Disregarded, disreputable, provincial, seedy, illicit, cheap, scrap, or just plain trash: there are many ways to describe the forms of screen culture that populate this issue of BioScope. From Bhojpuri action cinema to film paraphernalia sold by the kilogram by the scrap-merchant; from 1980s Malayalam soft-porn to “cracked” games consoles; these forms of screen culture inhabit a netherworld of disregard, disrespect, and, often, discontent. They are produced and circulated through intersecting infrastructures of illegitimacy and inhabit spaces and forms peripheral to the mainstream, the national, the metropolis, and film and media scholarship. Nonetheless, they engage audiences across South Asia, either through their localized appeal, their wide accessibility, their easy circulation, or the notoriety of their illicit forms. And they have now appeared in the scholarly limelight too. This issue of BioScope brings together a series of articles that illustrate the persistence, relevance, and appeal of this broad field of screen culture.

All BioScope contents are available for free download until 31 January 2017.

Editorial

Infrastructures and Archives of the B-Circuit
Ravi S. Vasudevan, Rosie Thomas, S.V. Srinivas, Debashree Mukherjee, Lotte Hoek

Articles

The Spectral Duration of Malayalam Soft-porn: Disappearance, Desire, and Haunting
Darshana Sreedhar Mini