Ram Krishna Ranjan
About Ram Krishna Ranjan
I work at the intersection of pedagogy, research, and filmmaking. As a film practitioner, I am particularly drawn to themes such as migration, gentrification, exclusion, memory and nation, decoloniality, postcoloniality, and the intersectionality of caste, class, and gender. Through my practice, I aim to build conversations around place-specific issues of social justice. I am deeply interested in pursuing film practice not as an illustration or explication of a pre-figured research result but rather allowing the inquiry to be shaped and advanced by the methodological affordances of the medium – its tools, languages, contexts, formal concerns, histories, etc. I am especially interested in transdisciplinary methods where film practice is influenced by and in conversation with several other disciplines. I believe that dissolving traditional disciplinary boundaries and contextual limitations can foster new methodological possibilities.
I often work across different modes and genres – a cinema that is in between and across documentary, fiction, performative, archival, essayistic, and autobiographical. So far, I have made more than ten films which have been widely shown. I also work closely within the ‘visual art’ context. Alongside my interests, my previous educational training in Fine Arts, Film, Ethnography, and Cultural Studies has enabled me to pursue an expanded notion of film practice. Before moving to Sweden, I led an independent media company in India for many years, focusing on documentary filmmaking and advocacy-related films for grassroots organizations.
In 2023, I defended my PhD in artistic research titled Cuts and Continuities: Caste-subaltern Imaginations of the Bengal Famine of 1943. In my PhD, I explored how film practice, both as a methodology and as an outcome of the inquiry, can be mobilized to explore negotiated imaginations of the Bengal famine from a caste-subaltern perspective. In my PhD, I also investigated the affordances of iterative, collaborative, reflective, and transdisciplinary film practice. Between 2018 and 2023, as part of this PhD research, I made five films: Fourth World (67 mins); You deny my living and I defy my death (34 mins); I Hesitate (5 mins); Contracts of making, viewing and listening (17 mins); and Where we rats lurk (11 mins).
Currently, I am working as an artist in a transdisciplinary multi-university project titled JustHeat. This project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Collaboration of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Europe (CHANSE), aiming to use oral history as a method to address issues of energy poverty, transition, and justice, particularly in relation to home heating in Sweden, Finland, England, and Romania. I am also working on an ongoing project titled In the Shadows, funded by Adlerbertska, which explores the conditions of gig workers in Gothenburg. Additionally, I am co-editing a special issue of PARSE, titled Fabulation, with Jyoti Mistry, planned for release in summer 2025, which seeks to examine the potential of fabulation in artistic practices. Alongside other colleagues, I am also involved in FilmED – Laboratory for Film Education: From Discourse to Practice, an Erasmus+ collaboration between the Netherlands Film Academy, Amsterdam; HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; and Łódź Film School, Poland.
Recent Publications
Ranjan, Ram Krishna. “Negotiating Caste-Subaltern Imaginations of the 1943 Bengal Famine: Methodological Underpinnings of a Creative-Collaborative Practice.” Third World Quarterly, March 8, 2023, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2023.2184336.
Ranjan, Ram Krishna. “Where we rats lurk.” Screenworks 13, no.1 (2023). https://www.screenworks.org.uk/archive/volume-13-1/where-we-rats-lurk
Ranjan, Ram Krishna. “Elephant Trumpet: In/out of the Black Box.” Inmaterial 7, no. 14 (December 22, 2022): 64–103. https://doi.org/10.46516/inmaterial.v7.153.
Ranjan, Ram Krishna and Nkule Mabaso. “When two southerners meet in a tram in Gothenburg, Sweden.” Parse, no. 15, (Autumn 2022): https://parsejournal.com/article/when-two-southerners-meet-on-a-tram-in-gothenburg-sweden/
Ranjan, Ram Krishna. “negotiated imagination.” Glossary of Common Knowledge, 2021. https://glossary.mg-lj.si/referential-fields/referential-fields/negotiated-imagination?hide=21
Ranjan, Ram Krishna. “Contracts of making, viewing and listening: Researching in and through films.” International Journal of Film and Media Arts 5, no. 2 (2020): 124-137. https://revistas.ulusofona.pt/index.php/ijfma/article/view/7231