Our Mission
Our mission at Rickshaw Film Foundation is to amplify South Asian voices and stories within the film industry and popular culture through community engagement, mentorship, and grant opportunities — inspiring a new generation of filmmakers in America and highlighting the values, traditions, and lifestyles of a rich cultural perspective.
It’s time for change. It’s time for our community.
It’s time for South Asian art.
The Opportunity
South Asians are the third largest immigrant population in America. Despite this fact, South Asian representation in the American film industry has been far from equitable. Only three male South Asian actors have been nominated for Academy Awards since the Academy was founded in 1930, and a South Asian woman has never even been nominated.
In the last few years, we’ve seen many South Asian creatives jump into the forefront of popular culture. The projects created by Mindy Kaling, Hasan Minhaj, Aziz Ansari, and many more have achieved tremendous amounts of critical and commercial success, while providing visibility for South Asians in America. These stories mean so much to our community; they help us connect with our families, our culture, and our identity as South Asians in America, and people can’t seem to get enough of them.
So why aren’t more of these stories being told? It has to do with a fundamental lack of support for South Asian filmmakers and artists on a financial, societal, and community level. We are on the cusp of great social change here in America, and it is crucial that we advocate for and invest in art that reflects that change. We must cultivate this opportunity to inspire, engage, and motivate the next generation of South Asian artists and stories here in America.
Our Solution
Rickshaw Film Foundation will be the entry point for South Asian Americans in the film industry and provide guidance and financial support to minority filmmakers across the nation. We believe that by connecting South Asian American artists with patrons, collaborators, and the resources to tell their stories, we can provide a rich cumulative cultural experience to share with the world.
Our first step at Rickshaw Film Foundation is launching The Writer’s Room, one of many planned incubator programs to foster and grow the talent in our community. The program is designed to take projects from ideas to ready-to-shoot scripts. As we continue to grow, we will develop grant programs to cultivate short and feature scripts into competitive, provocative, and polished films. These films will be submitted to global film festivals and distribution channels to further their impact.
Through social change and cultural growth, we hope to create a more diverse, inclusive world in which all people can feel proud of their roots and find inspiration from within - kickstarting a national and global movement and enabling all artists to tell their stories.
Get Involved
We are currently in the first phase of our growth as an organization - focused on building the community and facilitating connections between likeminded individuals. Our main goals at this stage are to engage, educate, and inspire the community. While the Writer’s Room provides the main outlet for these goals, there are other ways to get involved as well.
If you are interested in supporting the Rickshaw Film Foundation, you can sign up for our newsletter, share the Writer’s Room application with writers in your network, and show us some love on social media.