Creative COnversations
Our panel of industry experts will share their experiences and insights on the key steps to bringing a story from concept to screen, including research, writing, pitching, financing, casting and pre-production.
Shireen Alihaji
Filmmaker
Shireen Alihaji is a First-Gen, Ecuadorian-Iranian, Muslim and Disabled filmmaker. Her intersections inspire her to create space through film technologies. Given how we remember is pivotal to healing, her films use memory as a central gaze to de-internalize surveillance, uncensor the imagination and mirror our infinite reflections.
She Co-Authored Flipping the Gaze: Restorative Filmmaking Techniques and serves as Artist Support for the Islamic Scholarship Fund where she co-created Muslim-Centered film programming; an evolving framework that supports Muslim filmmakers to restore, center and define their narratives. Today, Shireen is a student of UCLA Arts Healing and is prototyping a creative lab for caregivers.
Ruth Du
Director/Producer
Ruth Du is a director and producer who gravitates towards relationship-based stories with a genre twist. Her extensive experience in production ultimately led her to produce feature film The Archer which premiered at SXSW 2017. Her directorial credits include YOUR BABY IS MINE (Lifetime 2018) and THE DEADLIEST LIE (Tube 2021). She was a 2020 Film Independent Project Involve Directing Fellow with short film titled YUGEN, starring Christine Ko (Tigertail, Dave). Her most recent feature is a dark comedy thriller titled SAMSON and stars Alice Lee (Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist).
Karan Sunil
Writer/Director
Karan Sunil is an Indian-American writer and director based in LA. He wrote and directed a hit comedy web series Code-Switched that he is currently developing as a series for Hulu and Lionsgate TV. He is also developing a dark comedy series with Sony Pictures Television and a scripted thriller audio series Scammers with Marginal MediaWorks and Anupam Tripathi (Squid Game) attached as lead. Karan was a 2020 Film Independent Project Involve Writing Fellow where the short film he wrote, Omolara, was selected for multiple festivals and premiered at the 2021 Urbanworld Film Festival.
Having immigrated from India as a child, Karan has been on a journey to use genre to reflect the humor and pain that comes from characters caught between different worlds. He is a graduate of DePaul University with a BA in Digital Cinema & Television Writing.
Click here to see the complete schedule of conversations.
Click here to download the Creative Conversations Flyer.
This is a free event. Priority for in-person training programs and financial stipends, including opportunities for paid internship placements, is given to active participants, ages 18- 24, in Creative Conversations, as well as young people who are low income, foster youth, homeless, and/or justice involved.
Presented by Venice Art’s Center for Creative Workforce Equity.
Supported, in part, by:
