TRUST ME I KNOW WHAT I'm DOING

Speaker 2 (00:00.29)
Hi, my name is Geeta Gandhbir and I'm a filmmaker and you're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing.

My name is Abhay Dandekar and I share conversations with talented and interesting individuals linked to the global Indian and South Asian community. It's informal and informative, adding insights to our evolving cultural expressions where each person can proudly say, trust me, I know what I'm doing. Hi everyone on this episode of Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing, a conversation with filmmaker Geeta Gandhbir. Stay tuned.

Speaker 1 (00:48.366)
Let me start by saying how grateful I am that you've chosen to spend your precious time listening, watching, and engaging with me. Whether you're tuning in on your favorite podcast platform, watching and subscribing on YouTube, or sharing this with your family and friends, I'm really thrilled that you're here. If you feel inspired and friendly, I would love to hear from you so drop a note at info at abayadandekar.com. We often talk about the power of curiosity and the importance of questioning the world around us.

Now some artists take that curiosity and transform it into activism and real change through storytelling. Very few though embody this intersection of artistry and empowerment as seamlessly as filmmaker Geeta Gandhbir. Growing up around Boston and raised with a boundary breaking and progressive spirit, Geetha's filmmaking journey has been shaped by great mentors like Spike Lee and Sam Pollard. Her work is grounded in a commitment to uplifting unheard voices, challenging the status quo, and pushing for social change.

From her early days in fiction and narrative film to her celebrated documentary work, including collaborations with industry icons and projects that delve into the intersections of race, justice, and community. Geeta's career has been recognized with many honors as a director, producer, and editor. Her recent documentary, The Perfect Neighbor, unraveled the tragic killing of Ajika Owens through police footage, exposing how minor neighborhood dispute escalated under Florida's Stand Your Ground laws.

It premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and won the Directing Award for U.S. Dramatic. Geeta has also co-directed the Emmy-winning HBO short Apart and the acclaimed series Black and Missing, which earned both an NAACP award and an Independent Spirit Award. Other notable projects include Lownes County and The Road to Black Power and Call Center Blues. As an editor, her films have garnered two Emmy Awards, an Academy Award and multiple Peabody Awards.

She's currently directing a series for Netflix with Spike Lee and Samantha Knowles, a retrospective on post-Katrina New Orleans. Now after the standard Marathi-American one degree of separation, Geeta and I connected for a conversation about her artistic journey, her experiences as a South Asian in the film industry, the challenges of making American documentaries against headwinds in 2025, and about cultivating trust. But I wanted to first know whether her Instagram profile photo showcasing a Black Panther

Speaker 1 (03:08.642)
was a symbolic proxy for how she approached the world.

I think, mean, so that honestly that I just love that artwork. Yeah. the poster. It's, I've worked on a number of films and the artwork for each of them is special. But that one was, I think one of the first ones I've had that was hand drawn in that way. wow. And to me, it was so reminiscent of the spirit of Lowndes County and what the folks were trying to do down there and they're organizing. So, so.

It's always an inspiration to me to see it reminds me of their of them and how they paved the way for us who are here now. That's why I keep it up.

Do you need sort of reminding of that or has that been sort of infused now very well? Not just in your professional work, but even just your personal life.

Speaker 2 (04:26.71)
the line of the traditional line of patriarchy and all the things that she could have, you know, and was raised with. And that actually came from her father, who was also very progressive for his time. So I think for me, that spirit, I have to say it's been with me since I was very young, again, my mother, and then some of the folks that I've been lucky enough to be supported by and mentored by.

Well, I mean, and what that I think speaks to for a lot of folks is when you have that spirit in you of constantly both questioning and the spirit of activism, it does sort of build power and presence in all the work you do. So I'm curious, particularly for you, what you find perhaps most empowering when it comes to making documentary films and especially in an age where

decentralization and AI and so many things tend to actually be disrupting empowerment. Particularly when it comes to making art.

