About the Team

Megha Acharya is a documentary practitioner, based in New Delhi. She is presently working as a producer in Chambal Media. She works there on projects in various capacities - script writer, director, editor and producer. The projects have dealt with the subjects of climate change, gender, agriculture and public healthcare policies. She has also worked as a freelance editor, cinematographer, and sound recordist for documentaries. Her film Sudhamayee (2019), part of her diploma film project in Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts and Communication, has won best film, best director and special mention in prestigious festivals across India. It is also available to watch on Mubi.

Geeta Devi, Khabar Lahariya’s Uttar Pradesh head has been covering environment, climate justice and resilience, migration for over a decade. Her association with the organization began in 2009. Her special reports on these subjects and her deep dive investigative pieces have earned her great repute in the world of reportage, both national, and with her appearance in a Google News Initiative short, international as well.

Priya Thuvassery is a filmmaker and television producer from Kerala, based in New Delhi, India. Over the last one decade she has been directing, producing and editing documentary films & television programmes for New Delhi Television, Fox Traveller, National Human Rights Commission of India, Films Division of India, Environment Ministry of Tamil Nadu, Public Service Broadcasting Trust & Khabar Lahariya. Her works include - Khanabadosh (2009), My Sacred Glass Bowl (2013), Survey Number zero (2016) and Coral Woman (2019). Her films have been recognised with participation, mentions and best film awards in many international and national film festivals. She is also recognized as a Canon Cinema EOS Platinum Associate. Currently, she is working as the director of Chambal Media. She was the Co-Director for the 16th edition of the IAWRT Asian Women's Film Festival, 2020. Her last film Coral woman was picked for Good Pitch India 2020.

Dr. Michelle Buckley is a Human Geographer at the University of Toronto Scarborough, Canada. Her research explores the wages and working conditions for those who migrate to take jobs in the construction and building materials sectors in India, the Gulf and Canada. This research is broadly concerned with workers’ strategies and prospects for decent and fair work, and the politics of gender, citizenship, caste and race that sustain contemporary processes of urbanization. Her work has been published in journals such as the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Antipode, Industrial Relations and Economic Geography.

Paula Chakravartty is Associate Professor of Media, Culture and Communication and at the Gallatin School at NYU (New York University). Her books include Race, Empire and the Crisis of the Subprime (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), Media Policy and Globalization (Edinburgh University Press, 2006), and Global Communications: Towards a Transcultural Political Economy (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008). Her current research focuses on race and caste in the discipline of Communication, racial capitalism and global media infrastructures, and migrant mobility and justice. Paula Chakravartty is James Weldon Johnson Associate Professor of Media Studies at NYU. She is also the co-director of the CRACS Co-Lab.

Aditi Bhande is a filmmaker based out of Delhi NCR. Aditi is interested in all that's hidden in plain sight in our everyday and the surprises it holds when we begin to ask questions.
With these questions & through the process of filmmaking she finds the courage & comfort of getting to know the world and its varied ways. In filmmaking she finds a convergence of her various interests. Aditi's thesis film 'Did You Do It?' was made as a part of the Creative Documentary Course at SACAC, New Delhi. Aditi has done her Masters in Development from Azim Premji University, Bangalore. She is currently freelancing as a filmmaker.

 

Annette Jacob is an independent filmmaker whose expertise lies in documentaries but she has also extensively worked on experimental films, video journalism, art documentation, audio/video campaigns for brands, corporates, institutions and NGOs. In addition to working for several clients over the last 6 years, she has produced films in the area of visual arts and exhibitions, and has made works for/with notable organizations like Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Max Mueller Bhavan / Goethe Institut, Khoj Artists’ Association, Serendipity Arts Foundation, Museum of Art and Photography, HarperCollins India, Good Earth India, Simurgh Centre, National School of Drama, Gates Foundation, Khabar Lahariya, The YP Foundation among others. She is currently shooting a feature documentary on Gender and Buddhism, and finished shooting another on Migration amongst Brick Kiln Workers in Northern India and a short documentary on Women and Land Rights. Over the last three years, she has also actively created digital and analog stop-motion animation works as a part of her own practice and also for clients. She has also collaborated with fellow artists - dancers, musicians, filmmakers, illustrators - to create experimental performance pieces, music videos, zines and animations.

Kavita is the co-founder of Khabar Lahariya and the CEO of Chambal Media. A Banda local herself - she likes to call herself Kavita Bundelkhandi, having chosen to drop her last name deliberately many years ago - she is also the region's first Dalit woman anchor to host her own news and views weekly, 'The Kavita Show'. For a long time, she was the only Dalit member of the Editors' Guild of India. Kavita brings with her several years of field reporting, having started out as a reporter herself, and often reports on special stories even today. Viewed as a formidable figure of inspiration and empowerment locally, especially for women, Kavita is also a TED speaker.