-Pakistan border, arguing that the very act of filmmaking can deconstruct ingrained notions of its solidity. Natasha Raheja, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Performing & Media Arts at Cornell University, will present her work exploring this concept in a seminar titled “Beyond the National Frame: Scenes from the Indo-Pak Border.”
Raheja’s research centers on how visual representations typically reinforce the idea of fixed borders – through maps, fences, and media coverage. However, she argues that by manipulating the visual medium itself – through techniques like juxtaposition, montage, glitch, and split-screen – it’s possible to reveal the border as a more fluid and contested space. She demonstrates that while the border functions as a marker of discontinuity, it concurrently exists as a continuous space.
The seminar will feature excerpts from Raheja’s 2023 short film, A Gregarious Species, an experimental work utilizing found footage of cross-border locust swarms in the Thar Desert, and Kitne passports? (currently in production). Raheja contends that, much like a filmic cut, the border itself “produces a shared and segmented space.” By combining found footage with her own original imagery, she aims to dismantle the “mental pictures about the fixity of borders” often perpetuated by mainstream narratives, exposing the reductions and excesses inherent in nation-state order.
Raheja’s projects broadly explore questions of migration, belonging, and majority-minority politics in South asia. She is also the Director of Cast in India,an observational portrait of Bengali metal workers manufacturing New York City manhole covers,and is currently completing a book tentatively titled Selective Welcome: pakistani Hindus in India.
Raheja received her PhD in Anthropology from NYU, a BS in Biology, and an MA in Asian Languages and Literature with a focus on Urdu from UT Austin.
[Image of Seminar Series Flyer – included as in original text]
