Description:

The films of New Delhi-based filmmaker Priya Sen address the complexities of lived experience in contemporary India through an expansive range of nonfiction approaches. From the immersive vérité of NOON DAY DISPENSARY (2014), which documents a charged encounter a government health worker and inhabitants of the Savda Ghevra resettlement colony in a single 30-minute shot, to the fragmentary and poetic essay on lockdown and protest NO STRANGER AT ALL (2022), Sen uses all the resources of documentary to reveal the distance between urban reality and the forms of freedom envisioned by its inhabitants. 

In this workshop, Sen will speak about the contours of her creative practice, offering insight into the social and formal concerns that shape her approach to documentary. What kinds of unseen personal and social forces come to the surface through her approach to observational cinema? How can filmmakers use the medium to question and perhaps transcend limits of expression and freedom?

Co-sponsored by the Center for Global Culture and Communication, the Subcontinent Project at Northwestern, and the MFA in Documentary Media.