Filmmaking team:
Director
NIshtha Jain is an independent filmmaker based in Mumbai, India. From her first film, City of Photos (2004) to the recent Proof (2019), she has explored the human condition in its myriad states. The politics of image making and self-representation, the complexities of social hierarchies, women’s movements and their struggles against patriarchy, and the lives and struggles of workers are some of the themes her films have dealt with. Her films have screened extensively at international film festivals and in art-house cinemas and have been broadcast on international TV networks. She has won numerous international film awards and is the director of the 2014 National Film Award of India for the Best Film on Social Issues, Gulabi Gang. Jain refuses to contain her curiosity within typical geographical or topical boundaries. As she works on Summer with Roxanne, she is also completing a film on the Indian jute industry entitled The Golden Thread. A Fulbright scholarship brought her to Austin, Texas, where she was affiliated with the department of Radio-Television-Film in 2019. She is also a Film Independent Global Media Maker Fellow 2019-2020. We are proud to announce that director Nishtha Jain has been named one of six outstanding female documentary filmmakers to receive the CHICKEN & EGG Award 2020!!
(portrait photo by Deborah Matzner)
Producer, Associate Director
Deborah Matzner is an Austin-born and raised, Brooklyn-based cultural anthropologist and filmmaker. She writes about visual culture and media making in India, as well as contemporary art and the senses in international context. After years as a scholar of Indian documentary film, including the work of Nishtha Jain, Matzner is thrilled to collaborate with Jain on a film that explores her own home terrain.(portrait photo by Nishtha Jain)