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152 << Diasporic Entrepreneurs and Digital Media

between media and diasporic identity, there are several reasons for the privi-
leged position cinema occupies. The first is simply the enduring popularity of
films and film music (mainly Hindi-language cinema from Bombay) among
South Asian families who migrated to the United States following changes in
8
U.S. immigration law in 1965. From the late 1960s, when enterprising fami-
lies began screening films in university halls and other venues, to the recent
forays into film exhibition by Bombay-based media companies like Reliance
Entertainment, Hindi-language Bollywood films continue to dominate the
Desi mediascape. These film screenings were usually held in university halls
rented for a few hours during the weekend, with films screened off 16mm,
and later, 35mm reels. These weekend screenings, with an intermission that
lasted thirty to forty-five minutes, were an occasion, apart from religious fes-
tivals, for people to wear traditional clothes, speak in Hindi or other regional
languages, and participate in a ritual reminiscent of “home.” At a time when
there were no cultural institutions in place and little on offer in mainstream
media that resonated with their emotions, nostalgic longing, and cultural
values, leave alone addressing the difficulties of life in a new cultural space,
these screenings were marked as an exclusively Indian space, away from
mainstream society, where families could meet and participate in a ritual of
sharing personal and collective memories of life in India. 9
A second reason that films and film music figure prominently in discus-
sions of Desi youth culture relates to Desi youth appropriating and remixing
film songs and dance sequences in college events, dance clubs, and so on. 10
Third, it is in and through cinema that diasporic writers and directors like
Hanif Kureishi, Mira Nair, and Gurinder Chadha began addressing the com-
plexities of claiming and defining South Asian identities in countries such as
the U.K. and the U.S. As Jigna Desai observes, Bollywood has shaped South
Asian diasporic filmmaking in multiple ways:

One primary example is the frequency with which Bollywood is referred
[to] thematically within the films themselves . . . in addition, Bollywood
conventions are reflected in the aesthetic forms and narrative structures
in a variety of films . . . also, there is crossover in terms of performers:
Shashi Kapoor, Zohra Sehgal, Om Puri, and Shabana Azmi are all actors
who have appeared in Indian and diasporic productions. Finally, diasporic
filmmakers have employed the networks of distribution that circulate
Indian films. 11

Finally, the limited influence of television production in the South Asian
American context (and more broadly, the Asian American one), can be