We sat down with director James Ivory to talk about growing up on the west coast, arts, films, Ismail Merchant, Ruth Prawar Jhabvala, Satyajit Ray and India. Ivory also shares some of his favorite films from his childhood days. Ivory was born in Berkeley, grew up Oregon and every year they visited San Francisco Bay… Continue Reading
Meet Nancy Zayed, Founder and CTO of MagicCube Inc, a Silicon Valley-based mobile digital security startup. Working in a startup demands a lot or time and attention and cuts into your personal life. Zayed grew up with working parents. Her father was a medical doctor and her mother was a pharmacist. What did she learn… Continue Reading
Meet Shireen Santosham, Chief Innovation Officer in Mayor Sam Liccardo’s office of San Jose. We sat down to speak with her about her role as a Chief Innovation Officer about building a smart city. How do you harness technology to improve the lives of denizens of this Silicon Valley city? How do you improve digital infrastructure… Continue Reading
We caught up with director James Ivory at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival, where his film Maurice was screened. This is a highlight of a longer upcoming interview. In this clip Ivory shares how his interest in India developed and the first documentary he made on India called The Sword and the Flute. It… Continue Reading
Amy Guittard is a fifth generation member of the family and the first woman to work in Guittard Chocolate Co of San Francisco. This is a 150 year chocolate company that runs 24/7 and produces over 200 chocolate products.
This was my first trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium that is about 90 minutes away from Silicon Valley. While I have visited Monterey and Carmel many times, I never did manage to visit the famous aquarium. Monterey Bay Aquarium demands your total attention from the moment you step in. There is so much to see… Continue Reading
Filmmakers Amit Madheshiya and Shirley Abraham’s award-winning documentary The Cinema Travellers shows you a different side of India’s love for films. The duo takes you on a magical ride around the small villages and towns outside of Mumbai (Bombay), India’ entertainment capital, which is home to Bollywood film industry. What we get to see in… Continue Reading
Meet Robert Byrne, President, Board of Directors of San Francisco Silent Film Festival, film restorer and engineer. We sat dow to talk about how he developed his passion for silent films, the legacy of silent films and his work in restoring silent films. We also find out why Byrne switched his major from film and theatre… Continue Reading
Meet Suzanne Frey, Director, Trust, Security, Privacy, Google Apps at Google. Frey has a liberal arts degree from Wellesley College and ended up working in the technology sector. After working for a few years, Frey decided to get an MBA from MIT and was on her way to becoming an entrepreneur when she got an offer from… Continue Reading
We sat down to speak with Dr. Rajni Agarwal-Hashmi about her work in stem cell transplant for children and how they go from the bench to the bedside in treating their patients. She is Associate Prof & Medical Director, Pediatric Cell Transplant Program, Stanford Children’s Health. Dr. Agarwal-Hashmi’s developed an interest in stem cell or cord… Continue Reading
We sat down to speak with Dr. Aaron Lington and Chris Motter on jazz and jazz improvisation. Dr. Lington shares how technology has changed the way people play and learn to play jazz. There is a lot students can do with technology today he shares. Mother shares how he uses technology to transcribe the music on his… Continue Reading
We caught up with filmmaker James Gray to talk about his new film The Lost City of Z. Gray was in San Francisco to attend the 60th San Francisco International Film Festival. We spoke to Gray about why Brad Pitt sent him the novel and how he got attached to the project and what did… Continue Reading
We sit down to talk to Nicole Lazzaro,CEO of XEO Design about the fun and emotion of games and why we play them. This is part of our Women in Science and Tech series. Lazzaro talks about her fascination with designing and creating games and about Virtual Reality (VR). Lazzaro has been designing games for… Continue Reading
Jazz musician and composer Billie Holiday would have been 102 years old today. She was born on April 7, 1915 in Philadelphia and died rather young on July 17, 1959. Holiday was a gifted singer, whose voice captured deep and complex emotions in an effortless manner. You simply can’t be indifferent to Holiday’s music, especially her… Continue Reading
Noah Cowan of SFFILM shares what is in store for the 60th San Francisco International Film Festival, the oldest film festival in the US. The festival runs from April 5th to April 19th 2017 in San Francisco and Berkeley. This year’s festival features over 180 films. And, for the first time the festival will honor… Continue Reading
