Alumni Spotlight: Sarita Khurana '11
The Alumni Spotlight is a place to hear from the School of the Arts alumni community about their journeys as artists and creators.
Sarita Khurana '11 is a Director, Producer, and Educator based in Brooklyn, New York. Her feature-film documentary debut, A Suitable Girl, is an official selection of the 2017 TriBeCa Film Festival. Khurana holds a B.A. from Oberlin College, an Ed.M. from Harvard University, and a M.F.A. in Film - Directing, from Columbia University's School of the Arts. In 2009, she was named as one of NY Women in Film & Television’s “Emerging Female Directors.” She has been a film fellow at NALIP-Diverse Women in Film, Art in General, the National Film Development Corporation of India, Women in Film, and Film Independent. Khurana is also the co-founder of Cine Qua Non Lab, an international development lab for narrative feature films, based in Mexico and the U.S.
Was there a specific faculty member or peer who especially inspired you while at the School of the Arts? If so, who and how?
Professors Eric Mendelsohn and Tom Kalin, were both significant influences during my tenure at Columbia.
Eric Mendelsohn taught me so much about directing, the value of each shot, and creating meaning from shot-to-shot. He gave me concrete tools to work with, which helped me craft and shape my ideas into visually meaningful moments. During my first year, Eric also nominated me for the NY Women in Film & Television’s “Emerging Female Directors” scholarship, which I received. This really meant a lot to me, and opened some doors.
Tom Kalin was the kind of professor who I wanted to emulate, in spirit and career. I knew of Tom prior to Columbia, because I had seen Swoon, a film I admired. In class, Tom often shared with us his own life and career trajectory, and I felt a kinship to him. He came from an experimental film and visual arts background, as did I, and now also made narrative films. And he continued to have an interplay between both, as I imagined I would. He also taught (and education is one of my other passions), was an activist in the queer community, and helped me understand what it meant to takes risks with your work, and not be afraid to put yourself out there.
What were the first steps you took after graduating?
The first steps I took after graduating were to continue working on the feature doc, A Suitable Girl, currently premiering at TriBeCa. I started this project with Smriti Mundhra ’09, at the end of my fourth year at Columbia. I spent the first semester of my 5th year in India, beginning to shoot for our documentary. I had high hopes that during that time in India I’d also shoot my thesis short. The doc was so intense that I didn’t have the capacity to do both. After graduating, I returned to India to continue filming. It was nice to have a concrete project to work on just as I was graduating. It gave me a focus, a direction, and a structure upon leaving graduate school. The other thing I did was continue to develop the lab that my colleague, Jesus Pimentel Melo ’11, and I developed – Cine Qua Non Lab – an international screenwriting lab for feature films, based in Mexico. Lastly, I took some freelance consulting jobs (writing, doing some teaching over the summer, etc.) for when I was back in NY and not in India. These were small jobs, but helped to pay the rent while I was working on my first feature.