Meena Nanji is an award-winning filmmaker who has produced, written and directed independent documentaries and experimental videos. Her first feature documentary, View From A Grain of Sand (2006), about the last 30 years of women’s rights in Afghanistan, won several awards at international film festivals as well as broadcast on television in the US and internationally. Nanji is a recipient of several prestigious grants, including the Rockefeller Foundation Media Arts Fellowship, National Endowment of the Arts, Center for Asian American Media, the Paul Robeson Fund, Pacific Pioneer Fund, Women in Film Foundation and Durfee Foundation. She has produced short films for channel 4 UK and RAI television Italy. She has curated and coordinated various film/video festivals and screenings in Los Angeles and San Francisco including the Los Angeles Festival and Outfest. She has been a juror on grant-giving organizations including the Rockefeller Foundation Media Grant, Center for Asian American Media, Durfee Foundation, AFI Film Grant and for film festivals. She has also taught at University of California, Santa Barbara and Otis Parsons School of Art and Design, Los Angeles. Nanji has been invited to guest lecture at universities and conferences around the world. She was on the board of L.A Freewaves. She was a founding member of ArtWallah, L.A’s South Asian Arts Festival and most recently in 2008, a co-founder of GlobalGirl Media (GGM), a non-profit media training organization for teenage girls in underrepresented communities of the world. Nanji is currently working on a feature narrative film, The Cosmic Forest, about a tribal artist from the central Indian forests, to be produced by Louverture Films. Her keen interest in exploring race and cultural diasporas, and gender rights, inspire her to continue to make films around issues of social justice and human rights.