ISO a producer for a nonfiction experimental film / new media project to be made in Philadelphia.
Two teenagers who have never met will participate in an experiment in getting to know each other
by creating and exchanging art work, letters, and writing little scripts for the other to perform—
all without revealing any specifics about their identities to each other. They will meet at the end
of the experiment, script something together, perform it together for the filmmaker to shoot.
The filmmaker will shoot with them individually through the experiment, and the participants
will also maintain a daily video diary. Everything created by the participants will follow prompts
directed by the filmmaker.
In a world of constantly shifting relationships, can a connection be truly fulfilling even through
repeated cycles of image formation and disillusionment? The project will be presented as a 15-
minute film, a live exhibition of the participants’ artwork, letters and excerpts from their video
diaries, and an interactive website.
About the filmmaker
Sonali Udaybabu is a filmmaker who works in the documentary and experimental modes to
explore artistic possibilities in understanding selves. She has worked as cinematographer,
assistant editor, assistant director, writer, and producer on documentary and short narrative
films. She has been involved with media activism and queer feminist organizing since her teen
years, and has also worked in publishing, media management and advertising. She has an MA
in Mass Communication from the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre in New Delhi,
and in the recent past has been a North Star Fellow (2019) and Robert Flaherty Film Seminar
Fellow (2018). In 2011, she was awarded for scriptwriting by the Ad Club, Bangalore.
She is from Bangalore and New Delhi, and lives in Philadelphia where she is an instructor and
MFA candidate in the Film and Media Arts department at Temple University.