Aparna Sharma

Aparna Sharma is a documentary filmmaker and film theorist. Her films document narratives that get overlooked in the mainstream imagination of the Indian nation. Her films have previously focused on the British Indian diaspora, displaced Kashmiri migrants, and the widows of Vrindavan. Since 2009 she has been working in India’s northeastern region, where in addition to making films that document the region’s cultural history she is researching early and contemporary cinema.

In her filmmaking Aparna Sharma is committed to exploring alternative visual vocabularies through which to evoke narratives that mainstream film forms — fiction or documentary, do not accommodate. She combines techniques of ethnographic film with montage practice inspired by the Soviet School.

As a film theorist she writes about cinema practices that fall outside mainstream Hindi cinema. She has written on Indian documentary forms, Indo-Pak ties through documentary, and the representation of gender in Indian cinema. She works as Assistant Professor at the Dept. of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, University of California Los Angeles