Sudha KF

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA will facilitate research and creation of a short non-fiction film that explores the intersections and interactions of notions of feminist architectural practices and social action. Gleaning from the oral history interviews of the Women of Vaastukala Archive, the film will research on a few selected women architects to examine how architecture as a practice of creating or designing spaces is inflected with their notions of spaces that could be carved out beyond physical infrastructures. Using oral histories of Madhu Sarin and Gita Balakrishnan as primary entry-point, the project will expand to study other interviews from the collection to understand how design is reimagined from a practical category to that of praxis. This project is in collaboration with Women of Vaastuakala Archive (WoV Archive). Announced as accessible in 2022, the archive is primarily located on the web and hosts oral histories of 21 women practitioners in architecture, design, planning, and allied disciplines, from across India. Supported by the Graham Foundation, Chicago, this archive has emerged from a research project Revisiting India’s Architectural History: Tracing the Women Practitioners of Twentieth Century India. The intent is to record conversations with a wide range of women practitioners in varying positions across the built environment industry, map their journeys, and arrive at an alternate narrative about India’s architectural history post-independence. At present, the archive is now supported and hosted by Curating for Culture, a collective focused on making invisible histories visible. Sudha KF is the Coordinator of this project. 

Sudha KF is an independent filmmaker and researcher from Kerala, India. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Cinema at IIT Palakkad. Sudha graduated with a Masters in Creative Enterprise (Film) from the University of Reading, UK in September 2017. She is a recipient of the Felix scholarship for 2016-2017. For her dissertation, she made a short fiction film Eye Test which won the National Award in 2017. She has been a recipient of the Generator Art Production Fund by Experimenter Kolkata and AAA- Inlaks Art Grant in 2022 to research and create a non-fiction film Ginger Biscuit (2024) that explored the history of culture and labour in bakeries located in northern Kerala. All her films have been screened at various national and international film festivals. She is a consistent contributor to The Crown Letter Project, an international art weekly web magazine. Some of her video works have shown at Argentinian Biennale (BienalSur), Photo Days Paris, Institut français de Prague, Institute of France (Kyoto) as part of Crown Letter group exhibitions. In addition to her career as a film-maker, Sudha has held editorial positions. She was the Assistant Editor at The Economic and Political Weekly (Digital). Since January 2022, she is working as the Development Editor at the CEPT University Press working on an anthology of research essays, a book on urban planning and continues to edit books on architecture. Given her practice in film-making, research and writing Sudha is best suited to be the Project Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA. 

The WoV Archive has scores of oral history interviews. As an entry point to her research on the archives, Sudha has proposed to begin with the works of Madhu Sarin and Gita Balakrishnan. Although empirically different, the work of these two practitioners’ offers the filmmaker the opportunity to explore possibilities and unpack the relationships that emerge between architectural practice, praxis and gender. After a primary level engagement with WoV Archive, the Project Coordinator will delve into the other existing oral histories to examine if the line of inquiry can weave in other practitioners. Based on her preliminary reading of the WoVA, the Project Coordinator intends to focus on Madhavi Desai and her pioneering work Women Architects and Modernism in India: Narratives and Contemporary Practices. Following the thread of academic praxis that women brought to architecture, the research will segue to seek continuities in the works of Nalini Thakur, focussing on her conceptualisation of the ‘knowledge system approach’. As a next step, Sudha will study Prabhjot Kaur who was the first Sikh woman to get a PhD in Architecture in Punjab. This will be followed by examining materials on Chitra Viswanathan whose work engages with ideas of sustainability and eco-friendly ways of living. Through this archival study, Sudha will draw up the initial framework of the storyline for the film and will continue to study the archive and consult more of the oral history to draw a more ready blue-print or script as to what and who can make their way into the final film. 

The project speaks to the vision of the Archives and Museums programme of IFA and responds to the impulse of the collaboration between IFA and Women of Vaastukala Archive that seeks to energise the collection of oral histories. The research and the final proposed film look at the materials not as a static organised set of materials waiting to be discovered, but experiences and stories that can be listened to on its own to find inter-connections. 

Sudha has divided her work into four broad phases starting with two months of research and  a deep-dive into the archives. This will be followed by preparation for pre-production and script. The third phase will be dedicated to shooting and production. The fourth phase will be towards the post-production and final edit of the film.

The primary outcome of this project will be the documentary film. The Project Coordinator’s final deliverables to IFA, along with the reports will be a copy of the final film and any other images and audio-visual materials created through the research towards the film. 

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens in a timely manner and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees.

This project is supported by Tata Trusts.