Kavery Kaul
Kavery Kaul (2016) is an independent documentary filmmaker based in New York. Her films have taken on a spectrum of topics, from race and class in American education to the cost and consequences of traumatic brain injuries. Her work has also focused on artists and musicians and has been featured at film festivals around the world. A graduate of Harvard, Kaul has received support from a variety of funders for her documentaries, including the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Kaul is the first Nonfiction fellow whose residency will be focused on film editing. Her current project, Streetcar to Kolkata, comes from her work in India as a Fulbright Fellow. The film follows Fatima Shaik, an African-American woman from New Orleans returning to search out her grandfather’s roots as a Muslim in India. Along the way Kaul documents the unraveling of Fatima’s own cultural and religious identity in the process. The journey from the banks of the Mississippi to the banks of the Ganges takes on an epic quality and, Kaul says, “allows viewers to identify with Fatima’s struggles and her victories … and tackles the critical question of our times: How do people divided by traditions, ideas and biases overcome hostility, suspicion and judgment before violence erupts?”