A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.
SAIC faculty member Gitanjali Kapila, a person with medium-light skin-tone and long, dark hair, stands outside with a fan.

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Gitanjali Kapila

Associate Professor, Adjunct

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Bio

I am a filmmaker, academic, and Associate Professor, Adjunct at the School of the Art Institute. I earned an MFA from the graduate film program at Columbia University in New York City and a BA from Wesleyan University. I spent three years in Denmark where I was awarded a production grant from the Danish Film Institute. I wrote, directed and produced an experimental award-winning short called Weaning (Løsrivelse). Its festival run included the Seattle International Film Festival; Female Eye Film Festival, Canada; Chicks with Flicks Film Festival, New York; Curtas Vila do Condo, Brazil; Arizona International Film Festival; Boston International Film Festival; Chicks with Flicks Film Festival, New York. I wrote, directed, and co-produced a dramatic short Breathing above the Treeline which enjoyed a robust reception on the festival circuit and won awards in multiple categories. I completed Bat, a dramatic short in July 2023. It was an official selection of WorldFest—Houston International Film Festival 2024 and received a silver Remi award in the long shorts drama category. In addition, I completed Groped in July 2023 which was also an official selection of WorldFest—Houston International Film Festival 2024. I am Associate Professor, Adjunct at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where I teach Beginning Screenwriting and a course of my own design on worldbuilding called Structuring Narrative and Building the Imagined World. I have taught introductory and advanced production and screenwriting courses at the School of the Art Institute since 2015. I have presented internationally on narrative and narrative structure and have published extensively on the hero’s journey. I am currently in development on a new short called Trinity Wars and am developing a crime procedural for series.

Awards

Bat: Silver Remi award in the long-short category; Illinois Arts Council Grant; Groped: Illinois Arts Council Grant; Breathing above the Treeline: 4 Winner, Best Narrative Short; 1 Nomination, Best Female Director; 1 Nomination, Best Writing; Weaning: Nominated Best Film, Female Eye Film Festival; Winner Best Film, Chicks with Flicks Film Festival; The Purifying Fire: Academy Nicholl Fellowship, Quarterfinalist.

Publications

True Heroes, False Hoaxes, and Nietzsche’s Will to Power: Bludgeoning the Truth of Coronavirus with a Narrative of Perversion; or how the Beaches Were Kept Open in Stephen Spielberg’s Jaws (May-22)

The Hero’s Journey as Anti-Narrative: Trending Descents/Dissents on the way Up to Revolution and Resolution in Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite and Disney’s 1950 Animated Cinderella (May-21)

The Black Heroine in the Mirror: crossing the threshold of the specular image, the esoteric journey and the encounter with the annihilating I in Jordan Peele’s Us

Stuck in a Labyrinth (or a Tower) with the Minotaur and trying to get out: Princess Aurora and Imperator Furiosa as the heroes of the Multimyth

Vimeo

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This course introduces students to the basic elements of a screenplay, including format, terminology, exposition, characterization, dialogue, voice-over, adaptation, and variations on the three-act structure. Weekly meetings feature a brief lecture, screenings of scenes from films, extended discussion, and assorted readings of class assignments. This is primarily a writing class, with students required to write a four-to-five page weekly assignment related to the script topic of the week.

Class Number

1494

Credits

3

Description

This course introduces students to the basic elements of a screenplay, including format, terminology, exposition, characterization, dialogue, voice-over, adaptation, and variations on the three-act structure. Weekly meetings feature a brief lecture, screenings of scenes from films, extended discussion, and assorted readings of class assignments. This is primarily a writing class, with students required to write a four-to-five page weekly assignment related to the script topic of the week.

Class Number

1439

Credits

3

Description

This course focuses on using the principles of narrative and narrative structure to explore worldbuilding as a method for creating platform-specific time-based media. Students will engage a variety of writings in order to apprehend the theoretical tools necessary for 1) understanding narrative as a controlled and mediated communication between writer and viewer; 2) apprehending the critical role of designed spaces and narrative mapping in creating imagined worlds; 3) interrogating the ways in which media technologies and delivery systems inform the centering of different narrative perspectives; 4) exploring the process of activating narrative content in the imagined world for platform-specific media. The works of Sophocles, Aristotle, and Joseph Campbell will provide a coordinated theoretical framework for course content. Over the course of the semester students should expect to produce an 'imagined world' which has undergone at least 5-6 iterations based on course content. Students will also be expected to produce a screenplay, television pilot and bible, game bible or other platform-specific writing based on the world that the student builds.

Class Number

1448

Credits

3