‘Everyone should see the potential to express themselves through art’

Gyani Pradhan Wong Ah Sui was enamored by film long before they started studying it. Watching credits scroll across a screen left Pradhan Wong Ah Sui with a sense of awe.

“You’re putting artists together from all forms — acting, cinematography, music, color —different disciplines merging into one product that’s arguably greater than the sum of its parts,” says the screen studies major. “I was excited by that and the idea of a community of people that comes together to create. Those two things sent me down a rabbit hole.”

Pradhan Wong Ah Sui’s honors thesis film, The Moving Room, is a self-written, produced, and directed semi-autobiographical work contemplating their move from Sikkim to the U.S. in 2017. They also directed the film “Long Play,” had art exhibited in the ArtsWorcester 20th Annual College Show, and spent a summer in Sikkim, India, documenting what it means to be home in a series of 600 film photographs, a project funded by the Steinbrecher Fellowship Program.

Their next venture is a collaborative film project. A group of Clark students received a $10,000 Projects for Peace award to document the experiences of young people in Central Mexico amid the uncertainty of climate change. The video project is an offshoot of a major National Science Foundation-funded climate change research study that is led by Professor Tim Downs. Wong Ah Sui and Nicole Overbaugh ’24 (a frequent co-collaborator) will handle pre- and post-production work such as editing, outreach, and scheduling.

“Even if you’re not majoring in an art field, everyone should be able to see the potential to express themselves through art,” Pradhan Wong Ah Sui says.

Stay tuned: A photo essay documenting Gyani’s meditations on “home” is forthcoming.