So I think for me, documentary film has always been interesting. I started in fiction and in narrative, but again, I started with Spike Lee. And then I was in the independent film world in the 90s here with a lot of artists who were, again, doing films that pushed the envelope. So I worked with Spike Lee. I worked very briefly with the Coen brothers. I worked with...

on Hudsucker Proxy for, I think, a couple of weeks, and then I got shifted to something else. And I worked with Merchant Diabry. But these are folks who, again, were doing film that was not traditional Hollywood. They were telling stories that were edgy, that may have had some sort of message to them, whether or not they were overt. And so that, for me, really influenced the way that I see art.

Speaker 2 (06:26.432)
that artists are people who don't necessarily, who in my world it might be the studio system, but it's oftentimes that there is the mainstream media that walks on one side of the street and artists walk on the other. you, you again, or even if you do collaborate, your job as the artist is to, again, to push for, for change and to uplift voices that maybe have not been heard. So for me, that was a really important part of my upbringing. And I think right now we are facing

obviously the threats of disinformation of, our world being, it's the pathway to fascism, right? But to create sort of a dystopian reality, the death of facts, the, again, the disinformation, the polarization, all of that is part of the strategy to keep us apart. And I think what is so interesting with, and,

I just want to say this, a free press is the cornerstone of any healthy democracy and documentary film stems from journalism. is sort of sometimes lives in the cross section of journalism and cinema and cinematic art. So there are, again, some documentaries that are very news based, fact based, you know, again, that lean into

sort of something that is pure journalism. And then there are others that lean more into cinema. Not saying I think those still have to be fact check, but they might be more of an opinion piece. I think living in this cross section is really interesting because you see attacks on both art and journalism and the government's sort of trying very hard right now with the current administration to tamp down anything that

could be seen as dissent, anything that could, again, push back against the agenda that they are trying to press forward. What's interesting is, in the same way that there are things that have taken over the documentary industry or have been at a threat of replacing the documentary industry, but at the same time, people are then using those platforms to create hybrid almost.

Speaker 2 (08:44.846)
of documentary and whatever that platform might be like TikTok, for example. People are using TikTok to tell whole stories and that's really fascinating. So I think we have to really, we have to be flexible, but it's a really important time to push for documentary and for it to remain as viable as it's been.

I was just gonna say, mean, that speaks a lot to the kind of idea that that power is being redistributed in a way and to some healthy effects where we sort of keep at least our attention focused in as many places as possible so that we're not losing sight of where marginalized struggles are happening.

And yet the documentary substrate is one that is, like you said, has many important intersections there. Like for you, has that taken a lot of practice for you to find at least the sweet spot of saying that like, yes, I have a very different vantage point on this than I did perhaps when I was first starting my career? mean, the notion that like how you approach this today.

Thank

Speaker 1 (09:54.328)
perhaps is a little bit different than how you approached this maybe early on in your career when you were first sort of making that transition of the jump from narrative scripts to documentary making.

Speaker 2 (10:34.026)
that a scripted film would have as far as storytelling. Ideally, there's an arc that you follow. There's someone that you connect deeply to, that you you feel that you can walk in their shoes. I think the difference between news and documentary is oftentimes, and particularly documentaries can be short or long, right? But it is that connection to the participants, as we now call them, and their journey that makes for

for people to feel that they are on a ride with you and that it is not just informational. Because I think what can happen with documentaries is that if they feel too dry, if they feel like it is purely information, then people don't attach, right? They don't feel concerned about what's happening. They don't care.

less compelling natures to them.

Yes, but documentary can be just as entertaining as scripted. And I think that's really important. also the

And by the way, did you know that from the very outset or is that something that's taken some patience and some practice for you to really come to that?

Speaker 2 (11:44.27)
I think because I began inscripted and was inscripted for 10 years, that was my foundation. That was my... before that, I studied art and I studied animation and animation... Or I worked in animation and that's similarly storytelling. So I've had a trajectory that's a little bit different. I didn't come from a journalist, like a journalism background. I came from a film background and a cinema background. So my segue into documentary was really one...

