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Who Gets to Take Up Space? Women, Desire and the Ordinary in All We Imagine as Light
This essay is adapted from the introduction I presented at Rialto/Griffioen for a screening of Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light. I had the privilege of introducing the film and wanted to offer the audience a few ideas to carry with them into the screening: about women and the city, migration and home, intimacy,…
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When the World Hardens, Go Where Beauty Still Lives
At the VU Women@VU International Women’s Day gathering this year, I found myself thinking about absence. Not only who is present in the room, but who goes missing from our frameworks. Whose names fall away. Whose lives remain insufficiently held by the language, institutions, and categories meant to account for them. During the event, Ismintha…
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Cats Don’t Chase Enlightenment—They Nap Through It
There are two cats who live rent-free in my head. One is a strung-out, cosmic being trying to meditate in a world that won’t stop spinning. The other is a sarcastic, loyal sidekick who, by the end of his story, learns to let go of language. Let’s begin with Flow—the Latvian animation that somehow feels…
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Fizz, Silence, and the Color of Connection: On Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop
In a cinematic world that often equates impact with intensity, Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop dares to whisper. Directed by Kyōhei Ishiguro, this 2021 anime film is a gentle study in restraint—a teenage summer romance told through soft hues, quiet poetry, and emotional understatement. Clocking in at just under 90 minutes, it’s light as…
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Intersectionality and Film at the Filmacademie
Almost every year I get to work with the vibrant students of the Filmacademie. An opportunity that I greatly look forward to as it always leads to powerful conversations in which I get to learn just as much as the students. The diversity and inclusion workshop involves the theory of Intersectionality and unpacking films and…
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The Best Lines from Lego Movie 2
I was a rather reluctant candidate when it came to watching Lego Movie 2. However, I was pleasantly surprised by its nuanced humor. Scathingly brilliant! A must watch if you love intelligent comedy. Sweet Mayhem: Bring me your fiercest leader. Wyldstyle: [referring to Emmet] This guy is special. Sweet Mayhem: This guy was a fierce…
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Roma, the Netflix movie
If you haven’t already I insist you must watch the Netflix film Roma; written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón. It is an extraordinary story about human relationships. It moved me so immensely with its sensitive portrayal of heart entanglements. The photography / cinematography is breathtakingly beautiful. There were several scenes that I paused to just…
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Thinking About the Floating Dead
The painting above is a depiction of Shakespeare’s Ophelia from Hamlet. The haunting scene describes how Ophelia, driven out of her mind when her father is murdered by her lover Hamlet, falls into a stream and drowns: There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke; When down her weedy…
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An Open Letter to Neenaji
Dearest Neenaji, Namaste. This is going to be a long letter. There is so much I feel about and for you that I have kept bottled up over the years, I am afraid it is going to shamelessly flow. Therefore, even before I get into what I want to say – I am going to…
