Join us for a special movie screening and Q&A with architect Rohan Shivkumar and filmmaker Avijit Mukul Kishore. "Nostalgia for the Future," is an award winning documentary film on Indian modernity, the formation of an Indian citizen, and the idea of the home.

About the film

'Nostalgia for the future' looks at the imaginations of homes across four examples of buildings made over a century. These are Lukhshmi Vilas Palace in Baroda – the gigantic home built by a progressive monarch in the late 19th Century; Villa Shodhan in Ahmedabad – a private residence that represents the idea of domesticity within Nehruvian modernity, designed by Le Corbusier; Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, which epitomizes the Gandhian aspirations of the nation-state; and public housing in post-independence Delhi, designed by the Government of India to house refugees from Pakistan and the bureaucrats of the newly independent nation.

The film explores these spaces and imagines the bodies that were meant to inhabit them through the evocation of the cinematic and aural collective memory of a nation. It uses a mix of formats – 16mm film and digital video in both color and black and white, along with archival footage from state propaganda films and mainstream cinema.

The film is a collaboration between film maker Avijit Mukul Kishore and architect Rohan Shivkumar. It emerges from the intersection of their respective disciplines – architecture and documentary film, both of which have been ingrained in the discourse of utilitarianism and certainty. The film opens these disciplines out to self-critique and looks at their role in imagining and constructing a nation and its citizen.

The film is produced by Films Division India.

Awards

Best Documentary Prize at IDSFFK, Trivandrum, 2017

Jury’s Special Mention at Signs Festival, Thrissur, 2017