Director Niki Caro talks about her new film The Zookeeper’s Wife, Jessica Chastain and Andrij Parekh, who is the director of photography for the film. The Zookeeper’s Wife is set in Warsaw, Poland during WW-II. The film is based on a true story on how the husband and wife team of Antonina Zabinski (Jessica Chastain) and Dr.… Continue Reading
We caught up with filmmaker Ritesh Batra in San Francisco to talk about the making of his film The Sense of An Ending (2017), his next film project with Robert Redford & Jane Fonda and his favorite Bollywood films. Batra shares what it was like to adapt the British novel to a film and work with an… Continue Reading
Shalini Govil-Pai is an engineer and author of two books on computer graphics. She fell in love with computer graphics as a teenager. Unsurprisingly she went on to get her under-graduate and graduate degrees in computer engineering. And with persistence and single-minded focus she got a job at Pixar Animation. As technical director at Pixar she… Continue Reading
Meet Danielle Applestone of Other Machine Company that makes desktop milling machine. Applestone talks about how growing up in Arkansas and discovering her love for math and science and how she decided to study engineering. She went to MIT to study chemical engineering and discovered that what she really wanted to study was material science. She… Continue Reading
Highlights of our upcoming interview with filmmaker Ritesh Batra on his new film The Sense of An Ending. The film is based on Julian Payne’s novel by the same name. This coming-of-age film is about a older man, who is semi-retired. Set in England, the film stars Jim Broadbent, Charlotte Rampling, Harriet Walter and Michelle Dockery (Downtown Abbey). Batra… Continue Reading
Nicole Lazzaro is CEO of XEO Design, a San Francisco Bay area company. She has over 20 years experience designing and developing games for various platforms. Here are highlights from an upcoming interview from our Women in Science and Tech series where she talks about the joy of wonder and developing games for virtual reality. What… Continue Reading
So, there I was at a screening of Kong: Skull Island at a IMAX theatre with my 3D glasses jammed over my regular glasses. Get ready for some fantastic action whispered my better half. I could sense the excitement in the theatre and it looked like folks were really looking forward to watching this picture.… Continue Reading
Filmmkaer Mark Pellington talks about this new The Last Word that stars Shirley MacLaine, Amanda Seyfried, AnnJewel Lee Dixon, Thomas Sadoski & Philip Baker Hall. This is a coming-of age film of a octogenerian played by MacLaine. We sat down to speak with Pellington about the making of The Last Word, working with MacLaine & Amanda Seyfried and The… Continue Reading
San Francisco’s Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) Film Festival is back this year with an interesting theme – Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow. The festival spotlights and celebrates Asian American films, music and food from March 9-19, 2017 in San Francisco and Oakland. Filmmaker Lena Khan’s debut feature The Tiger Hunter is the opening night film… Continue Reading
Silicon Valley’s annual film festival Cinequest is back this year with a strong focus on Virtual Reality (VR). Rebranded as Cinequest Film & VR Festival the festival has expanded beyond its traditional downtown San Jose area. This year film screenings will be held in various parts of San Jose and in a new location in… Continue Reading
Academy award winners Damien Chazelle and Justin Hurwitz talk about La La Land, a film that pays homage to Hollywood musicals and French filmmaker Jacques Demy. Chazelle and Hurwitz were room mates at Harvard Univeristy and they moved to Los Angeles to pursue their dream of making films. While at Harvard they worked together on… Continue Reading
This year’s San Francisco’s Mostly British Film Festival (Feb 16-23) has a rare treat in store for film buffs. On Tuesday, Feb 21st you catch the legendary film editor Anne Coates in conversation with film historian David Thomson at the Vogue Theatre in San Francisco. This will be followed by the screening of A Murder… Continue Reading
Director Ritesh Batra of The Lunchbox fame is back with a new film The Sense of an Ending. The film is based on Julian Barnes’s novel by the same name that won the Man Booker prize in 2011. The compact novel as the New York Times Book Review put it is ” a mystery of memory and… Continue Reading
For the past 2 years we have produced a special TV series on Women in Science & Tech. Our sense was that this series would resonate with our audience in the San Francisco Bay area. Happily we got very encouraging feedback from viewers and programming folks from various TV stations. And then we expanded our footprint… Continue Reading
I sit down to talk with John Turner director of Korla, a documentary that takes you on a fascinating journey on Korla Pandit’s music and life. Pandit was a talented musician, who was the person to perform live on American TV. Pandit performed on KTLA in Los Angeles in 1949. He was eventually replaced by… Continue Reading
The Kamla Show 