Growing up in India, many of us have vivid memories of watching our favorite stars dance across snow-clad mountains, stroll through cobbled European streets, or sing against the backdrop of timeless cathedrals.
For me, these weren’t just movie moments — they were invitations into a world between imagination and geography.
Cinema became my first map of Europe. I didn’t know the names of those places yet, but I felt their rhythm through music, color, and emotion.
Years later, being part of the creation of the India–Europe Film Connections online platform felt like reliving that cinematic journey — only this time, from behind the lens.
Conceived by Shikha Jhingan and Ranjani Mazumdar under the EU-India Social Sciences & Humanities Platform (EqUIP), the project explores how Indian cinema has mapped Europe through Indian eyes.
Design Meets Research — My Role in Shaping the Platform
While the foundation of the project is academic research, my role was to translate that scholarship into an accessible digital experience.
My contributions included:
- Structuring the platform’s information architecture so viewers could navigate films by location, timeline, language, and cinematic themes.
- Designing a visual language that respected academic rigor while feeling cinematic and emotional — not like a catalogue or archive.
- Creating UI patterns that made complex research easy to explore even for non-academics.
- Strategic positioning so the platform could serve both researchers and fans of cinema, bridging scholarship and cultural memory.
My goal was simple:
If the research mapped cinema, the platform needed to map emotion.
It had to feel like scrolling through memories, not browsing a database.
More Than Locations — Cinema as Emotional Cartography
The research dives into over 100 films across industries like:
- Bollywood (Hindi, Mumbai/Bombay)
- Tollywood (Bengali, Tollygunge)
- Kollywood (Tamil, Kodambakkam)
- Mollywood (Malayalam, Kerala)
It uncovers how landscapes become languages — how sound, performance, and on-screen presence transform real spaces into emotional experiences.
From the Eiffel Tower’s romantic glow to London’s rain-washed nostalgia, Europe becomes cinema’s emotional backdrop for longing, belonging, transformation.
Where Design Meets Memor
Working through the film list never felt academic.
It felt like turning pages of my own emotional scrapbook — and designing the platform felt like preserving that feeling digitally.
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge — I’m 10 again, watching mustard fields that were actually Swiss valleys.
Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara — Spain felt less like a country and more like adulthood calling.
Rockstar — Prague became heartbreak and desire.
Queen — Paris was liberation, Amsterdam was self-discovery.
Jab Harry Met Sejal, Hum Tum, London Dreams, Tamasha, An Evening in Paris…
Each one unlocked not just memories, but versions of myself.
As I layered each film into the platform, it felt like building a digital map of memories — personal, national, cinematic.
Why This Platform Matter
It’s not just a database.
It’s not just research.
And it’s not just design.
It’s a bridge between scholarship and sentiment.
It shows how cinema from Bollywood, Tollywood, Kollywood, and Mollywood shaped our inner geography of Europe long before Google Maps — and how those imagined landscapes still live inside us today.
India–Europe Film Connections is a tribute to those cinematic dreams and to the bond between art, place, and memory.
🔗 Explore the platform: https://indiaeuropefilmconnections.com/
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