In this episode I, Kamayani Sharma, am in conversation with Jyoti Nisha, filmmaker, writer and scholar.She is the director of BR Ambedkar: Now And Then, a widely anticipated, partially-crowdfunded documentary that is now readying for release. In her essay, ‘Indian Cinema and the Bahujan Spectatorship’ [Economic & Political Weekly, May 2020], she theorised about the politics of the gaze from her perspective as a Dalit woman viewer and media researcher. Jyoti was  Director’s Assistant on Neeraj Ghaywan's Geeli Pucchi [Dharma Productions, 2021], a short that was part of the Netflix anthology, Ajeeb Dastaans. We discuss growing up as a young woman in UP of the 1990s and 2000s, how Jyoti came to filmmaking via journalism, screenwriting and academia, working on - of all things - a Dharma movie and her journey, artistic and logistical, towards the completion of her upcoming documentary 'BR Ambedkar: Now and Then'. By way of Jyoti’s own essay, African-American film history and the polemical theories of the documentarian Trinh T. Minh Ha, we unpack the idea of the oppositional bahujan gaze unto Indian cinema and the complicated question of how realism in Indian cinema is  part of a Brahmanical aesthetic scheme. Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-11. Credits: Producer: Tunak Teas Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee Marketing: Dipalie Mehta Images: Jyoti Nisha Additional support: Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0] References: Jyoti Nisha, 'Indian Cinema and the Bahujan Spectatorship’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 55, Issue No. 20, 16 May, 2020 bell hooks, 'The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Representation', Black Looks: Race and Representation, Boston: South End Press, 1992. Trinh  T. Minh-ha, 'The Totalizing Quest of Meaning', When The Moon Waxes Red:  Representation, Gender and Politics,  Routledge: London, New York,  1991. Yashica Dutt, Coming Out As Dalit, Aleph Book Company, 2019.