I started with the perspective of it being about storytelling and the art of cinema and how you tell a great story. And so I don't have the foundation a lot of folks have who came from news and journalism. So for me, it was always art. The art kind of was the basis. And I had to learn the other pieces of it, which were how it's different with documentary when you are dealing with real people.

obviously real stories and the journalistic norms were something I had to learn.

Yeah. Speaking of Spike Lee, was reading a little bit where, you know, certainly you have some upcoming work with Spike Lee and Samantha Knowles. And he once said that you have this incredible empathy for struggling people and that it shows in your films and that you're a filmmaker who never exploits her protagonist's misery.

Spike Lee, that?

Speaker 1 (13:12.295)
Yeah, you know...

I've never seen that in my life.

I'm curious, know, for for that, you know, and at least respect reflecting on that, is that empathy at the core of providing both kind of the foundational anchors and even the uplifting buoys for an audience to feel that same kind of connection to a story?

I do think empathy is incredibly important in storytelling in general. We have to be able to, and this goes across the board to me, narrative, writing, script, unscripted as we documentary, et cetera, but in any kind of storytelling, if you don't feel that you can walk in the shoes of the protagonist or the characters if it's a fictional book.

the participants if it's a true story. If you can't walk in their shoes in some way, I think that disconnect is what leads to it being uninteresting to you. So for me, that I think as a director, think it's, and our filmmaker, and for folks who are in every department, it's incredibly important to feel, to be able to immerse yourself in the world of.

Speaker 2 (14:32.012)
the characters or the participants and understand what they would feel and then be able to translate that to a greater audience. That's, I think, a key part of the process. yeah, empathy, do think is necessary. But I think you can also very dispassionately tell a story about someone or something that you don't care about. But no matter what, you have a POV. The filmmaker has a POV. It's impossible not to.

are ripped.

Do sometimes toggle between having to have some agnostic perspective on things, even though it is remaining your POV? And then does it also take a fair amount of patience to remind stakeholders to actually, really, this is the mission of this project, or this is

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think sometimes as filmmakers, deal with myself and other folks that I know have worked on projects where you might be dealing with something where, again, the participants or the characters, if it's a narrative, don't always elicit immediate empathy so that they have created a situation for themselves that puts them in the seat of being the villain.

or they have committed a crime. Oftentimes, immediately, it's very hard to relate. But I think our job as a filmmaker is to contextualize it, to contextualize what they've done or not, or not. There is no contextualizing it in a way that makes it understandable. But our job is to give as much of a 360 as we can. In journalism, there's that saying that one side

Speaker 2 (16:22.156)
Someone will tell you it's raining, someone else will tell you it's not raining, and our job is to go outside and figure out if it's raining, you know? And that's to find... Yeah.

but on film and in story, right?

Speaker 1 (16:35.074)
You're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing. Let's take a quick break and come back to our conversation with filmmaker Gita Gandhbir. Stay tuned.

Speaker 1 (16:48.462)
Conversation. It's the antidote to apathy and the catalyst for relationships. I'm Abhay Dandekar and I share conversations with global Indians and South Asians so everyone can say, trust me, I know what I'm doing. New episodes weekly wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Speaker 2 (17:09.934)
you

Hi, I'm Vivek Murthy. I'm the 21st Surgeon General of the United States. And you're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing.

Speaker 1 (17:29.336)
Hi everyone, this is Chef Vikas Khanna. Hi, I'm Karan Soni. Hello everyone, my name is Tan France. Hi, I'm Lilly Singh. Hi, I'm Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and you are listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing.

Hey, I'm Sanjay Sharma. I'm the founder and CEO of Marginal Media Works. This is Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing.

Welcome back to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing. Let's rejoin our conversation now with filmmaker, Geeta Gandhbir. You know, our connection here is because of a mutual family friend. you know, the question, you know, that I have is how did you become so poised to particularly highlight the Black American experience, especially as an Indian American woman whose parents came here in the 60s and 70s?

with a very, very different backdrop of experiences and your own lived experiences, then sometimes at least on the surface is what's perceived from the black American experience. How did that intersection at least come about so wonderfully for you?

