DIRECTOR SHALINI KANTAYYA
Emmy-nominated filmmaker Shalini Kantayya directs fiction and nonfiction films that artfully marry the future of science with the future of story. Her latest film, TikTok, Boom, was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and was official selection at SXSW. Her critically-acclaimed 2020 Sundance film, Coded Bias, was broadcast nationally on PBS’s Independent Lens and globally on Netflix in April 2021. The film has been nominated for a Critics’ Choice, and an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Documentary. The film won Best Director at the Social Impact Media Awards, and the Visionary Filmmaker Award at GlobeDocs. Shalini’s debut feature, Catching the Sun, released globally on Netflix on Earth Day 2016 with Executive Producer Leonardo DiCaprio and was named a New York Times Critics’ Pick.
Shalini directed for National Geographic television series Breakthrough, Executive Produced by Ron Howard, and episodes for NOVA and YouTube Originals. Shalini is a TED Fellow, a William J. Fulbright Scholar, and Concordia Studios Artist Fellow. and a finalist for the ABC/Disney Directing Program. Kantayya is an Associate of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
W shalinikantayya.net
ARTIST NOTES
In making of Coded Bias, I discovered that in the realm of artificial intelligence, there has always been a blurring between what’s real and what’s imagined. My film seeks to explore this blurring of real and imagined A.I. Coded Bias weaves personal stories, graphic elements, and lyricism to explore how bias gets encoded in the algorithms that decide the destinies of millions of people. Coded Bias invites audiences to imagine a more humane use of A.I.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION COMPANY
7th Empire Media is a production company with a mission to create a culture of human rights and a sustainable planet through imaginative media that makes impact.
