About
Kalpana Subramanian is an artist-filmmaker, educator and a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Media Study, University at Buffalo. She uses transcultural and interdisciplinary modes of inquiry into the philosophy and aesthetics of experimental film and media. In 2015 she was a Fulbright Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellow at the Brakhage Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her recent films include the five-part series Light Mediated: Eyes on Brakhage (2016), Tattva (2018) and Choreography for Disembodiment (2019). She is a member of the Substantial Motion Research Network, a forum for scholars and practitioners interested in cross-cultural exploration of media art and philosophy.
In 2006 she received the UK Environmental Film Fellowship to make a wildlife documentary, Turtles in a Soup. Her film The Maze of Lanes (2002), received awards for Creative Approach (2003) and Cinematography
(2003) at the Montana CINE International Film Festival. She received a Merit Award for Conservation at the International Wildlife Film Festival (Montana, USA, 2007) and a Jury’s Special Mention at the Centre for
Media Studies, Vatavaran Environment and Wildlife International Film Festival for Turtles in a Soup. Her film Portrait of Yvonne Lo in Assisi (2014) won an Audience Award at the Documentary Festival of History and
Archeology in Perugia in 2015. She is also a recipient of the Audi Design Award (1996) as part of a multidisciplinary team. Subramanian has been invited to participate in various curated programs, including Mystical Affinities: Female Perspectives on Brakhage (Toronto International Film Festival – Wavelengths) and Olhar de Cinema (Brazil, 2018). Her short films have screened at several venues world-wide, including, the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (Japan), Antimatter Media Arts Festival (Canada), Big Ears
Festival (USA), Digital Anthropologies (France), ULTRACinema MX (Mexico), Green Film Festival (Korea) and Wildscreen UK among others.
As a core member of the Sacred World Research Lab an award-winning design think tank and media lab headed by Ranjit Makkuni, she helped create the Eternal Gandhi Multimedia Museum (New Delhi) one of the world’s first digital multimedia museums. She also worked on The Crossing: Living, Dying and Transformation in Banaras (India, USA 2002), Musical Landscapes and Goddesses of Music and the Planet Health (2010, India) museum and exhibits.
As an educator, Subramanian has taught Film, Media and Communication to undergraduate students in both India and USA since 2006. She is also a vocalist and a published author of four childrens’ books.
