Grennan, Rosemary; (2025) Mobile Times: Digital Files, Scales of Circulation and the Material Conditions of Cinema in Delhi in the Age of the Phone. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Throughout India, films are illegally downloaded and streamed; MP4s are sold from small booths, watched on inexpensive mobile phones, digital files are hand-delivered across the cities, hoarded on capacious storage devices, and traded from neighbourhood kiosks. Vernacular producers raid the archives of the internet and reconfigure networks to create abundant iterations of digital files of varying formats and quality. This thesis takes an ethnographic approach to the often imperceptible digital video file, tracing how it moves in and out of visibility, the forms that emerge from its mobility and circulation, and the shifting scales and ontologies of the moving image that these processes create. The first sections of the thesis establish the material conditions in which practices of media exchange, reproduction and consumption exist in Delhi. It traces intersecting structures of communication, supply, and consumption; from local internet providers, internet cafes, and mobile phone kiosks. To examine how media infrastructures are composed of palimpsests of old and new technologies and technical knowledge, which intersect with contemporary digital structures of cinema. Additionally, it examines the development of storage media and vernacular archiving practices, which extend beyond mere file storage to encompass the outward gesture of circulation. In this context, reproduction is a complex process of encoding, re-editing, naming, and storing, and these conditions in turn transform video content through processes of fragmentation, corruption, and recomposition. To examine the types of imagery and cinematic form these media practices produce, the second part of the thesis locates different intersecting media networks of Delhi and beyond, back onto the surface of the image to explore the particular aesthetic experience they produce. More specifically, it describes the different forms of spectatorship emerging from the screen of the mobile phone, how this affects the experience of cinematic duration, and how the linearity of film as a time-based medium is disrupted by everyday life rhythms. Finally, it explores different haptic and tactile engagements with the film copy through practices of re-editing and embellishing video collections.

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