Sameera Jain

Sameera Jain is the Course Director of a unique Creative Documentary program at SACAC (Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts and Communication) in New Delhi.

 

Jain’s film, Mera Apna Sheher attempts to question the gender demarcation in the streets of Delhi; a contested terrain where conflicting emotions of belonging and alienation, anxiety and comfort, freedom and control come together. Jain calls attention to the oppressive power of surveillance (of women by men), subverting this controlling gaze by her process of documentary intervention. In a slowly unfolding observational canvas, Mera Apna Sheher explores the mobility of female taxi drivers through her city, as well as inserting a ‘decoy character’ (an actress who is filmed with a hidden camera) to test out the sites of belonging, and at times, denied ownership to women of Delhi’s public spaces.