Ritika Kaushik
Film historian and video essayist with a focus on documentary cinema and South Asian cinema.
ABOUT
Ritika Kaushik is an Assistant Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick. Her academic and videographic research focuses on the history, aesthetics, infrastructures, archives, and afterlives of state sponsored documentaries in India.
She received her PhD in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of Chicago and worked as a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Research Training Group "Configurations of Film" at Goethe University, Frankfurt.
Her writings have appeared or are forthcoming in journals like Feminist Media Histories (forthcoming), Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, Economic and Political Weekly, Docalogue, ASAP | art, and in the edited volumes Accidental Archivism (meson press) and Cinema and the Indian National Emergency (Bloomsbury). Her practice-based research is rooted in her training and experiences in filmmaking, which in addition to her own projects include her work as Assistant Director on a major Bollywood feature film. Her videographic work has been featured at the Pesaro Film Festival's Rimontaggi Competition, the journals NECSUS and Tecmerin, and in the Sight and Sound annual poll for best video essays in 2023.
She has delivered public talks at venues including Arsenal, Berlin and Cinea, Antwerp, and her curatorial work includes a forthcoming film series at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Los Angeles and a yearlong Lecture and Film series on Satyajit Ray at the Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum. Frankfurt.
She received her PhD in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of Chicago and worked as a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Research Training Group "Configurations of Film" at Goethe University, Frankfurt.
Her writings have appeared or are forthcoming in journals like Feminist Media Histories (forthcoming), Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, Economic and Political Weekly, Docalogue, ASAP | art, and in the edited volumes Accidental Archivism (meson press) and Cinema and the Indian National Emergency (Bloomsbury). Her practice-based research is rooted in her training and experiences in filmmaking, which in addition to her own projects include her work as Assistant Director on a major Bollywood feature film. Her videographic work has been featured at the Pesaro Film Festival's Rimontaggi Competition, the journals NECSUS and Tecmerin, and in the Sight and Sound annual poll for best video essays in 2023.
She has delivered public talks at venues including Arsenal, Berlin and Cinea, Antwerp, and her curatorial work includes a forthcoming film series at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Los Angeles and a yearlong Lecture and Film series on Satyajit Ray at the Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum. Frankfurt.
BOOK PROJECTS
FILES BEGET FILMS: HOW INDIAN BUREAUCRACY MADE DOCUMENTARIES
My in-progress book titled Files Beget Films tells the story of a colossal documentary filmmaking enterprise that showed India on film, through a behind-the-scenes look at the complex operations of power, patronage, experimentation, subversion, and dysfunction that governed filmmaking at Films Division of India.
Learn MorePODCAST
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: A Podcast About All Things Documentary
Email: ritika.kaushik204@gmail.com