Shalini Kantayya

Activist, Artist, Change Agent, Educator/Teacher, Entrepreneur, Environmentalist, Filmmaker, Foodie, Global soul, Idea generator

Filmmaker Shalini Kantayya’s, Coded Bias, premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim. Coded Bias was broadcast nationally on PBS Emmy-award winning series Independent Lens and globally on Netflix in April 2021. The film won a SIMA Award for Best Director, and has been nominated for a Critics’ Choice, a Cinema Eye Honors, and NAACP Image Award, among others. Shalini’s debut feature, Catching the Sun, premiered at the LA Film Festival and was named a NY Times Critics’ Pick. Catching the Sun released globally on Netflix on Earth Day 2016 with Executive Producer Leonardo DiCaprio, and was nominated for the Environmental Media Association Award for Best Documentary. She directed the season finale of the National Geographic television series Breakthrough, Executive Produced by Ron Howard, broadcast globally in June 2017. She has also directed for NOVA and YouTube Originals. Shalini is a TED Fellow, a William J. Fulbright Scholar, and an Associate of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Her current film, TikTok, Boom, premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, was official selection at SXSW, and anticipates global release later this year.

Making films, artificial intelligence, space travel, eco activism, algorithmic justice

Movies have the power to spark movements for change.

Documentaries, Ecology, Filmmaking, Food - eating it, Science-fiction, Solar, Water

Nineteen and wide-eyed, I remember the low deep throated-chant of 800 Tibetan monks praying. I was in the South Indian village of Bylakuppe, one of the thirteen villages that India had gifted the Tibetan refugees. Before I knew aperture or iris, I knew there were experiences that I could not express in words. That was the moment I fell in love with images, and began to put imaginary picture frames on everything I saw. I discovered vision in a new way. My love for the image was just that — impulsive, passionate, all-encompassing, and without reason. But my love for visual storytelling also became integrated with my love for human rights. I have always been inspired by stories of ordinary people who overcome seemingly insurmountable hardships. Over the last ten years, my adventure as an independent filmmaker, educator, and activist has given me the opportunity travel the world in pursuit of a story.

imagining the future