Kaytie Nielsen

Kaytie Nielsen, a filmmaker and theatre artist, will be based in New Delhi working with Jamun, self-described as “a collective of co-conspirators, an ensemble of visual storytellers who strive to create brilliant images of concepts and ideas.” Dedicated to digital filmmaking, the team at Jamun focuses on collaborative creative processes and is driven by interdisciplinary border-crossing. The collective embraces and explores new technology and tools of creation, while seeking to preserve “the romance of filmmaking.”

Kaytie developed a passion for storytelling at an early age, growing up at her family’s theatrical costume shop near Fort Worth, Texas. She aspires to a career in film and theater that creates space for others to tell their stories and advance positive social change. In May 2016, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Carnegie Mellon University with a Bachelor of Humanities and Arts degree, with concentrations in Creative Writing and Directing and a minor in French and Francophone Studies. In 2013, aided by a Humanities Scholars Summer Fellowship, she wrote, directed, and produced a musical on feminism and civil rights in the 1960s, proceeds from which benefited Traffick911, an anti-human trafficking organization. That same year, she undertook dramaturgical research on the 20th century Irish conflict in Belfast, Northern Ireland that laid the groundwork for a musical she later produced through Carnegie Mellon’s Playground Festival. In 2014, she completed a documentary on the history of Senegalese theatrical performance and served as a Media Intern for the Council on International Educational Exchange in Dakar, Senegal. As Director of Video Production for The Unexpected Laboratory, a young multidisciplinary artistic company, she led a film team to Tamil Nadu, India in 2015 to create videos for Visions Global Empowerment focused on uplifting disenfranchised communities. Kaytie has been a filmmaker for the CREATE Lab of Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute, and directed a documentary on the dangers of transporting crude oil by rail. Her senior honors thesis was a documentary film on Afro-French female identity.