A Room of Our Own is a memory project featuring the voices and experiences of women graduates from FTII, Pune. While memory is often subjective and can veer into nostalgia, this web-based project uses personal stories of women students to question conventional histories of cinema. Through oral histories, photographs from private collections, and 13 short videos reflecting their time as students, the filmmakers foreground a shared, gendered experience – one that highlights and celebrates the contributions of women in Indian cinema, particularly those from FTII.
FTII was established in Pune in 1960 by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. As the first film school in newly independent India, it recognized cinema as an essential part of the nation’s cultural landscape. Over the past six decades, FTII has produced more than 6,000 graduates – of whom just over 600 are women.
In this interactive installation, visitors are invited to engage with a curated journey of edited clips from online conversations (conducted between 2020–2023), archival photographs, and newly created short films. Each visitor creates a unique, non-linear path through the content, shaped by chance and choice. The focus is on foregrounding a collective experience rather than highlighting individual experiences alone.
This work-in-progress aims to ask: How do we remember our years as women students at one of the country’s premier film institutes? What were the films we dreamed of, the images we created, and the ideas that shaped us? What do these memories say about women’s place in cinema today?
This project is led by filmmakers Reena Mohan, Bina Paul and Surabhi Sharma. They are all graduates of FTII, Pune, and have made significant contributions to Indian cinema as filmmakers, editors, and educators.