Speaker 2 (19:10.506)
as a young person, they're definitely coming up in the 70s, there was definitely racism. didn't, my parents didn't necessarily understand it or know what it was, but I was in settings that were predominantly white at times and experienced racism that I think made me understand again, very different degree, obviously, but that drew me to other communities of color.

and to identify with other communities of color because of this common experience of racism. And again, in no way. mean, obviously, Asian-Americans have their own story here. And I walk through the world as a South Asian woman. So I do not have the lived experience at all of anyone in the African-American community. And then after that, I...

was really interested in film. I was really interested in perspectives that were not the majority, that were not sort of white-centered or Eurocentric lens of the world. so for me, that led to interested filmmakers like Mira Nair. I think I saw her work very early, Salam Bambay. Also, I grew up watching Bollywood because my parents watched Bollywood films.

And to me that was really, and I loved animated films and I Star Wars because Star Wars was about rebellion and you know, so those kind of films were influential. And then independent filmmakers like Mira and Spike Lee, I remember I saw Do the Right Thing in the theater and it blew my mind. And then my education too, I think I was interested in, and one at the time was called cross-cultural anthropology, which I don't know what it would be called now, but it basically meant.

The study of people of people of color, is so like, that term is so rude now and so inappropriate. But I studied, I was interested in the study of of communities and also the intersection where of movements between communities that had either again, the African American community was brought here unwillingly. They were essentially trafficked, right? Stolen and trafficked. Our community, our immigrants,

Speaker 2 (21:28.076)
But it's, you know, there's, again, people leave home only because they have to. there's the question, and that's true for many immigrants across. If you're looking for something better, means what you have at home is not working for you, or that there is not enough resources or something is wrong. So I think for me then, after college, I met Spike Lee and he hired me on Malcolm X. I basically followed him around. He was teaching at Harvard and I was working.

for an animation professor there, Susan Pitt, who was an incredible artist. And I bumped into Spike and then followed him around the campus until he hired me. Because I was 21 and I didn't want to live in my parents' basement any longer. I just graduated and my life was not what I wanted it to be. And then he hired me on Malcolm X and really he was the most, he single-handedly changed my life. Like he's that one opportunity he gave me.

I'm

Speaker 2 (22:25.23)
was the one I was able to run with. And I met him, I met Sam Pollard. And Spike Lee's 40 acres was a jumping ground, a jump. It was essentially an incubator for so much talent. And Spike didn't just, it wasn't just me, Spike made it an incubator for BIPOC folks, people of color. So I met folks there who were, there was another Indian woman there, Tula Goenka, who really became a close friend and mentor. She now teaches at Syracuse. She's a professor.

She took me under her wing. also met another woman who profoundly influenced me, Sonia Gonzalez Martinez. She's an editor, but she was like a, like kind of treated me like a younger sister. Even though I think we're about the same age, but she was, you know, and she's Puerto Rican. So there was, there was a, it was sort of, again, a very diverse place where a lot of us could, could get a start. And I can't tell you how many people have come out of

Like that was a training ground and then they've sort of spread, grown wings and taken off.

And you mentioned that there's a gratitude of being allowed into these spaces and there's a lot of community there and, you know, mentors and peers and, you you develop this great, a lot of substrate for learning and developing then your point of view and the deep empathy that's involved in not just the events or the storytelling, but the history behind it and so much depth to that.

What maybe did you actually have to unlearn about yourself in order for you to then embrace being welcomed into that space or embrace the opportunity of now spending time in that space and storytelling with the perspective of great mentors like Spike Lee and others and were there things about you, your own upbringing or experience that you had to sort of unspool in order to sort of embrace?

