Swarnavel Eswaran Pillai
eswaran@msu.edu
517-348-6187
C643 Wells Hall
619 Red Cedar Rd
East Lansing, MI 48824
FacultyEnglishFilm Studies
Professor (Department of English and the School of Journalism)
Film and Media Studies; Film and Media Production; Creative Writing; Race and Ethnic Studies; Global and Diasporic Studies
Biography
Swarnavel Eswaran is a Professor in the Department of English and the School of Journalism at Michigan State University, where he teaches film history, theory, and production. He graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India and the University of Iowa. His documentaries include Nagapattinam: Waves from the Deep (2018), Hmong Memories at the Crossroad (2016), Migrations of Islam (2014), and Unfinished Journey: A City in Transition (2012). His research focuses on Tamil and Indian cinema’s history, aesthetics, politics, contemporary digital cinema, and concomitant changes. His essays have appeared in Screen, Jump Cut, South Asian Popular Culture, and Caste: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion. His books include Tamil Cinema Reviews: 1931-1960 (Nizhal, 2020) and Madras Studios: Narrative, Genre, and Ideology in Tamil Cinema (Sage Publications, 2015). His fiction feature Kattumaram (Catamaran, 2019) has been screened in over fifty international film festivals, including at the Frameline, InsideOut, and Kashish.
Artist Statement
I believe in the possibilities of cinema to entertain and educate people, enabling them to come together and challenge the status quo for a better future. While the interventions through art may not be palpable in their immediate effects but we are witness to its centrality in the significant changes in our society regarding the discourses surrounding race, gender, identity, sexual orientation, equity, migration, displacement, and environment, ecology, Anthropocene, and digitality. My documentaries, which are collaborations with my students at MSU, engage with these topics to document lived reality and interact with people around us to understand the complexity of life that can lead to peaceful coexistence through the acceptance of diversity and appreciation of difference. It is driven by the faith in cinema to inform and heal us.
Projects
Nagapattinam: Waves from the Deep, 2018, (Director, Editor and Producer), 72 min.
My decade-long work—a documentary on Tsunami relief and rehabilitation (2004-2014) at Nagapattinam, a coastal town in South India. 20 May 2016. Chicago Tamil Forum. Foster Hall, University of Chicago.
Hmong Memory at the Crossroads, 2016, (Co-director with Safoi Babana-Hampton and Cyril Payen, and Associate Producer), 97 min.
Hmong Memory at the Crossroads, 2016, (Co-director with Safoi Babana-Hampton and Cyril Payen, and Associate Producer), 97 min.
Winner Best Documentary Film (Feature Category). Universe Multicultural Film Festival. Los Angeles. April 2017.
Official Selection. Indie Fest USA (IFF), California, 16 Oct. 2015. Nominated for the Best Documentary Feature
Musée de l’Histoire de l’Immigration (The Museum of the History of Immigration) at the Palais de la Porte Dorée, Paris, France, 17 March 2016, Screening and Round-table discussion
Migrations of Islam, 2014, (Director, Videographer, and Editor), 56 min. Official Selection. Ethnogra Film Festival, Paris, 2015
Official Selection. World Documentary Film and Television Conference (Falmouth, UK, 2014).
Screened at the SOAS (The School of Oriental and African Studies) Conference, London, 2014.
Official Selection. Queens International Film Festival (New York, 2013).
Book Trailer, 2012,(Director, Trailer for Marcia Aldrich’s Award-Winning Novel, Companion to an Untold Story, Univ. of Georgia Press, 2012), 5 min.
Unfinished Journey: A City in Transition, 2012, (Co-director, Co-producer, and Co-Editor with Mark Huelsbeck), 26 min.
Officially Selected by the African World Documentary Film Festival (2014)
Screened at IRepresent International Documentary Film Festival in Lagos, Nigeria.
Screened at the Molefi Kete Asante Institute for Afrocentric Studies, Philadelphia.
Screened at Missouri History Museum, University of Missouri at St. Louis.
Official Selection. St. Augustine Film Festival—a part of the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (2012).
Official Selection. San Diego Black Film Festival (2012).
Kattumaram (Catamaran), 2019 (Writer, Director, and Producer), Fiction, 73 min.
Media Mentions
Dr. Swarnavel Eswaran Pillai: Seeing Life and Culture Through Film
College of Arts & Letters
June 11, 2021
Awards and Honors
Courses
DS 103: Media History
FLM 260: Introduction to Digital Cinema and Media
ENG/FLM 334: Screenwriting
ENG 332: Historical Approaches to Film
Documentary Capstone
MI/ENG/JRA/WRA 311: Introduction to Documentary History, Theory, and Production
TC/ENG/JRN/WRA 411 and 491: Documentary Design
ENG 430: Seminar in Film and Media Theory: Authorship and Genre
FLM 336: Aesthetics of Film Editing
ENG 333: Gangster Film
ENG 333: Popular Hindi Cinema
ENG 360: Postcolonial Cinema and the Diaspora
TC/ENG 491: Short Film: Writing and Directing
FLM 450: Ethnic Film: Indian/Hindi Cinema
FLM 301: Film History
Publications
Madras Studios: Narrative, Genre, and Ideology in Tamil Cinema (Sage Publications, January 2015
Cinema: Sattagamum Saalaramum /Cinema: Frame and Window. Chennai: Nizhal Pathippagam, Dec. 2012. This book is an anthology of scholarly essays in Tamil on documentaries and experimental films.
“Cinematography and the Poetics of 1950s Tamil Cinema: Maruthi Rao and Visual Style.” Screen (2017) 58 (1), pp. 73-81. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjx009
“Secularism and Its Discontents: Moor’s Last Sigh and Riot.” ART (Analyses, Rereadings and Theories), 4 (1), 2016, pp. 1-15.
