Straight 8—A Portrait of Tom D’aguiar is an attempt to revisit a collection of home movies that date back to the 1940s, in and around Bangalore City. The film is neither a documentary chronicling a life nor is it entirely without narrative. The home movies seen in the film were from an old house, where Tom lived, that was about to be demolished, and the fragments of his films were found in a plastic bag by the filmmaker. This process of “rummaging” can be seen as way of retrieving memory. In Straight 8, the 8mm films exist as fragments and slices of differentiated reality come to life, without a beginning or an end. The protagonist in the final lap of his life remembers, with precision, procedures and techniques, many of which are rarely referred to in today’s digital age. Straight 8 is not just a nostalgic film about amateur filmmakers and their technology. It intends to explore the creative expressions of ordinary people, at a time when technology was not easily available and technological/chemical processes were often clumsy. It looks at how technology is domesticated and improvised with, as imagination and desires evolve with the many shifts witnessed in the modern world.