SAFF 2020: Saturday

Dr. Jasbir S. Kang

Dr. Jasbir S. Kang, MD, FHM is Medical Director, Hospitalist Program at Rideout Health. A physician and community activist based in Yuba City, CA, he currently serves a Board member of Adventist Health -Rideout Foundation. He co-founded the Punjabi American Heritage Society in 1991 and the Punjabi American Festival in 1995 to foster cross-cultural understanding. He helped to create the first permanent museum exhibit documenting the history of Punjabi Americans.

Navkiran Kaur Khalra

Navkiran Kaur Khalra, is an Electrical Engineer by profession. She along with her family have been Human Rights advocates and highlighted the massacre of Sikhs in Punjab during and post 1984. Navkiran migrated to US about 10 years ago for her graduate school. She has been involved to collaborate various Human Rights organizations interested to research and document the human rights abuses in Punjab and has kept the legacy of her father Shaheed Jaswant Singh Khalra alive by representing the Sikh cause to the Sikh Diaspora and other communities and human rights defenders.

Christy Campbell

Christy Campbell is an award-winning author and journalist. In 2000 he quit the Sunday Telegraph newspaper, where he was war correspondent and feature writer, to research his first major book, the Maharajah’s Box. Since then he has published a sequence of well received investigations into military history, true crime, wartime code-breaking and companion animals. He is married with three grown up children and lives in Suffolk, England, not far from Maharajah Duleep Singh’s one-time country mansion, Elveden Hall.

Waris Ahluwalia

Waris Singh Ahluwalia (born 1974) is a Sikh American designer and actor based in New York City. His company, House of Waris, has collaborated with a number of other designers and artists throughout the years. Ahluwalia’s first film was The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) by Wes Anderson, as Vikram Ray, with a cast that included Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Anjelica Huston, and Cate Blanchett. He played a short role in Wes Anderson’s critically acclaimed The Grand Budapest Hotel. His film Beeba Boys, directed by Deepa Mehta and starring Randeep Hooda, was released on October 16, 2015.

Hosted by Filmmaker Michael Singh

Michael Singh is an American-born documentary filmmaker who grew up in the Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.  The son of a Punjabi farmer who was raised a Sikh, and a white Connecticut mother, Michael returned to the United States for higher education, ending up at the University of Chicago, and then USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.  His award-winning work has appeared on Discovery, NBC, PBS, and Al Jazeera.  His latest documentary, ‘Valentino’s Ghost: Why We Hate Arabs and Muslims,” received the Muslim Public Affairs Council’s “Voices of Courage and Conscience” award, and is designated a New York Times Critics’ Pick.  It received a standing ovation at La Biennale, The Venice Film Festival, and was banned by the Sundance Film Festival and PBS due to its detailed exposé of Israel as an unapologetically racist apartheid state.

Satinder Kaur, Filmmaker

Satinder Kaur won the Grand Prize in the 2019 Women in Media CAMERAderie initiative for her short film Blood and Glory, which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival. Kaur is a fellow of the Writers Guild Foundation’s Veterans Writing Project. She has written and directed several award-winning and widely viewed shorts. Her film, The Last Killing, on police brutality and the decade of disappearance in Punjab, India, won the Amnesty International Best Human Rights Short award. As the multimedia director of Ensaaf, she spearheaded the video advocacy efforts of the largest human rights documentation initiative in India. During this time, she traveled throughout Punjab and interviewed survivors of torture and police brutality. Kaur received her MFA in film directing from USC School of Cinematic Arts. Currently, she’s a screenwriter in the GTDI program at NBCUniversal. 

Hansjeet Duggal, Filmmaker

Hansjeet Duggal is a virtual/augmented reality& animation evangelist and an editor. His VR animated film Freiheit was selected for recognition in Annecy (the oldest and most competitive animation festival) in France. He recently got selected in American Cinema Editor’s Diversity Program and is being mentored by Oscar winning & nominated film makers His movie Jutti Kasoori which he edited was aired on PBS last November. He also produced a movie on field hockey star player Sardar Harbail Singh, and “Shades of Indigo” which is premiering at this year’s Sikhlens: Sikh Arts and Films Festival. He was also the editor on “The Cheez that Binds”. He also teaches in the Sikhlens Digital Voices Program which teaches filmmaking to students throughout the United States.

Harjus Singh, Filmmaker

Harjus Singh was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. After high school Harjus attended the University of Cincinnati, majoring in BioMedical Engineering, and eventually Chapman University getting his MFA in Film Production. Harjus’s thesis “All Quiet on the Homefront” which stars Waris Ahluwalia, was based on the true story of Bhagat Singh Thind. It has screened at Oscar qualifying film festivals such as LA Shorts. Harjus continues to write and direct films which tend to be focused on identity and power. Currently Harjus has a feature script in the final round of Sundance Labs and has worked in the industry at places like EuropaCorp and CBS.

