Film scholar Aruna Vasudev, ‘Mother of Asian Cinema’, passes away at 88

Founder President, Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema, Aruna Vasudev during a Press Conference on Buddhist Film Festival ‘‘ The Inner Path’‘ in New Delhi on April 18, 2012.
| Photo Credit: Photo: S.Subramanium

Aruna Vasudev, an eminent Indian film scholar, critic, festival curator and painter, has passed away at 88. Known by her formidable sobriquet ‘Mother of Asian Cinema’, Aruna was celebrated for her passionate evangelism of Indian and Asian films. She is credited for fostering interest and scholarship about Asian film cultures the world over.

Remembered by her warm, affectionate smile and amiable manner, Aruna was a fixture of Delhi’s cultural circles as well as several national and international film festivals—a strident emissary of Asian cinema on a world stage. Her honours included the Officier des Arts et des Lettres, France’s highest cultural award, and the first Satyajit Ray Memorial Award by FIPRESCI India. She inspired a generation of critics and cineastes to take film scholarship — and activism — seriously.

Aruna Vasudev was born in 1936 in British India. She studied photography in New York, then completed her doctorate in cinema and censorship at Sorbonne in Paris. She was involved in the early decades of broadcast television in India. In 1988, she became the founding editor of Cinemaya, a pioneering film quarterly dedicated to Asian cinema, printed out of Delhi. Three years later, she founded NETPAC (Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema), an independent non-profit committed to the propagation of films from across the continent.

One of the offshoots of Aruna’s proselytism was the creation of the Osian’s Cinefan Festival, which screened films from India, Asia and the Arab world. The festival, a touchstone of modern Delhi’s cultural life, was discontinued in 2012.

Aruna was also one of the trustees of the Public Service Broadcasting Trust, which supports the production of independent documentaries in India. She also served on the juries of marquee festivals like Cannes and Locarno.

As a writer, Aruna Vasudev authored several books on cinema and literature. Her book Being & Becoming, the Cinemas of Asia, co-written with Latika Padgaonkar and Rashmi Doraiswamy and published in 2002, is considered a landmark.

Asian cinema “does not need the sort of promotion that was our single-minded determination when we set out,” Aruna told The Hindu in 2016 while discussing a book of collected writings from Cinemaya. “The histories, cultures, societies of the countries and their cinemas are known and documented…” The quote ends without her taking credit for this transformation.

Aruna took a late-life interest in Japanese ink paintings, known as Sumi-E, and had exhibitions of her works. In 2021, she was the subject of a documentary, Aruna Vasudev: Mother of Asian Cinema, directed by Supriya Suri.