Who’s Who in Green: Shalini Kantayya

Growing up between Mumbai, India and Brooklyn, New York, it took filmmaker and water rights activist Shalini Kantayya a long time to understand how the survival of cities is dependent on finite natural resources. But soon enough, Kantayya began to feel torn between the materialistic, technologically advanced American society and the world that can’t even get a clean drink of water.

On Changents, Kantayya explains,

“My passion for water rights did not begin with an intellectual study, but as all great adventures of my life begin—with the heart. In 2001, I spent 40-days documenting the religious festival at the convergence of three holy rivers. In awe of the millions of pilgrims giving reverence to the river as a life-giving Goddess, and its contradiction with the environmental impact of the festival on the river, called me to ask questions. As I became aware of the mounting global water crisis, I realized that it represented a clash of cultures – between a culture that values water as a shared sacred source of all life and a corporate culture that regards water as a commodity to be bought and sold.”

Kantayya began to feel that there were many stories about the struggle for water that just couldn’t be told using words. She committed herself to using media to give a powerful voice to the unheard, founding a production company called 7th Empire Media and beginning work on films that highlight social injustice across the world.

The William D. Fulbright Scholar in documentary film was the only woman to place in the top ten out of 12,000 filmmakers on FOX’s On the Lot, a reality television show created by Steven Spielberg dedicated to the search for Hollywood’s next great director.

“Water is life,” Kantayya said as keynote speaker at Wesleyan University’s 2009 Earth Day celebration. “We are facing a world water crisis. A world in which nations are at war for water and every drop is for sale.”

Kantayya’s recent film, a DROP of LIFE, is a futuristic sci-fi flick about the mounting water crisis and has been used by the African Water Network as an organizing tool in over 40 villages across Africa. A DROP of LIFE has also screened at festivals around the world, winning Best Short Film at Palm Beach International as well as the Audience Choice Award at the IUOW Film competition.

Check out a preview of a DROP of LIFE:

Kantayya was also nominated for the Reebok Human Rights Award and also received a Senior Performing Arts Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies to make a film about political street theater in India.

A DROP of LIFE can be purchased on DVD at AdropofLife.tv. Learn more about Kantayya’s water rights activism at Changents.com/Shalini.

Shalini Kantayya’s Green Score: 20,599

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