In FTII memory project A Room Of Our Own, a reminder that women were there too

An act of demolition served as one of the building blocks of a digital memory project on the Film and Television Institute of India’s female graduates. A separate act of erasure spurred the project, titled A Room Of Our Own and initiated by FTII alum Reena Mohan, Bina Paul and Surabhi Sharma.

A few year ago, the girls’ hostel at the Pune institute was torn down and replaced by another structure. The hostel’s residents swapped old photographs and reminiscences about their time there.

In 2021, the institute commissioned Being FTII, a commemorative volume comprising essays by some of the institute’s best-known alumni – nearly all of them men. The following year, FTII alum Gauri D Chakraborty put together the anthology Balancing The Wisdom Tree. The book comprises information on all the women who had studied at the institute until 2022 as well as essays and interviews with some of the graduates.

She was there too – this basic and yet overlooked truth is one of the ideas driving A Room Of Our Own. How did the women react to living away from home, hostel life and the FTII campus itself? How were their creative journeys shaped by male-dominated classrooms and faculties? These are some of the questions that A Room...

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