Every house is haunted. First by the spirits of those yet to come and later by those that came before. We are marked by the architecture of the homes we live in.

‘Lovely Villa’ is the name of the apartment building where the filmmaker grew up in as he studied to become an architect. It is in LIC colony designed by Charles Correa in suburban Mumbai. It represents an imagination of the ideal community for a modern India. The masterplan and architecture see an articulation of the ideal environment to live as imagined for the new Indian middle classes, with its focus on creating the possibility for housing different communities and classes within one building. It included a hierarchy of open spaces where different kinds of interaction could take place. The apartment buildings had unusual floor plans and open to sky terraces where kitchen gardens could be grown.

The filmmaker’s parents moved into this colony in the early 1970s and lived there for over 40 years. The film explores the architecture of the colony through a personal narrative. Using found materials, like old photographs and drawings, and stories that range from family histories and other narratives, both semi-fictional and documentary, the film highlights some of the specific architectural gestures of the project.

• Script and Direction: Rohan Shivkumar
• Cinematographer and Associate Director: Avijit Mukul Kishore
• Editor: Rikhav Desai
• Sound Design and Post-production: Madhu Apsara
• Assistant Director and Additional Cinematographer: Sabari Pandian
• Producer & Commissioning Editor: Rajiv Mehrotra
• Executive Producers: Tulika Srivastava and Ridhima Mehra
• Produced by Public Service Broadcasting Trust