When I was asked to be part of the “A Room of Our Own” project, it made me nervous and anxious. A lot of painful, uncomfortable questions emerged from seemingly happy memories. My film, Random Thoughts on a Sunday Afternoon, is made entirely from found footage. As I pieced together old camera practicals, stills of my peers at FTII, our diploma films—some of which I had acted in—and my own films as a director, I began to question why a time that was personally so difficult for me still remains the happiest time in my life.
The conflict between the conservative India of the 1980s, which I struggled with as a young girl and woman, and the joy of watching a film on the big screen has remained a constant in my life. From a childhood fascination with cinema that eventually led me to FTII, to slowly discovering my own voice—this film is a document of FTII in the early 1990s. It features me, my friends, my classmates, the staff, and the landscape of the FTII campus of that time, as seen through our films.