Anula Shetty is an award-winning filmmaker and new media artist. She is the founder of Fire Work Media, a media production company that uses AR /VR and mobile apps to tell stories about the environment and marginalized communities. She is a 2020 CAAM (Center for Asian American Media) Fellow and a recipient of a Pew Fellowship. She was previously awarded three Media Arts Fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and was nominated for a USA Artist Fellowship. She received a Project Involve Fellowship, two Independence Foundation Fellowships, and a Leeway Foundation Transformation Award for her art and social change work.
Anula received her MFA in Film & Media Arts from Temple University and serves on the board of the Alliance for Media Arts and Culture. She is a proud member of A-Doc, Brown Girls Doc Mafia, and a co-director of the artist-run video collective Termite TV. Her work has been widely screened at festivals and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, The Flaherty Film Seminar, National Museum of Women In The Arts, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Pacific Film Archive.
Her previous work includes the documentary Kamaka‚eha, Aching Eye (Grand Prize, U.S. Super8 Film Fest) and the narrative short Paddana, Song of the Ancestors (Best First Film, Mumbai International Film Festival).
Anula is committed to creating innovative, socially engaged participatory media art projects with communities. A key part of her practice is addressing issues of access, impact, and sustainability. She is interested in exploring the use of emerging technologies like Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and mobile apps as platforms to distribute community and artistic media. Her immersive documentary work includes creating video installations and mobile media apps to explore new ways of experiencing a place and the oral histories that surround it. Projects she has implemented include Time Lens www.timelens.org, an immersive mobile App exploring gentrification and homelessness. Time Lens was awarded first place in New Media at the UFVA Media with Impact Conference. It was also selected for presentation at ISEA 2015 in Vancouver, Canada and, the 2014 SIGGRAPH Conference. Other projects are Walk Philly www.termite.org/walkphilly. Current projects include Places of Power, a multi-platform immersive VR documentary about places of belonging and power in North Philadelphia http://www.termite.org/power, and Cosmic Egg, a poetic documentary set against the surreal landscape of egg harvesting, transnational surrogacy, and the desire for procreation.
Anula was awarded three Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Artist‐in‐Communities Grants to conduct youth filmmaking residencies at the Reichhold Art Center in the U.S. Virgin Islands. She was an Artist-in-Residence at Asian Arts Initiative and the Village of Arts & Humanities as part of two social practice artist residencies funded by ArtPlace America. She currently teaches film and video at Temple University and has previously taught at the University of the Arts, Arcadia University, Asian Arts Initiative, and Scribe Video Center.