Breathing above the Treeline

Gitanjali is a filmmaker, academic and a member of the faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago. She earned an MFA from the graduate film program at Columbia University in New York City and a BA from Wesleyan University. She spent three years in Denmark where she was awarded a production grant from the Danish Film Institute. She wrote, directed and produced an experimental award-winning short called Weaning (Løsrivelse). She recently completed a dramatic short Breathing above the Treeline which is currently enjoying a robust reception on the festival circuit with 19 Official Selections, 2 wins for Best Short and 4 live screenings since May 1, 2019. She is in post-production on a new dramatic short Bat which shot early March 2019. She has taught introductory and advanced production and screenwriting courses at Columbia College Chicago since 2004. She joined the Film, Video New Media and Animation faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015 where she teaches screenwriting. She recently presented her first paper on Steven Soderbergh’s interactive internet-based app Mosaic at the CILECT Congress in Mumbai in November 2018. In May 2019 her first article was published which was jointly edited by Columbia College Chicago and The University of Palermo, Buenos Aires. It offers a reconceptualization of the hero’s journey for the female protagonist. She will present her research at the 13th Interamerican Conference on Design in Buenos Aires at the end of July 2019. She has also been invited to present new research on writing narrative for interactive internet-based media at CILECT 2019 taking in Moscow in October 2019. She is currently writing a comedy Christmas feature called Sandra Claus which she will pitch as one of 10 finalists in front of investor representation at the Princeton Independent Film Festival for the 2019 Raine Filmmaker Award in September 2019.