Leena Manimekalai is a leading Tamil poet and a multiple award winning filmmaker. Her strong repertoire of films with an impressive exhibition record covering over 100 International Film Festivals includes the acclaimed ‘Maadathy-an unfairy tale’ (Feature Fiction), ‘the Sengadal-the Dead sea’ (Cinema Verite), ‘White Van Stores’ (Feature Documentary), ‘Is it too much to ask’ (Mockumentary), ‘Goddesses’ (Short Documentary) and ‘My Mirror is the Door’ (Cine Poem). She is an interventionist and her forte is participatory filmmaking. Her tryst with censorship, both constitutional and extra constitutional, as a brown queer female body, as a poet and as a politically unapologetic filmmaker is in itself a meta narrative in her journey as an Artist. She was recently chosen as a BAFTA India Breakthrough Talent (2022-23), named Artist in Residence by the Jackman Humanities Institute – University Toronto(2023) and Centre for Free Expression – Toronto Metropolitan University (2023), profiled as one of the twenty artists who inspire change globally by PEN America(2023). She has a Master of Fine Arts(MFA) in Film from York University and is currently teaching Undergraduate students at the Department of Visual Studies, University of Toronto, Mississauga. ‘Saracura’, a participatory climate film with the Afro Indigenous Quilombola community at Amazonia is her latest work in development.
