Ara Chawdhury

(born 1989, Manila, Philippines) Ara Chawdhury is an award-winning writer/director, human rights activist, event organizer, and musician. As a third culture kid, my projects are interested in intersections. In what happens when the lines between social constructs blur. I want to create provocative art that challenges the world being presented to my children and the rest of the global southern majority. I am interested in deconstructing how history shapes culture, and reconstructing a sensibility from the debris of cultural erasure. My work has been described as “Charming”, “Rich”, “Irreverent”. I was interested in musical theater growing up and studied Mass Communications at the University of the Philippines, hoping to make a living writing for the papers while I wrote music and sang for different rock and blues acts (Dama de Noche, Hastang, Bad Baby, Imadyina). I got involved with film production through Damgo ni Eleuteria (2010) as a production coordinator and actress and saw that you could make magic with so little, just by being hyperspecific.