Sareena Sandhu, Student Filmmaker

Sareena Sandhu is a high school senior at Menlo School, in Atherton, Northern California. She received a grant from the HAND Foundation in her junior year to research the cultural integration of Punjabi Sikhs into Northern Italy, more specifically the Parmesan cheese industry, and filmed “The Cheez that Binds Us” to document it. She also utilized the film equipment from the new Sikhlens Equipment Rental Program.

She is new to the world of documentary filmmaking but has enjoyed the process of creating her first documentary and intends to pursue this art further in the future. Her work on this film has earned her recognition in winning the Youth in the Community Joy of Sewa Award in 2019. She loves to learn about the prominence of Sikhs throughout the world and has taught her fellow classmates about Sikhism on multiple occasions. Sareena loves traveling, dancing Bhangra on her team of 12 years, flying, and playing field hockey. She really enjoys engaging with her culture in these multifaceted ways and sharing what she loves about it with her friends and community.

The Cheez That Binds us

Italian Punjabi Sikhs Rashpal Kaur, Baljeet Singh, and Iqbal Singh work on Italian dairy farms, and in the production of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese in Novellara, Emilia-Romagna. All tell of the difficult immigration from India to Italy, the process of settling in a foreign country, and the progress they have made since.

Bhajneet Singh is a Sikh community activist, entrepreneur, philanthropist, actor, and creative writer! Born and raised in California, Bhajneet loves playing sports, traveling, doing kirtan and being on the beach. He has devoted much of his life to mentoring Sikh youth through Gurmat Camp and is gifted at connecting kids with the teachings of Gurbani in a practical, thoughtful, and relatable way. Bhajneet became a father 3 years ago to Ajeet Singh, his first little lion, who inspired him to write this book. Bhajneet lives in LA with his family and is a devoted dad of three energetic kids (Ajeet, Simer and Kirpa) as well as uncle of four (Gurdaas, Sobha, Jodh, and Bibek). He does his best writing on long flights to China. Ajeet Singh, The Invincible Lion, is Bhajneet Singh’s first children’s book which he hopes will inspire kids to be strong in the face of bullying. With Gurbani as the guide, kids can overcome any challenge with chardikala and grace.

Harman (Harmohanjit) Singh Pandher is a public, elementary school teacher. He was born in Vancouver and raised in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree (English Literature) and a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of British Columbia. From 2011 to 2018, he was elected to two consecutive terms as a School Board Trustee on the Burnaby Board of Education. Harman is the author of Sugar, Steel, and the Maple Leaf: the poems of a young Sikh Canadian. He is the founder of SONG Creative Mentorship Association of Greater Vancouver: a non-profit society focused on providing youth with mentorship in the arts and opportunities for community service. He lives in Burnaby with his family, including his dog, Wicket. Harman can be contacted at harmanspandher@gmail.com. Gurpreet Kaur Birk is a Canadian freelance illustrator. Her work can be seen on Instagram @birkidy.

Simran Jeet Singh loves sports and signed up for his first marathon after being inspired by Fauja Singh — and like Fauja, he has not stopped running since. Simran is an activist, writer, and scholar who believes deeply in the divine goodness of all people. He was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, and now lives in New York City with his wife and two daughters.

Jasmeet Kaur loves to blend art and our Baani together: art that stirs the soul and Baani that feeds the soul. Baaniart presents nature, thoughts, abstraction, spirituality, and tranquility of our Sikh scriptures in vibrant colors and mediums. Jasmeet studied Textile Design from The National Institute of Fashion Technology in New Delhi. She worked for several years in the field of interior design and started her own company Kaur Competency LLC in San Antonio, Texas, working with residential homes and boutique hotels. She now lives in San Antonio with her husband and two sons, Darsh and Jeeve.

Priyanka Mac is an artist interested in capturing the dynamics of color and texture. Her painting is influenced by her work within the fashion industry, and has been exhibited in private and commercial venues. Priyanka holds an MFA from the Academy of Art University, San Francisco and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. She lives and maintains a studio in Los Angeles, CA.

Cha (animated)

Bibi is plagued by memories of the past, and her granddaughter Simran is starting to notice. In resolving to teach Simran how to make Cha, they are pulled into the past, to Bibi’s memories of one fateful day in Delhi, 1984.

One World One Hope

In this period of Covid-19, the world has been hit with one of the greatest crises of our time – a crisis that has pushed aside differences and helped us realize that humanity is connected. A musical and spiritual representation of our journey, rising together through this pandemic as one global human family – Presenting Guru Arjun Dev Ji’s Universal Message of Oneness in ONE WORLD ONE HOPE