Tata Institute of Social Sciences

Dr. Shilpi Gulati

Assistant Professor
Mumbai Campus Centre for Critical Media Praxis , School of Media and Cultural Studies

Qualification

BA English (Delhi University),

MA Media and Cultural Studies (Tata Institute of Social Sciences),

MPhil Theatre and Performance Studies (Jawaharlal Nehru University),

PhD Cinema Studies (Jawaharlal Nehru University)

Contact

shilpi.gulati[at]tiss[dot]ac[dot]in

shilpi.gulati@tiss.ac.in

Shilpi Gulati is a filmmaker, scholar and educator whose work explores the political and imaginative possibilities of documentary practice. Her research is grounded in practice-led methodologies that move between non-fiction filmmaking, critical pedagogy, and community-based media. Through her films she engages with questions of gender, memory and identity and focuses on feminist approaches to storytelling in South Asia.

She is a two-time recipient of the President’s National Film Award for her documentaries Qissa-e Parsi (2014) and Taala Te Kunjee (2018). She was a Fulbright Fellow at Columbia University (2018–19) and a Getting Real Fellow with the International Documentary Association (2024–25).

Shilpi's engagement with the field extends to programming and jury work across national and international film festival. Recently, she served as Festival Director of the 13th Cut.in Students Film Festival (2026), India’s longest-running platforms for student and early-career filmmakers, and the Digital Disruptions Film Festival (2024), which focused on low cost digital technologies. In these roles, she has led and trained postgraduate students in collaborative programming and exhibition making.

Alongside her practice, research and curatorial work, Shilpi consults as a creative producer across fiction and non-fiction projects, supporting early career filmmakers through editorial development, financing, outreach and distribution. She is also engaged in mentoring initiatives with PSBT Doc Commune, Video Consortium’s SSP Asia and the International Association of Women in Radio and Television.

Documentary Studies
Practice as Research
Media Infrastructures and Cultural Policy
Mobile Media and Digital Cultures
Film Festivals Studies
Community Media
South Asian Cinema
Theatre and Performance
Visual and Public Cultures

Filmography:

Cool Ladies Club (2026) Co-Director | Editor | Feature Documentary | 72 min
Made to Feel (2021) Director | Editor | Short Experimental | 15 min
Naach Bhikhari Naach (2018) Co-Director | Editor | Feature Documentary | 72 min
Lock and Key (2017) Director | Feature Documentary | 75 min
The Parsi Story (2014) Co-Director | Editor | Short Documentary | 26 min
Dere To Delhi (2012) Co-Director | Editor | Short Documentary | 30 min
Inside Out (2010) Co-Director | Editor | Short Documentary | 30 min
There Are No Borders Here (2009) Co-Director | Editor | Short Experimental | 15 min

Writings:

Gulati, Shilpi 2022: “Our Films, Our History,” Indian Express, March 26, 2022
Gulati, Shilpi 2022: “A Difficult Year for The Indian Film Fraternity” FemAsia: Asian Women’s Journal, January 2022
Gulati, Shilpi. 2021.“Super Censorship of Cinema?” Economic and Political Weekly 51 (31): 8
Gulati, Shilpi. 2019. “Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, 2019: Action,” Media Practice & Education 20 (4): 390–92.
Gulati, Shilpi. 2017 “Book Review: Anjali Monteiro and K.P. Jayasankar, A Fly in the Curry: Independent Documentary Film in India,” Social Change 47, no. 2 (June): 306–8.
Gulati, Shilpi. 2015, “Expression and Repression: Censorship and Challenges before Political Documentary Films in India,” Journal of Literature Studies, (January), New Delhi

Principal Investigator: “Exploring Gendered Access to Digital Technologies among Resource Poor communities in Mumbai,” funded by the American Jewish World Service (Present)

Principal Investigator: “Exploring Digital Citizenship Among Youth in India: Expression, Assertions, and Negotiations” funded by the American Jewish World Service (Present)

Researcher: Lights, Camera and Action for Gender Equality: Promoting Gender in Popular Hindi Films, funded by Department of State, U.S. Mission to India, 2021-2023

Documentary History and Theory
Contemporary Media Ecologies
Visual Cultures
Introduction to Filmmaking
Editing and Sound Design
Advanced Documentary Practice
Masters Research Project
Masters Final Media Project