Professional Biography
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).