We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Aayushi A. Shah. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Aayushi A. below.
Aayushi A., thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?
Yes, I’ve been very lucky to earn a full-time living from my filmmaking work since I graduated from film school in New York 4 years ago. My producing teacher got me a job on the set of Mr. Jon Keeyes’s ‘The Survivalist’ right after film school, I made some contacts on that set, and it grew incrementally from there.
In hindsight, I don’t think that I could have sped up the process (and I wouldn’t want to either) because I learned so much during that nascent period when work opportunities came in dribs and drabs: I learned to put myself out there, to network, to negotiate, and honed my craft—skills that still serve me today. I took the time to build my résumé one film production at a time, so that, eventually, work began to beget more work and I reached the major milestone wherein I didn’t need to actively seek out work anymore—rather, work came to me through recommendations; recommendations, moreover, for film productions and production companies of note.
Aayushi A., love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
When it came time to decide what I wanted to do re: my career in high school, I think I was subconsciously predisposed to choose something that was the inverse of my upbringing in the suburbs of Mumbai: I wanted to be a part of something big. I had always loved watching films and had just had the epiphany of the power that cinema can have as an art form. I decided, therefore, to dedicate my life to mastering an art—the art of writing/filmmaking.
Now I’m a writer/filmmaker based in New York. Currently, two of my short screenplays, ‘The Rest is Silence’ and ‘Strange Things Will Happen,’ are being recognized by well-respected national and international film festivals, such as the FARO International Film Festival and the Cinescape Lisbon Online FilmFest (both in Portugal); the Climax International Festival of Independent Cinema and the MAGMA Film Awards (both in Madrid); the FilmHaus (in Berlin); the Jharkhand National Film Festival (in India); the Nocturna Online Brooklyn Film Festival andPlanet Cinema (both in New York); the Sensei FilmFest (in Hong Kong/China/Taiwan/Japan/
Both my screenplays feature messy, meditative women front and center, whose inner strength, for all its quietude, is not immediately apparent. And this is what sets me apart from others: that I unabashedly tend to put myself in my work, that my writing and filmmaking are audaciously personal. I have a unique voice that is shaped by my scars, my experiences, my flaws, and my South Asian identity—and which, therefore, is entirely my own. Indeed, these screenplays are the foundation of the character-driven, female-centric, almost-autobiographical films that I will write.
In addition to writing, I’ve worked as a filmmaker on a number of film productions which have been well-publicized, have screened at significant film festivals nationally and internationally, and which have given me the opportunity to work alongside TV stars, Daytime Emmy nominees, and Tony Award nominees. As the filmmaker, I am the sole custodian of both the creative and the logistical, the essence of my responsibilities being to always be thinking two steps ahead to ensure that we don’t have to sacrifice either one for the other. To this end, I single-handedly schedule each shoot in detail and run the set in an organized manner during principal photography, the latter of which involves providing direction to the cast/crew while on set and problem-solving on the fly. When a crew member couldn’t make it to set due to a pet emergency, for example, or we were running behind schedule, or we lost a location at the last minute, I came up with resourceful solutions that kept the production moving forward.
Having recently also worked as a filmmaker for such venerable American organizations as The Juilliard School, The Drama League, Unspeakable Vlogs Inc., Eos, Bloomberg, There We Go Films LLC, PVH, etc.,I am proud to be able to say that I have carved out a place for myself in the American film industry.
For me, because my work is so personal, the most rewarding aspect of being a writer/filmmaker is being recognized for my work. Just recently, my short drama screenplay, ‘The Past, Present, and Future,’ won the ‘Quarterfinalist’ award at the 9th Filmmatic Drama Screenplay Awards—an accolade that increased my screenplay’s rank on Coverfly (Hollywood’s most comprehensive database of screenplays), so that it now ranks in the Top 37% of the 142,655 screenplays that are currently on its database. This is doubly gratifying because Coverfly is also Hollywood’s largest database of screenwriting competitions, but it curates only the top screenwriting competitions to include in its database, and the Filmmatic Drama Screenplay Awards is one of these top competitions.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
I’m not exaggerating when I say that cinema has got me through a lot. I am a firm believer, therefore, in the power of cinema as an art form. And I want to pay that forward: I want to write and work on films that make people feel less alone and more understood. This is my ‘why’, my goal, that drives my creative journey forward.
Image Credits
– Headshot – Photo by Parish Mandhan
– Aayushi directing on set in NYC (1) – Photo by Bryan Wolfinger
– Aayushi directing on set in NYC (2) – Photo by Bryan Wolfinger
– Aayushi on set in NYC (1) – Photo by Karoline Kueen
– Aayushi on set in NYC (2) – Photo by Paula La Bloise