Speaker 2 (24:25.422)
Absolutely. I think we are all tainted by living in a culture that otherizes us in some ways. incredible opportunity obviously has been afforded to myself, my family here in the US, but there's also biases that we inherit. And I think within our own culture and on our family, there's a lot of anti-blackness, which comes from

again, a white living in a white supremacist, patriarchal, heteronormative society. And I think for me, the idea that, and as you know, I think there's so much within our communities, what worries me is that there are that obviously that's a concern and something that I struggle with a lot is the sort of goal of white adjacency within the Indian

Colonial. Right, Colonials.

Speaker 2 (25:21.102)
or the South Asian community, I should say. And I think that has, I mean, you see it now, you see now, like who are the, like who are some of the folks aligning themselves with and also working under the Trump administration? So I'm just gonna say it plainly, like who are folks who again are looking to support deportation and the hideous treatment of other vulnerable groups, migrant groups here?

Like, how could that be? But it's this, again, this desire, and it's also a Hindu sort of fundamentalist thing to try to align ourselves, right? But based, I think, historically in the caste system, to try to align yourself with sort of the person who is the highest in the racial hierarchy here. And I think for me, that was a really important and painful lesson to shed that, you know? And I don't know.

I don't, we all think we don't have it, but in some way, some of the things I think about that I was in pursuit of, you know, as a young person coming up here, the things that I've valued were based in that system. Sort of a racist system that valued certain achievements and saw others as less than. And so those are things that I had to contend with and shed. I also really had to, it was really important to me to

think about forging alliances. How do we align ourselves? How do I become an ally? How do I not bring with me all this baggage, this colonial baggage? And how do I work in support of the communities that I am telling stories about? And I think for me too, and particularly in the most more recent years,

That builds power, by the way.

Speaker 2 (27:19.342)
there's been in the documentary community, I think the documentary community is one of the first to really like, sparked this flame. But the representation has been incredibly important to me and to a lot of my colleagues and behind the camera as well as in front of it. Because documentary is one and film in general is 100 % a colonial exercise, but documentary filmmaking in particular.

has always been about, as we know it, particularly in Western culture, has been about folks usually of European descent going into communities that are not of European descent and bringing with them that very imbalanced power dynamic and telling their stories with no say from them, with no agency from them.

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:10.318)
So there is a whole movement in the documentary industry to decolonize documentary and to make that different and to make, now we, again, we don't say subjects anymore, we say participants. Because we want them, the people whose stories we are telling to have as much agency in the telling of their stories as we do and to be uplifted and to, again, to debunk the sort of anti, this sort of racist colonial structure.

of documentary, but this exists in filmmaking too. When you look at filmmaking, it's always been a fight who tells our stories. And it's critical that it's us. It's critical that there's representation.

Those structures are so rampant in so many different arena of society. mean, art and institutions. When I think of pieces that you have to let go of and really shed to be able to make and liberate yourself to create a project, to realize some art, what specifically did you maybe have to shed or let go of?

particularly with this project of the perfect neighbor.

So The Perfect Neighbor is actually, oddly, it's a personal film because so, so Ajaka Owens, who's the young mother in the film, it was my sister-in-law's best friend. that is, so I think it's, it's a different project than the others that I've because it, because of that deeply personal connection to my family and to people I love and

Speaker 2 (29:52.618)
We really became involved in the beginning because we wanted to advocate for the family. The perpetrator was not arrested. Stand Your Ground laws came into play and we hit the ground very quickly, particularly my partner, who's also a producer on the film, Nakankwantu. He hit the ground pretty quickly with my sister-in-law. I have two sister-in-laws who were on the ground immediately. And one,

the best friend, the other is a incredible activist and organizer. And so she came, she basically the minute it happened, she got the phone call, she called us, my husband went down and we were so we were there trying to use whatever skills we had, really with the media, you know, trying to help organize just to make sure that there was some sort of justice. And then about a couple months, so we were started where Ben Crump's team came on board, we were working with them to

to help in the, figure out media that could keep the case alive and tell stories. Because even after the arrest of Susan Lawrence, who was the perpetrator, we did not know if she would be convicted. Again, we have seen what happened with Trayvon Martin. We have seen Stand Your Ground used in a number of ways. And so, as defense, when it's really, obviously it's a law that's very dangerous for people of color.

abused. So about two months in we got though we got our hands on all this body cam footage that had been the prosecution, one of the attorneys had done a FOIA request or sued the police department, the Freedom of Information Act used that to get footage from the police department of the all any body camera footage that existed plus all the things that had been created in the investigation.

