Rahul is a doctoral student-junior researcher at the institute of Art History and Visual Culture since 2024. He is a practicing documentary filmmaker and a film researcher. His research interests are centered around topics such as identities, diaspora, migration, video art, gallery films, Indian avant-garde cinema, Czech/Hungarian as well as Estonian cinema.
His article-based doctoral thesis is centered on Russian-Estonian identity representations in contemporary documentaries as well as video and visual art (2007-2024). In particular, he is analyzing works of Eléonore de Montesquiou, Kristina Norman, Vladimir Loginov and Marianna Kaat among others.
In addition to his thesis, Rahul’s book titled The Phantasmagorical and Ethnographic World of Amit Dutta is nearing publication. The book charts out the filmmaker’s work and concentrates on finding thematic, artistic and stylistic observations; it places Dutta’s works into an art historical-film prism as well as analyses his ethnographic and museum films that linger on the boundaries between animation fusing with the real, self-reflexivity and ancient Indian aesthetics. Rahul’s own cinematic endeavors have also received accolades and screened at festivals such as NH Docs Film Festival (Florence and the Hymns of Joseph, 2022) and BAFTA-qualifying Carmarthen Bay Film Festival (The Binoculars, 2019).
Rahul Sharma
PhD student - junior researcher