Posts in Filmmaker Files
Filmmaker Files - Episode 12: Featuring Iram Parveen Bilal

Raised in Nigeria and Pakistan, IRAM PARVEEN BILAL is a Physics Olympian-turned-filmmaker. In 2007, she formed Parveen Shah Productions - a global production company that focuses on stories that elevate the human condition. Iram’s third narrative feature, I’LL MEET YOU THERE, recently had its world premiere in competition at SXSW. The film is a family drama about a Muslim cop and his teenage ballerina daughter.

Iram was one of 15 directors invited to La Cinéfondation's L'Atelier at Cannes to develop her next feature project, WAKHRI (ONE OF A KIND), based on an accidental social media star in Pakistan. With an eye towards TV, Iram is shopping her one-hour show, DETAINED, which follows two matriarchs stuck at an ICE detention center. DETAINED made the top-20 un-produced, female-written pilots’ list for WeForShe. Her past noted feature length works include JOSH (AGAINST THE GRAIN), which became Pakistan's first film on Netflix and found a place at the US Library of Congress. Iram is an active mentor for women in film and tech and she believes genuine curiosity is the only antidote to fear. She is now the proud mother of a three-month-old daughter.

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Filmmaker Files - Episode 10 : Featuring Kiara C Jones

Kiara C. Jones is a director, producer, writer and the proprietor of Cultivated Films. Her New York-based production company champions diverse storytelling and is focused on creating sustainable financial models for independent filmmakers. The Directors Guild of America honored Kiara with the Grand Jury Award for directing CHRISTMAS WEDDING BABY (Urbanworld, VIACOM, BET, Netflix). Kiara was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for producing Anja Marquardt’s, SHE’S LOST CONTROL. (Berlinale, CICAE, SXSW), and she produced the critically-acclaimed BLACK GIRL IN PARIS (HBO) and collaborated with Oscar-winning writer, Geoffrey Fletcher as the US winner for the Bombay Sapphire Imagination Series (TriBeCa). Kiara most recently directed and produced 21 AND DONE a feature documentary illuminating the plight of children aging out of the foster care system and produced PREMATURE, by Rashaad Ernesto Green (Sundance, IFC).

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Filmmaker FilesCasey Kohlberg
Filmmaker Files - Episode 9 : Featuring Kishori Rajan

Kishori Rajan is an Executive Producer of the critically acclaimed HBO series Random Acts of Flyness, which received a 2019 Peabody Award for "breaking the mold of what TV can be". Kishori also produces feature films including The Short History of the Long Road (Tribeca Film Festival 2019), The Price(Samuel Goldwyn Films), and American Fable(IFC Films). She is the recipient of the 2019 Producer’s Award from Cinereach for a "remarkable commitment to complex and authentic films" and is a 2017 Cannes Producers Fellow, a guest lecturer at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and a contributing writer to Filmmaker Magazine. Kishori graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. in Film Studies.

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Filmmaker Fileshonto88
Filmmaker Files Episode 8 - Featuring Natalia Iyudin

Natalia Iyudin began making VHS films in black and white at the age of 15. After moving to New York City from Poland, she delved into television, working as a lead editor on shows for VH1, BET, MTV, and PBS. In 2018, her short sci-fi film, "The Garden" starring Sophia Lillis ("It", "Sharp Objects") was acquired by the Gunpowder & Sky's sci-fi platform DUST. Natalia's acclaimed short narratives have collectively screened over 30 festivals worldwide. From 2014 to 2018, Natalia lead development at a production company helmed by an Academy Award winner, Ross Kauffman, where she shepherded such projects as "Girly" with Rashida Jones, and Refinery 29. She wrote and directed branded content series for Toyota and, in 2017, wrote/directed an award-winning digital series "We Got You" featuring Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter of the Roots. In 2019, Natalia debuted on primetime television (the CW), with two episodes of "Two Sentence Horror Stories" from the creator Vera Miao, and Warner Bros' Stage 13: “Gentleman” starring Nicole Kang and Jim Parrack and “Scion” with Kate Jennings and Uly Schlesinger.

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Filmmaker Fileshonto88
Filmmaker Files Episode 7 - Featuring Lily Baldwin

Lily Baldwin is a director and performer. She sees story as a visceral trajectory of impressionistic moments. She uses these ‘stylized dreamscapes’ to investigate worlds that are shadowy and cutting, searching for signals of luminosity and commonality.

Her films are featured on Netflix, The Criterion Collection, Filmmaker Magazine, NOWNESS, Vimeo Staff Pick, Short of the Week, and Fandor. Her VR project, THROUGH YOU, co-directed with Saschka Unseld, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was a recipient of the Sundance Institute New Frontier / Jaunt VR Residency.

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Filmmaker Files Episode 6 - Featuring Lina Pliopyte

Lina Plioplyte is a storyteller - a director and a camera person with an Emmy, a Silver Lion and a Clio in tow. She started her journey studying journalism in my native Lithuania then in Colorado. She then began  working as a fashion video journalist for NYLON magazine in New York. For the last decade she has been shooting and directing commercials, short films, investigative journalism pieces and digital series content for The New Yorker, Viceland, A+E as well as brands and non profits, like Garnier and the ACLU. Her first feature length documentary, Advanced Style, played in theaters worldwide and was reviewed in the  New York Times and The Guardian. She loves telling stories that inspire others to live better lives, and uplift women.

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Filmmaker Files: Episode 4 - Featuring Anu Valia

Anu Valia is an Indiana-born, New York-schooled filmmaker whose award-winning short films have screened across the country and abroad. Her short film, LUCIA, BEFORE AND AFTER, won the Jury Prize for US Fiction at Sundance Film Festival and has screened at over 30 festivals around the world.

Anu is a Big Vision Empty Wallet 2018 fellow, a New York Film Festival 2017 Artist Academy Fellow, and an artist resident of SPACE at Ryder Farm in New York. She is also an ambassador for the American Film Showcase, a U.S film diplomacy program promoting arts involvement and education abroad.

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Filmmaker Fileshonto88