That's when we got our hands on two years worth of body cam footage. And that's when I was like, there's a story here that we should tell. And working hand in hand with Adjika's mother, we made this film. It was really to showcase the dangers of stand your ground, but also to, we wanted to subvert the police body camera footage, which is so often used to surveil vulnerable communities of color and to, again,

Speaker 2 (32:46.626)
support each other, raising their kids together. And Susan was this one outlier and her access to a gun is what sort of, you know, again, had this terrible ripple effect on the whole community.

And this was something that was so deeply personal and woven a lot of your innate activism and this notion of there's more to it than the sort of like news cycle aspect of this that you only see that one first slice and there's so much work that still needs to be done. Is this an instance where the line between filmmaker and director and participant

was a little bit more blurry than usual.

I think I was not in the film and I purposely didn't put any myself. My family is in the film, but organically, just because they were there. You see them in some of the footage, but particularly in the aftermath, they were there on some of the news footage and the court, the footage that takes place in the court. I think that absolutely it was a very hard film to make because...

I don't know if I was 100 % objective, but it took all my, and it took all of my ability and an incredible team that I had to really, work on it with me. And also I wanted them, it was important for them to hold me accountable, to us accountable to making the best film possible as opposed to trying to have our feelings.

Speaker 2 (34:27.726)
override the process. And so it was hard. Somebody said to me later, they said, after screened at Sundance, they saw the film and heard why we made it. And they said, it was grief work. And I was like, that's a really great term. I've never heard of that term. But I think it was. was something that we needed to do because one,

I don't have any other skills. have nothing else to offer this.

That's all right. It's your vehicle. Sure.

They asked me anything I could do for them. But also, yeah, I just couldn't, I wanted to understand how do we get, how does you get from, how do we go from someone being your neighbor and you're annoyed with them over a dispute about noise that children make who play near your house to an actual murder? how does that happen? Like that to me, it's something that I feel like, again, we, and in these fraught times we live in, it feels like.

The loss of life.

Speaker 2 (35:31.828)
It's something that we, it really felt like a cautionary tale.

You're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing. Let's take a quick break and come back to our conversation with filmmaker Geeta Ganbir. Stay tuned.

Speaker 1 (35:51.254)
Every story told is a lesson learned and every lesson learned is a story waiting to be told. I'm Abhay Dhandekar and I share conversations with global Indians and South Asians so everyone can say, trust me, I know what I'm doing. New episodes weekly wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Speaker 1 (36:13.09)
Hi everyone, this is Sitz Re-Rom and you're now listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing.

Speaker 1 (36:26.69)
Hi, this is Farhan Akhtar. Hi guys, I'm Ananya Pandey. Hi, this is Madhuri Dixit and you're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing with Abhay Dandekar.

Speaker 1 (36:41.58)
Hi there, I'm Abhay Dandekar and you're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing. Let's rejoin our conversation now with filmmaker Geeta Gandhbir.

It's certainly fodder for a lot of important policy and activism work that still needs to be done. Does this, a film like that, such a difficult and personal one to make, does it change the arc of what you hope mentoring and legacy are all about for you when it comes to the sort of professional journey that you're on?

So does it change mentoring and legacy as far as this film goes? I don't think so because I feel like part of my journey, and this is inspired by Sam, Sam Pollard and Spike Lee, has always been to try to raise up other filmmakers. Like Sam did that for me, Spike did that for me. And the more of us there are, particularly filmmakers whose voices are historically marginalized, that is where my

My goal lies is to open the door for as many of us as possible because that

guess does it make you see your mentees or message to your mentees and those around you that personal items and really, really deeply enmeshed stories like this are in fact really valuable and should have a place.

