Where Adab Meets Film: Mapping Discourses on Akhlaq and Islah in the Urdu Film Journals from India (1930–1950)

Abstract

Film journals had become part and parcel of the complex of cinema consumption and a vital source of information in the 1930s. These film journals successfully expanded the reach of cinema and created a space for thinking and engaging with cinema and cinema-related content. The film magazine not only fulfilled the needs of average cinema-goers but was also aimed at distributors, exhibitors, advertisers and potential film financiers. This article throws light on the issue of cinema’s relationship to language through the Urdu film journal. It explores how literary public spheres impinged on the cinematic and reflected the tensions and anxieties that had arisen over the question of the Hindi-Urdu language divide during the 1930s. The intersection between – and transformations of – literary and cinematic cultures effected by commercial printing produced a series of complex negotiations. Through the specific cases of the Urdu film journals Film, Shama, Star, Film Stage and Nigarkhana, I show how these journals were responding to – or how they expressed continued engagement with – notions of akhlaq (moral conduct) and islah (correction) which were central to contemporary articulations on reform and morality.

Phantasmatic Remediations Between Archives and Platforms

“…In recent years, we have seen new archives being produced by scholars actively seeking out print materials in languages that have not been adequately explored, offering the possibility of research across several Indian language archives. Sarah Niazi’s (2023) work on 1930s Urdu film magazines, Ranita Chatterjee’s (2014) recuperation of Bengali studio papers from the silent period, or C. Yamini Krishna’s (2024) deep dives into Telugu print archives of the 1940s and 1950s, suggest new possible futures for a polyglot film history.…”