Kavita Das Gupta
Community Media, Ahmedabad (IN)

"I have been trained first as a sociologist and then as a filmmaker. My first love has always been cinema and I was consumed by the magic of cinema. As a child I always wanted to create this magic. I always thought of myself as a filmmaker. As I grew up though, I started developing a passion for people and spaces other than the ones in which I lived which was the modern metropolitan Delhi. I desired to travel to villages and visit tribal heartlands. I was mesmerized by their songs, their art and their way of life. This is what made me seek out a Masters in Sociology from Delhi School of Economics. It was at this juncture that my desire for becoming a filmmaker reared up again. Cinema and Sociology… The natural road for me to travel was towards Documentary Film Making. This is how I found my way into Earthcare Films. Though a full-fledged production house, for me Earthcare was my film school. I learnt film making here under Krishnendu Bose. In the many years that I spent here I researched, assisted, scripted and eventually produced films. We worked on conservation politics and made films on communities living in the different forests of India. I spent many beautiful years filming forests and people and the world in between. I met so many wonderful people and soon I started wondering how to make my work a more organic whole of their lives? This was what started off my journey towards Community Media."