Amitanshu (Amit) Das is a senior fellow and director at Penn GSE and the Annenberg School for Communication. He has produced broadcast documentaries, filmmaking courses, workshops, and an Academically-Based Community Service filmmaking program in collaboration with Philadelphia’s public schools, the School District of Philadelphia, and the Netter Center for Community Partnerships. Through coursework and related initiatives, Mr. Das has provided in-depth film training to high school, undergraduate, and graduate students.

Mr. Das joined Penn GSE from New York University where he was a member of the NYU Film faculty and director of NYU’s Department of Film, Video, and Broadcasting, one of the largest professional film, television, and digital media programs in the country. An award-winning filmmaker and television producer, his films have screened at venues like the Cantor Film Center and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. He has lectured extensively on film and television history at the American Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. Mr. Das’s recent filmmaking credits include Freedom School (2011, Telly Award Winner) and A Safe Place to Play, both for WHYY PBS Philadelphia. The Prophecy, a short video on the Pennsylvania Lenape Native American community of Pennsylvania, was exhibited at Philadelphia’s Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology from 2008 to 2011. It was placed on permanent display at the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania Cultural Center in Easton, Pennsylvania. He directed three short documentary films set in Norristown, Pennsylvania for the 2014 Ethnography Forum Plenary: “Multimedia Representations of a New Latino Diaspora Town” by Dr. Stanton Wortham.

In 2015, Mr. Das produced and directed the video components for American Education Reform: History, Policy and Practice, an eight-hour Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) written and presented by John Puckett and Michael Johanek. The series was a first for Penn GSE and had its third annual re-run in 2017. Mr. Das is an advisor to the Penn student initiative CAMRA and the Screening Scholarship Media Festival, both engaged in the exploration of film and scholarship.

Before moving to the United States, Mr. Das was a documentary filmmaker and an educational and broadcast television producer in India and taught at the Jamia Mass Communications Research Centre in New Delhi. He was part of a vanguard of filmmakers and TV producers working for India’s first satellite-based educational broadcasting network. He produced programs for the Indian national television network, Doordarshan’s Countrywide Classroom. He also produced and directed for the University Grants Commission’s Pilot Pre-School Television Project, Times of India Television, and CENDIT (Centre for Development of Instructional Technology).

Research Interests and Current Projects

A central and ongoing theme of Mr. Das’s work is the demystification and democratization of media technology and film-crafts; the understanding that film is a natural locus of interdisciplinary exchange; a sense that film is the lingua franca or global dialect of our time; and that purposeful filmmaking is an extraordinarily powerful engine and a catalyst for social change, helping us move toward a fairer and more just society.

He established and currently leads the School District of Philadelphia (SDP)-Penn GSE Film Project. A central component of this project is a year-long course co-taught with Dr. Kathleen Hall and supported by grants from the Barbara and Edward Netter Center for Community Partnerships. Teams of Penn students are first trained in filmmaking and then collaborate with Philadelphia high school students to produce films on their schools, local communities, and personal lives. SDP-Penn GSE films have been broadcast on PSTV Comcast Philadelphia Channel 52 in 2016 and 2017.

In Fall 2017, Mr. Das began working with Penn SP2, the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice, as director of SP2 Films, launching the new SP2 Film Fellows Program and producing and directing a promotional short for Love and Social Justice-A Documentary Film Journey with John Jackson Jr.

With a 2018 grant from the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, Mr. Das taught a year-long Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course where a team of Penn and high school students creates an original motion picture drawn from their own lived and observed experiences then fictionalized. The course merged film art, self-expression, youth voice and agency supported and sensitized by contemporary ideas and approaches of trauma-informed practice.

Publications

Selected Publications

Jackson, J. (Producer/Writer), & Das, A. (Producer, Director, Writer). (2017). Love and social justice: A documentary film journey with John Jackson Jr. [Film/Short]. Philadelphia: SP2 Films.

Puckett, J. (Producer/Writer), Johanek, M. (Producer), & Das, A. (Producer, Director). (2015). American education reform: History, policy and practice [MOOC Video]. Philadelphia: GSE Films.

Wortham, S. (Producer), & Das, A. (Producer, Director, Cinematography). (2014). Multimedia representations of a new Latino diaspora town presented by Dr. Stanton Wortham. [Three short films for 2014 Ethnography Forum plenary]. Philadelphia: GSE Films.

Das, A. (Producer, Director, Cinematography), & Slaughter-Defoe, D. (Producer). (2010). Freedom school. [Film]. Philadelphia: GSE Films.

Das, A. (Producer, Director, Cinematography). (2009). A safe place to play. [Film]. Philadelphia: GSE Films.

Das, A. (Producer, Director, Cinematography), & Searle, K. (Co-producer). (2008) The prophecy.[Film]. Philadelphia: GSE Films.

Das, A. (Producer, Director). (2006). Father Robert Bullock: Facing history and ourselves. [Film]. Boston: Facing History and Ourselves & GSE Films.

Stoney, G. (Producer), Bagnal, D. (Producer), & Das, A. (Producer). (1998). In the shadow of the bars: Drama at Sing Sing. [Film]. New York: George Stoney Productions.

Das, A. (Series Director). (1989). The economy series. [Film]. Delhi: Times of India TV and Doordarshan (Indian National Television).

Das, A. (Producer, Director, Cinematographer, Editor). (1988). Building with mud. [Film]. Delhi: University Grants Commission’s Countrywide Classroom.

Das, A. (Producer, Director). (1988). Diary of a mukhya sevika. [Film]. Centre for the Development of Instructional Technology and UNICEF, India.

Malik, B. (Producer), & Das, A. (Associate Producer, Cinematographer, Editor). (1985). Lest we forget.[Film]. Delhi: Centre for the Development of Instructional Technology.