Chemistry

Sahra Bhimji (nee Girshick) is a film writer, director and educator. After many years in France and the UK, in 2015 she returned to living in her native California. She is an Assistant Professor of Film Production at Diablo Valley College, a community college in the Bay Area.

She makes both personal documentaries and imaginative narrative films. As an undergraduate at Stanford University, she made her first short film, “The Girl with the Curl”, on a 16mm Bolex with a grant from the Stanford Film Society. From there, she has gone on to make dozens of short films on 16mm, Super-8, and digital video formats. Her films have screened at numerous film festivals including the London Short Film Festival, Portobello Film Festival, the San Francisco Women’s Film Festival, San Diego International Children’s Film Festival, and the Aarhus Independent Arts Festivals. She has had success on the website Filmaka.com, where twice she has won the grand jury prize. Her film “Hot Air” stars David Armand (How not to live your life, Pixelface, Armstrong &Miller Show) and screened at the International Green Film Festival in Seoul Korea and CineGlobe at CERN in Switzerland.

Sahra has worked with numerous artists and filmmakers including Miranda July, Scott Snibbe, and Gabrielle Demeestere. She has produced corporate videos for leading international companies including Goldman Sachs, Bank of New York Mellon, and Unite Housing, as well as compelling documentaries for non-profit organizations including Children’s Hospital of Oakland, Council of Christians and Jews and the Holocaust Education Trust, taking her film camera to Nepal and Costa Rica. Working with professional actors, she created a series of catchy, fresh online training videos for Digital Training Videos. She is a skilled editor and has authored two patents on automatic video editing from her work at Hewlett Packard.

Sahra enjoys lecturing and working with students of all ages, and has taught filmmaking at Santa Clara University, San Francisco State University, Stevenson College Edinburgh, and through Media Education and Screen Education Edinburgh. She enjoys working with community groups and has acted as a mentor to young filmmakers in Edinburgh and London.

She holds an M.F.A. in cinema from San Francisco State University, during which time she spent a year studying film at University of Paris (St Denis). She also has a B.S. from Stanford University in Earth Systems Science and Drama.