Speaker 2 (38:13.302)
Yeah, you know, I don't think it changes that because I already knew that. And that's the thing. Again, this one happens to be mine, or a story that is, and I never thought I would, knew if I would tell a story or have a story that I was personally connected to like this, be one that I make. Because I love all of everything I work on. They're all my heart. But this one just, it just happens to be that there's this action.

But I think for me, I've worked on other films before. I've had the honor of working on other films before. I worked on a film called The Sentence years ago with a dear friend of mine, Rudy Valdez. And it was his personal journey. it was really about his sister who was incarcerated for nine years. It's on HBO. But that story to me was one that I worked on, again, his journey. But because he's my friend and I love him, it became mine too.

Speaker 2 (39:38.86)
my connection to it or my family's connection to it inherent in the film. We wanted it to sort of play on its own.

And it sounds like that organic spirit is one that's so pervasive for you that, you know, it's sort of always going to be there for your mentoring and for legacy for that matter.

Yeah. the mentoring, like I said, it's, obviously I try as much as possible to support films, know, filmmakers and, but it is a challenging time for us. There's, know, with funding being cut, there's the, you know, obviously the government defunding PBS, NPR, NEA grants, NEH grants. Like they're all, it's really, there's, it feels like there is a direct war right now against what we do.

And so it's a time where we really all need to, I think, figure out ways to continue to do this work.

How do you find levers of capital and power and allyship as a person of color, as a South Asian woman, as an Indian American, as a non-white filmmaker? Who's representing and advocating and activating in 2025 then with the backdrop you just mentioned?

Speaker 2 (40:53.432)
So there's a lot of organizations that have been building power throughout for many, many years. So I think it's this collective organizing that is most critical and that we have to keep doing. And I just want to say for people of color in this industry and in so many industries, this is nothing new. mean, there is a direct offensive right now, but at the same time,

as folks who've been historically shut out and independent filmmakers, this has always been the way. Like jazz musicians, you know, it's like artists that don't walk, you know, sort of, don't do the mainstream and sort of look for, tell stories that are considered alternative, even though they are not. This is what has always been the case. So,

It's not a new story.

Speaker 2 (41:51.584)
It's still disheartening and it shouldn't be this way, unfortunately it's not new. So I think there's organizations like the, there's the Black Documentary Collective, there is Brown Girls Doc Mafia, there's ADOC, which is the Asian Documentary Association, if I'm saying that right. But there's a bunch of organizations that exist. There's the

queer producers collective. So that have, again, been working to figure out ways. There's also a great organization, Chicken and Egg, that has supported my work and continues to support the work of female film... of women. Forgive me. It should be of filmmakers who identify as female. They support, they give grants. So there's a lot of places that...

Speaker 1 (43:12.27)
We'll pivot to a different kind of push here. I'm going to do some quick rapid fire for you. Just, you know, play with this a little bit. What's your favorite Amarjit Rekata title?

Probably the Mahabharata series that they wrote. It's the whole series. I've read that series, I think front to back. And the Mahabharata was always just one of my favorite long longitudinal stories.

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:40.782)
Is there a favorite character that you sort of like their story arc?

So of course, Draupadi, who was the, you know, again, the only, aside from the, you know, the mother. But I also really liked Arjuna. Arjuna was really interesting because he was the archer. So I liked his character a lot.

What's the most underrated Star Wars character?

my god, the most underrated Star Wars character.

Maybe someone who endears and endures, but not necessarily the first in line when it comes to getting love as a Star Wars character.