“Tamil Documentary Naali: Low-End Technology and Subaltern History.” TransMissions: The Journal of Film and Media Studies, 1 (1) , 2016, pp. 5-20.
“Mysskin’s Pisaasu (2014): Ghost as the goddess.” Studies in South Asian Film & Media, 7 (1+2), 2016, pp. 89–101.
“The Texture of Interiority: Voiceover and Visuals,” Studies in Visual Arts and Communication, 2 (1), (2015) http://journalonarts.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/SVACij-Vol2_No1_2015-Pillai-Texture-Voiceover-and-Visuals.pdf
“Mirugavidusagam: Theater of the Body, Ritual and Land,” Studies in South Asian Film and Media (Intellect), 5 (1), Spring (April) 2013 (The Body: Indian theatre Special Issue), pp. 37-46.
“1970s Tamil Cinema and the Post-Classical Turn,” South Asian Popular Culture (Routledge), 10 (1), April 2012, pp. 77-89. Reprinted as“The 1970s Tamil Cinema and the Post-Classical Turn,” In Priya Joshi and Rajinder Dudrah eds. The 1970s and its Legacies in India’s Cinemas. Eds. England, UK: Routledge 2014, pp. 76-88.
Tamil Cinema Vimarsanangal: 1931-1960/Tamil Cinema Reviews: 1931-1960 Coeditor. (Chennai: Nizhal, 2020).
Manudamum Mandiyiduthalum: Marivarum Cinemavum Maaratha Agathedalum/ Humanity and Reparation: Changing Cinema and Its Unchanging Yearnings (Chennai: Parisal Pathippagam, 2019). This book is an anthology of scholarly essays in Tamil on fiction and nonfiction films regarding the transition from the celluloid to the digital.
Madras Studios: Narrative, Genre, and Ideology in Tamil Cinema (Sage Publications, 2015).
Cinema: Sattagamum Saalaramum / Cinema: Frame/Window (Chennai: Nizhal Pathippagam, Dec. 2012). This book is an anthology of scholarly essays in Tamil on documentaries and experimental films.
“Death Rides a Horse and Its Influence on Indian Cinema.” FemAsia: Asian Women’s Journal. 25 Oct. 2020. http://femasiamagazine.com/death-rides-a-horse-and-its-influence- on-indian-cinema/
“Contemporary Tamil cinema and its departure from the mainstream: Manusangada/Cry Humanity and To Let.” Jump Cut (2019) 59 (Fall Issue), https://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/Eswaren-Tamil/text.html
“Periyar as Biopic: Star Persona, Historical Events, and Politics.” Biography (Winter 2017) 40 (1), pp. 93-115.
“Cinematography and the Poetics of 1950s Tamil Cinema: Maruthi Rao and Visual Style.” Screen (2017) 58 (1), pp. 73-81. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjx009
“Secularism and Its Discontents: Moor’s Last Sigh and Riot.” ART (Analyses, Rereadings and Theories), 4 (1), 2016, pp. 1-15.
“Mysskin’s Pisaasu (2014): Ghost as the Goddess.” Studies in South Asian Film & Media, 7 (1+2), 2016, pp. 89–101.
“1970s Tamil Cinema and the Post-Classical Turn,” South Asian Popular Culture (Routledge), 10 (1), April 2012, pp. 77-89. Reprinted as“The 1970s Tamil Cinema and the Post-Classical Turn,” In Priya Joshi and Rajinder Dudrah eds. The 1970s and its Legacies in India’s Cinemas. Eds. England, UK: Routledge 2014, pp. 76-88.
“Dalit Life, Tamil Cinema and Masculinity: Interventions of Pa. Ranjith and Mari Selvaraj.” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, 50 (Dec. 2023). http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue50/eswaran.pdf
Leena Manimekalai’s Is It Too Much to Ask? — Tenancy, Transphobia, and Tamil Society.” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 61 (Fall 2022), Ejumpcut.org. Accessed 23 Feb. 2023. https://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/SwarnavalEswaran/index.html]
“Maadathy – An Unfairy Tale: Caste, Space, and Gaze.” CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion, 3 (1) April 2022, pp. 163–180.
“Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan: History, Horror, and Culture.” Mise-en-scène: The Journal of Film & Visual Narration. 6 (2), 2021. https://journals.kpu.ca/index.php/msq/article/view/1579
“Death Rides a Horse and Its Influence on Indian Cinema.” FemAsia: Asian Women’s Journal. 25 Oct. 2020. http://femasiamagazine.com/death-rides-a-horse-and-its-influence-on-indian-cinema/
“Adaptation as Cultural Appropriation: Transnational Frames and Local Flavors,” (Based on my Keynote address at the Caesurae Annual Conference) Caesurae: Poetics of Cultural Translation, (3:2 & 4: 1) 2019/2020. https://91b33d06-5e91-4fe5-919c-f23e70d3e168.filesusr.com/ugd/cc0cb5_f272fa85dc8a4962a8c0782e025c4a5c.pdf
“Contemporary Tamil cinema and Its Departure from the Mainstream: Manusangada/Cry Humanity and To Let.” Jump Cut (2019) 59 (Fall Issue), https://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/Eswaren-Tamil/text.html
Exhibitions
Kattumaram (Catamaran), 2019 (Writer, Director, and Producer), Fiction, 73 min.
Wesleyan University
“Film Screening and Discussion: Kattumaram (Catamaran).” Center for the Arts, Wesleyan University.
Nagapattinam: Waves from the Deep (2018) (Producer, Editor, and Director) Documentary, 73 min.
Chennai, India
2021
