Private Project

Notes for the Self

Notes for the Self (2025) is a portrait on the filmmaker’s mother and herself. When her mother comes to India to visit her in Auroville, a place once frequented by the family, their week-long stay together is shaped by a simultaneous distance, longing, and unspoken resonance. Communicating with each other through a space coded with overlapping but different meanings for both, the notes of their relationship are expressed through the film form.

  • Jahnavi Pradeep
    Director
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Short, Student
  • Runtime:
    10 minutes 25 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    June 1, 2025
  • Country of Origin:
    India
  • Country of Filming:
    India
  • Language:
    English, Tamil
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Tamizhagam International Film Festival 2025

    Best Experimental Film
  • Alibag Short Film Festival 2025

    Official Selection
  • Beyond Borders Feminist Film Festival 2025

    Official Selection
  • Auroville Film Festival 2026

    Wisdom Award
Director Biography - Jahnavi Pradeep

Jahnavi Pradeep is an interdisciplinary creative based out of India. She is an alum of Mount Holyoke College (2023), where she double majored in English and Film Media Theater. After her undergraduate studies in the States, she returned to India as a fellow for Auroville Film Institute and University of Ladakh’s Open Space Documentary Arts Program (2025). Her artistic practice runs parallel to her personal search for roots and identity, finding direction through her experiments across writing, film, photography, archiving, and new media formats such as installations. Jahnavi’s projects have taken her to Karnataka, Ladakh, Pondicherry, and Tamil Nadu so far, reiterating her creative journey as an ongoing process of remembering and building connections across time and space. For example, In 'In the Light of Time' (2025), her encounters with Ladakh’s prehistoric rock art led her to pursue a second film project titled 'Excavating the Present' (2025) that looks at these archeological artifacts in connection with South India and her own familial ancestry. Looking forward, she hopes to continue to push the boundaries of the multimodal quality and educational potential of art and storytelling.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

My mother visited India from the United States in May 2024, and came to spend some time with me in Auroville, where I was part of an Open Space Documentary Arts program. In the midst of pitching for my first film assignment, I decided her visit was an ideal coincidence. I would film my mother’s vacation. However the filming process led to something different. What was to be a representational documentation of her visit instead became an autonomous mode of presentation of our relationship. As my debut film, this project became my initiation into the language of cinema. Editing became an introspective process. And in thinking of the emotive shifts and contrasts I wanted to highlight, I began developing a sense of how sound and moving images come together to form certain sensorial experiences.