Space, screen and the Indian multiplex film

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article summarises my doctoral thesis on the multiplex movie theatre in post-liberalisation India, whose rise has fostered radical changes in Indian popular cinema. The thesis explores the intersection and interaction of this encounter, where the psychology of architecture influences the cinematic landscape, binding architectural topography to spectatorial life. Cinema is spatially moored to the cinema hall, and even though present-day digital technology makes its relocation to spaces other than the cinema hall possible, the primary intent of cinema production is the cinema hall, its exhibition implicated in a publicness that informs its experience. In exploring how the particular spatial dynamics and imaginative matrix of the multiplex space informs its cinematic narratives, the thesis attempts to examine, through a selection of ‘multiplex films’, the configuration of a new imagination, birthed by the particular social, economic and cultural vectors of the multiplex experience.