Priya Sen

Co-presented by CFMDC and re:assemblage collective

SAVAC is pleased to invite Priya Sen to Toronto, ON for an artist residency. Her work explores form, ethnography, music, and migration in different urban contexts. During the course of the residency, Sen will engage in peer-to-peer exchanges with artists and cultural workers about balancing their daily artistic practices with paid labour. In addition, Sen will lead a video crit session for new and emerging filmmakers, screen her latest film Yeh Freedom Life/This Freedom Life, and participate as a jury member for the 2019 Images Festival. We invite you to attend the screening of Yeh Freedom Life/This Freedom Life.

Filmed over the course of a year in Ambedkar Nagar, a dense, largely working class area in South Delhi, Yeh Freedom Life moves between the two very different worlds of its protagonists, Sachi and Parveen, and tries to keep up with the currents and swings of their respective loves. Sachi works at a local beauty parlor; Parveen runs the family’s small cigarette counter at a crowded intersection. They are surrounded by a cacophonous city; they are both in love with other women. The film accompanies them through their desire to find and live, according to Sachi, their “freedom lives”–lives that are outside of the constant scrutiny and sanction of society and family. But this “freedom life” also leaves them vulnerable to the precariousness of love, when it refuses such constraints. The film is in Hindi with English subtitles.

Screening at TMAC
Tuesday 9 April 2019 at 7:00pm
Toronto Media Arts Centre (TMAC)
32 Lisgar St, Toronto, ON M6J 0C9
Conversation with director Priya Sen to follow, moderated by filmmaker Aisha Jamal

Screening at York University
Tuesday 26 March 2019 at 12:45pm
Nat Taylor Cinema, Ross Building N102
York University, Toronto, ON
Conversation with director Priya Sen to follow, moderated by SAVAC Executive Director Indu Vashist

Priya Sen is a filmmaker and artist working across film, video, sound, and installation. Her work has largely centered around questions of form, urban ethnographies, music, and migration–mainly in New Delhi, a city in which she chooses to situate her practice. Priya Sen will be present for this screening.

Aisha Jamal is a Toronto-based filmmaker, film programmer and college professor. Her short documentaries have screened at festivals and venues worldwide. She recently finished her first feature-length documentary called “A Kandahar Away”. Aisha programs Canadian films for the Hot Docs Canadian Documentary Film Festival and the Syria Film Festival. She teaches film theory and history at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario. Along with Maya Bedward, she hosts a monthly podcast on gender, race and representation in cinema called “The Gaze.”