No Stranger at All
Director
Sen Priya
India / 2022
40 min.
/ Original version with English subtitles
Original language
Hindi, Urdu, English
“For two years starting in 2020, this work has been forming along the edges of disquiet and premonition, in fragments and intensities, through wandering and not-staying. It has tried to find language for and ways across the bizarre upheavals of social and political values with the rise of fascism in India and a global pandemic. It has insisted on being amongst the things that keep from falling apart. Filmed in Delhi, these incomplete fictions are of the people, places, and protests that keep the language of hatred at bay and absorb the city’s grief and euphoria. In them are the continuous echoes of a violent and tenuous present.
The false closures and tenuous associations in this video/essay compose a timeline of the city at an angle through the time of this work. There is a shadowy sense of a protagonist who un-dreams it all; a stranger, who turns out, is no stranger at all.” Priya Sen
Production Priya Sen. Production company Priya Sen (New Delhi / Bangalore, India). Director Priya Sen. Cinematography Priya Sen. Editing Priya Sen. Music Priya Sen. Sound Priya Sen.
Priya Sen is a filmmaker and artist who works across film, video, sound, and installation. She has an eclectic and itinerant practice with nonfiction film that explores forms and vocabularies for tenuousness and un-settling within urban frames. Sen received an MA from Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi and an MFA from Temple University, Philadelphia. She has taught nonfiction and experimental film practice and facilitates media labs, video modules, and workshops. Her films have screened globally at festivals and venues that include BFI London Film Festival, Outfest LA, Seoul International Women’s Film Festival, and The Kitchen NYC. She is currently teaching at the Srishti Manipal Institute in Bangalore.
Films: 2008: About Elsewhere (29 min.). 2014: Noon Day Dispensary (27 min.). 2015: House of Earth (27 min.), Stories of Us: Footnotes from Emerald Island (14 min.). 2019: Yeh Freedom Life (70 min.). 2021: Faasla (with Nicolás Grandi, 50 min.). 2022: No Stranger At All.
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