Deepa Somasekhara Pillai and Yi Wang
Performance Studies alums Deepa Somasekhara Pillai (M.A. '20) and Yi Wang (M.A. '20) were awarded the 6th and 20th places respectively in the Cannes International FIlm Festival - Mobile Movie making category.
Deepa's film Wandering through Stillness and Yi's film Stranger's Letters, were the final project as part of the course Cell Phone Cinema, conducted by Professor Karl Bardosh at NYU. The Global Short Film Awards, established in 2015, recognizes excellence in short films under 15 minutes long in a variety of subjects. 10 finalists from NYU were featured along with 60 other projects from across the world.
Deepa S Pillai is an Actor, Dancer, Choreographer and a Hatha Yoga Practitioner, based out of Dallas, Texas. She completed her Masters in Performance Studies in Tisch, 2019-2020 and teaches Indian Classical Dance and Yoga online. She is a gold medalist in Bharatanatyam from REVA University and is an active performer in the fraternity. Her interest in life is to decode the magical bond between storytelling and Life and how the former's modalities become root to the latter's existence. Art is one of the interesting dimensions through which stories get propagated and bodies, therefore, are both ephemeral blocks of life and the threads that weave the fabric of a culture/ belief/ practice, for eternity. She is presently on her Optional Practical Training and aspires to create stories of her life experiences, as they emerge, into films (not more than 2 minutes), precisely why Cell Phone Cinema has become one of the most valued skills she has earned.
Yi is a storyteller with experience in screenwriting, film directing, producing, editing, as well as stage management. She holds a BA from Peking University and is a member ofPerformance Studies 2020 MA cohort, Tisch school of the Arts. Her creative works include national award winning feature length film script (Chinese), short films and fictions. Stranger’s Letters tells a warm little adventure of two strangers during quarantine. It is dedicated to a very special time. A time that we went through, in isolation and solidarity.