Film Screening of Bend It Like Beckham

The Department of English and Cultural Studies, in collaboration with MacGuffin Club, organised a film screening of Bend It Like Beckham (2002), conducted by Dr. Shrimoyee Chattopadhyay, for MA students as part of a curricular engagement aligned with the course Postcolonial Digital Narratives. The screening was conceptualised as a pedagogic intervention that used cinema as a visual narrative form to introduce students to key concerns in postcolonial and diasporic studies, including identity formation, migration, gendered aspirations, and cultural negotiation within transnational spaces.

Bend It Like Beckham, set within the British Punjabi Sikh diaspora, narrates the story of Jesminder “Jess” Bhamra, a young woman navigating the tensions between familial expectations, cultural traditions, and her ambition to pursue professional football. The film offers a compelling representation of diasporic subjectivity, making it particularly relevant for MA students engaging with postcolonial narratives across media. Through its portrayal of everyday life, generational conflict, and embodied resistance, the film functions as a cultural text that foregrounds the lived realities of migrant communities in contemporary Britain.

The screening enabled students to encounter key theoretical ideas central to the Postcolonial Digital Narratives course—such as hybridity, double consciousness, and the third space—through a cinematic medium. Rather than approaching these concepts solely through theoretical readings, the film allowed students to observe how postcolonial identities are narrativised visually, temporally, and affectively. The protagonist’s negotiation of multiple cultural codes illustrates the complexities of belonging and self-fashioning that are central to diasporic narratives.

The film also holds significance in terms of its narrative circulation and afterlife within digital culture. As a widely streamed and frequently referenced diasporic film, Bend It Like Beckham continues to exist within digital platforms, online archives, and global viewing contexts. This aspect aligns closely with the course’s focus on how postcolonial stories are mediated, preserved, and reinterpreted through digital means. The screening thus encouraged students to consider cinema not as a static text, but as part of a larger digital narrative ecosystem that shapes collective memory and cultural identity.

Additionally, the film’s focus on sport as a global and transnational language resonates with themes of mobility, aspiration, and neoliberal multiculturalism discussed in the course. Jess’s journey reflects the intersections of race, gender, and nation within global cultural circuits, offering a nuanced perspective on how empowerment and agency are negotiated within postcolonial contexts.

Overall, the film screening served as an academically grounded visual engagement for MA students, reinforcing the objectives of the Postcolonial Digital Narratives course. By situating Bend It Like Beckham within a postcolonial framework, the event underscored the pedagogical value of film as a narrative medium through which students can critically engage with diaspora, identity, and the digital circulation of postcolonial stories.