Articles by Ishita Tiwary

Ishita Tiwary is Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. She also directs the Raah lab, a community-facing research space that focuses on migration and media. She is the author of Video Culture in India: The Analog Era, Oxford University Press, 2024. This essay is based on the chapter ‘Video as Intimacy: A Biography of Hiba’, from the same book.

Remember VHS? Remember How It Slipped Past Censorship?

March 16, 2026

If you have lived through or ever wondered about the era of rented cassette tapes and video parlours, this essay is for you. At the heart of this piece is a feminist curiosity around what women were doing, gazing at and blushing about during the heyday of video films.