Arun Vir
Adjunct Instructor, Art History and the Visual Arts; Directing Workshop for Women Award Recipient; The American Film Institute, ADD, National Film and Television School, Beaconsfield, England, Hill Lane College, England
Arun Vir began her independent filmmaking career 20 years ago coordinating docs and news magazine shows for Channel Four in London, England.
Contact
- Email: arunkvir@gmail.com
Going against her Indian orthodox upbringing she moved to New York City and found herself at the center of independent filmmaking community in downtown Manhattan. Arun joined Young Filmmakers Foundation and later established herself as Media Training Director for Film/Video Arts where she produced groundbreaking workshops for nascent filmmakers, with the support of independent artists as Jennifer Fox (My Reincarnation, Beirut, The Last Home Movie), Christine Vachon (I shot Andy Warhol), James Schamus (Crouching Tiger), and sponsors as Kodak, Arri, and Spike Lee's 40 Acres and a Mule. She went on to produce The Bulls' Night Out, a low-budget cop thriller for under 35k. Bulls' screened at US festivals and found distribution through the Angelika Feature Film Market.
Arun was invited to serve as committee member and reader for Fifth Night, famously known as the Nuyorican Poet's Café, founded by poet Miguel Algarin in 1973. Staged readings were performed to packed audiences by an emerging talent pool that included Francis McDormand, Steve Buscemi, David Strathairn, Adrienne Shelley, and John Leguizamo. Fifth Night inspired Arun to find her own voice as a writer. Her screenplay earned her the "Directing Workshop for Women" award sponsored by AFI. "The Last Weekend" took 'Best Short' at the 1999 Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles. Committed to sharpening her tools as a filmmaker, in 2005 Arun was invited as shadowing Director on ‘CSI Miami' with director Joe Chappelle (The Wire). She has penned a number of feature scripts including ‘Suburban Turban'-- a coming of age urban drama about an Indian-American hipster who struggles with his identity in a post 9/11 America.
Arun currently freelances for corporate agencies and production companies, producing a variety of multi-media, viral, documentary and narrative projects from her office in Glendale, CA. Her clients, past and current, include Dir, Garrett Williams (Sundance winner 96'), Katherine Brooks, Thunder Sky Pictures, Captains of Industry, Stanley Nelson's Fire Light Media (Coordinating producer- Freedom Riders- Emmy nominated 2011), Iron Mountain, Comedian, John Cleese and Florence Henderson.