A film ends. The lights come on. Usually, that is where the experience ends too. But at an Out of Sequence screening, the credits are only the beginning.When 23-year-old Pranjal Gautam was a final-year student and sociology teaching assistant, he used film clips to discuss ideas. That practice eventually evolved into Out of Sequence, an event-curation platform he started in July 2025. He curated films, music and visual art, from listening sessions and exhibitions to art fairs and cocktail bars.Their gatherings are usually held in Mool, a yellow-tinted basement in South Extension, New Delhi, that now hosts art and culture collectives, often led by students or young artistes.One of Out of Sequence’s recent events, ‘Export’, brought together graphic designers, typographers and printmakers. Earlier this year, their event ‘High Society’ that stretched for eight hours combined film screenings, from Rajesh Rajamani’s The Discreet Charm of the Savarnas (2020) to Hirokazu Koreeda’s Shoplifters (2018), with an art market featuring tattoo artists, vinyl sellers and cyanotype makers, alongside a three-album listening session.ALSO READ | Artistes, promoters, venues have their own kind of power on troubled tours like Ed Sheeran’s“I get to experience a lot of things, different people giving their opinions on stuff. It’s always nice to see where people are coming from and how they are perceiving something”, says Kartik Singh, a regular attendee, who works with an advertising firm.“I think the prime motivation was finding community,” Pranjal, now 25, says. “The film is secondary, the ideas and conversations are primary.” Over time, he has seen people who meet at one event returning for others, often bringing friends along. What began as a way of finding his own people has become a network of people finding theirs.Story continues below this ad A crowd at an Out of Sequence gathering sits in the warmly lit venue while the movie starts (Photo Credit: Pranjal Gautam)You can’t make a bad zineA similar thread of fostering community runs through DelhiZine, founded by Delhi University graduates Borishan Ghosh, 22, and Rinchan Lyall Robert, 21. “I really wanted to create something physical, something people could hold in their hands,” Rinchan says. Her first zines were made on a shoestring budget. (Back then the printing cost was a rupee or two for one sheet of paper. She used to make dozens each week and distribute them for free before they started the collective. Now zines are priced at Rs 15 for black-and-white ones and Rs 20 for colour zines.) She would use her lunch money to get them printed. She called it The Weakly, a curation of college news, music recommendations, poems and the occasional picture of a cat.Along came Borishan and the two decided to do this at scale. They would leave a bunch of zines at bus stops in north Delhi, and return a day or two later to find that they had all been picked up, mostly by students. Soon, they started putting up stalls at college events and book clubs, and a few months in, they had built up an impressive catalogue of fascinating zines.DelhiZine, that started as a tiny publication shared among close friends, eventually grew into arguably the most popular non-profit student-run collective that publishes zines and conducts workshops.Sanjana Dutta, a 20-year-old college student who has been participating in their events since they began in 2024, says, “It has given me some of my closest friends. We grew closer folding zines. I feel very hopeful seeing something like DelhiZine thrive because it feels like there is still a place for physical media.” They have collaborated with the New York-based magazine Rambler!, and have sold over 2,600 zines till date.Story continues below this ad“This is entirely a labour of love,” Borishan says, speaking about the tight-knit group of a handful of volunteers who keep the collective running. At their workshops, people are given one A4 size sheet of paper and some stationery and are told to “make a bad zine, make something that looks ugly”, and what follows is everyone realising together that it is very difficult to make a bad zine.Experiments with soundThe same impulse to experiment, without necessarily knowing where it will lead, can be found in another corner of Delhi’s creative community. Shiv Ahuja, one of the founding members of Synth Hang, has been playing music since he was 13. He played for various Delhi bands in his 20s until he found himself fascinated with the sound of the synthesizer, that is integral to electronic music.To most people, electronic music remains synonymous with dance music. Synth Hang aims to diversify that perception. What began as a group of friends sitting down to experiment with modular synthesizers has grown into a loose community of musicians, sound enthusiasts and curious newcomers.Yuvraj Singh, a musical artist who frequents Synth Hang events, often held at Shack Coffee in Shahpur Jat, expressed how refreshing it was to see people from all walks of life come together for it. “I was very happy to see a space for us music nerds to come together, bring our gear, and just jam. Sometimes chaotically, sometimes with a plan.”Story continues below this adThe point, Shiv emphasises, is not really about synthesizers at all. “The idea is more about playing and experimenting with sound,” he says. While mainstream music already has its spaces, there are fewer places for the more experimental impulses that musicians may not get to explore in their professional gigs.At Synth Hang, a techno producer can experiment with something completely different; a flute player can run their instrument through an iPad and see what happens. Shiv himself has encountered genres that he was unfamiliar with Botanica. They have stations set up, with synths and other equipment that participants can tinker with and experiment, for instance.Since their first session held two years ago, called Play Date, people have found a community that they didn’t think existed earlier. They have hosted pioneering avant-garde musicians like Laurie Anderson, held concerts, and dozens of more hangs.The sense of community and hands-on experience is the crux of it all. You turn up not quite knowing what you will hear, and leave having heard something or someone you did not expect.Story continues below this adThese spaces offer the reassuring discovery that you are not the only person who cares. And sometimes, that is enough to make a strange interest feel a little less strange. Young musicians try their hand at synths in the listening stations set up by Synth Hang at their monthly events (Photo Credit: Shiv Ahuja)All of DelhiZine’s independent workshops are always free of cost, except when they are collaborating with any other organisations/collectives, in which case it is in the range of Rs 500-700.Out of Sequence events are priced at Rs 499 for a day pass, and Rs 249 per movie screening. If it is a two-day event, tickets for both days are around Rs 750. SynthHang’s monthly events all function on a pay-what-you-can model. Ticketed events are priced between Rs 300 and Rs 400, with discounted tickets available for students. (Shreyoshee Palit is an intern with The Indian Express)