Suneil Sanzgiri- Exploring Cultural Identity Through Diverse Media

Filmmaker Suneil Sanzgiri, SM ’17, employs a variety of media and techniques to deeply engage with his cultural heritage and uncover the colonial past of his family's ancestral home in Goa, India. Utilizing his background as an alumnus of the Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT) program, Sanzgiri employs a unique approach that involves analyzing historical texts and utilizing 3D scanning technology to explore geopolitical dynamics and economic disparity. Additionally, he manipulates physical materials like 16-millimeter film to create art that exposes truths about bygone eras.

Sanzgiri explains his innovative methods, stating, “I’ll scratch film or cut it up or reassemble it or add things like saffron leaves and petals or tree bark. Right now, I’m burying film underground.” In this process, he places film in the soil to allow it to naturally degrade, and then later, as he describes it, “unearths and resurrects the images.” This endeavor aims to symbolize the transformative nature of nature on memory. Sanzgiri intricately links the subject of his work to themes of buried truths, trauma, and colonization, such as his portrayal of Valles, a young doctor and mother who vanished following her involvement in a protest against Portuguese imperialism in Angola. Her family hailed from colonized Goa, which endured Portuguese rule for over 450 years. The unresolved disappearance of Valles and the subsequent political unrest connected to her demise serve as recurring reminders of historical trauma that resurface unexpectedly, akin to Freud's perspectives on the resurgence of trauma.

In another project, Sanzgiri's film, titled [Title of Film], delves into the emotional and visual depths of his 3D scanning creations, a technique commonly seen in resource extraction endeavors like mining. By implementing this technology, which is traditionally used for extraction, to construct a model of the interior of his ancestral home in Goa, a region marred by centuries of mining activity, Sanzgiri exhibits his contemplation on transforming extraction-oriented technologies to preservation tools.

Sanzgiri credits his interdisciplinary and critically-focused education at ACT for significantly shaping his worldview, emphasizing the impact of history and theory courses in fostering his perspective. He encourages current ACT students to maximize the resources available at MIT, reminiscing about profound encounters like conversing with Noam Chomsky and admiring the generosity he experienced during his interactions with distinguished figures.