Speaker 2 (44:25.19)
So funny. What's his name? So I saw there's a couple that I think of, but I'm forgetting the name right now. The general who's with the rebel command, but he's of that, the fish, the fish faced one. I love him. He's the one who says it's a trap. That is my favorite. He's one of my favorites. I also love the Jawas. The Jawas. I think there's something slightly racially problematic. And like there's like

It's a trap,

Speaker 2 (44:52.622)
with the Jawas and the Sand People. I think just the Jawas as sort of a community has always been really interesting to me. think though, so certainly Rogue One was my favorite of the films. And then I was just watching Andor as of recent with my kids. I watched Andor through the entirety of it.

A colleague and sort of someone, Bo Willimon was a writer on it. And so, yeah, I'm blown away by how radical it was. I like meaning it really, it wasn't that radical, but that it was, that they allowed something like that to air. That was really like a win for, for Disney and for.

Yeah, big, big changes from mid 70s filmmaking to...

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I love the original, the whole Star Wars series, but I think like Rogue One to me, just the kind of the messaging of it, also the execution of it.

Alright, last quick one. What's the best decade of hip-hop?

Speaker 2 (46:02.499)
wow.

I don't know my answer at least, but.

That's really hard because there's the really early stuff from the like of the late 70s and the 80s. mean, to me, because it's the birth of it, think that's one of I mean, that to me is sort of the most amazing one that I think some of the best some some of the artists that have come out since then, even more recently have been so so incredible.

that and so creative that it's that I almost feel like that really early time period and then even the more recent really creative stuff is is interesting where there's sort of a renaissance.

Yeah, it feels very similar.

Speaker 1 (46:50.658)
Yeah, kind of late 70s, mid 80s, or early 80s stuff. And even the stuff that's coming out now that's very, very grassroots. For me still, it's mid 90s, early 90s.

early 90s was really great too. The early 90s was really great. But I feel like it's, I feel like there's people now who have taken from that and taken it further.

As many will say, right? It's all new and it's all the same.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. But then it's true that our 90s was very creative.

Let get you out of here on this one. I mean, at the end of the day, and especially for those who might be discovering your work for the very first time, how do you, through your films, cultivate trust?

Speaker 2 (47:33.646)
That's a really good question. And that's really important. I think the trust of your team is really important and the trust of the participants is really important. I'm always as honest as possible. I get it depends. I'm making a... There's films that we make where we're trying to sometimes an expose on something that was criminal, for example. So in those, are you...

But I am always, I try to be, even in those cases, I try to be as transparent as possible and set expectations and tell them I'm going to, and almost to the point of being brutally honest, like, this is what this film is going to be about. This is what we're doing. This is where, this is how I plan to, this is what I would like to, how, why your story matters. And this is,

how the vision of it and do you want to participate and if you don't, that's okay. You know what I mean? Obviously, but it's that, I think it's that honesty as being as honest as possible with the folks that you are working with that is key and explaining to what it is that you're doing, all the sides of it, what can happen, the good and the bad. I think that is really helpful because people,

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:02.136)
people, first of can smell bullshit, like they can smell it. So that's, and then two, just, think they would rather know, they would rather feel, they feel more empowered by, you know, if they understand that you're gonna be straight with them and tell them, tell them the truth.

Well, truth telling and straight shooting and transparency, all great qualities and characteristics for people to enjoy and appreciate and really hopefully gain a lot of insights from. Geeta, thank you so much. This was really a treat to share some time with you and I hope we can visit with you again down the line.

Absolutely. Thanks for the time. Thanks for the interest.

Thanks again, Geeta. As we all know, there are major headwinds that are making it harder and harder to freely share stories and news, especially from communities of color. So a huge shout out to please check out URL MediaWorks and Epicenter NYC, both the brain children of Mitra Kalita, who is a friend, a veteran journalist, a former guest, and I think the most avid Asomiya enthusiast that I know. Check out the links in the show notes. And a huge shout out also to the link that made this episode possible.

my good friends and cousins from Framingham, Massachusetts, Chithra and Swati Joshi, and their awesome mom Jyoti. And as always, if you enjoy the show, I hope you consider leaving a review or sharing it with others who might appreciate, trust me, I know what I'm doing. Till next time, I'm Abhay Dandekar.