Who is?
Swati Srivastava
Writer / Director / Voiceover Artist
Former Woman in STEM now a Woman in FILM. NY. LA. India.
With more than a decade of visual storytelling experience directing, filming, editing, and producing video content for a variety of industries, Swati’s work has been shown on national TV in the US and in India, at film festivals across the world, and won many awards including the “Most Important Video of the Year” award from CNN-India. She s also a Certified Facilitator in Civil Discourse and Political Dialogue, having developed the skills necessary to facilitate dialogue & understanding across deep political rifts, and become an agent in mending a divided nation, one conversation at a time.
Through meandering lanes of Delhi to the streets of New York / Los Angeles, Swati has traveled quite a distance. The topper in her bachelors program at Delhi University and the All India Gold Medalist in her Post Graduate Management program, she spent more than a decade working in the corporate world as a Software Engineer where she learned to be tech-savvy and business oriented. To pursue her dreams of becoming a filmmaker, Swati enrolled part-time at UCLA Extension and studied nights & weekends while maintaining her full time job and waiting for her Green Card. She completed two Certificate Programs at UCLA; Film Studies and Specialization in Cinematography, both with Distinctions. She also trained extensively with the ertswhile Judith Weston (Directing Actors, Filmmakers’ intuition) to work with actors.
Swati has written & directed several short films, short docs, music videos, and political commercials, which have won many national and international awards. A sample of Swati’s Directing Work (Fiction) can be seen on this website. As a Director, Swati is much loved by both her actors (“has a way to talk with actors..!” ) and her producers & crew (“one of those rare directors who are BOTH an actor’s director as well as in the technical realm”). Swati also works as Behind The Scenes/ 2nd unit director.
An immigrant to the US, Swati is engaged with the social and political issues of our times. Several of her political commercials have been broadcast on National TV, and her essays & articles have appeared in various online publications. An American patriot at heart, Swati is increasingly involved in the bridging movement that is attempting to depolarize our country.
To document the epidemic of suicides by Indian farmers, Swati traveled to India where she interviewed and documented farm-widows and struggling farmers. While in India, she covertly filmed a Government run autopsy center. The horrific video was broadcast by CNN-IBN (CNN-India) on its prime time TV show called ‘Citizen Journalist’, watched by millions of viewers & won CNN’s Most Important Video of the Year award. For another doc, she chose to highlight an issue that has affected her life personally; the issues legal immigrants face in getting their Green Cards. To bring light to this issue, Swati traveled to Washington D.C where she interviewed fellow immigrants and documented their stories. She also interviewed members of congress and key policy makers.
Swati has written several screenplays, and is currently in development on two features, one an emotional drama called “Both Sides Now” based on true events that deals with grief & the restorative power of human connection. The other is a light-hearted romantic dramedy “An Indian Wedding” with Indian characters living in America pursuing their own immigrant dreams!
Swati & her partner Mark Bartosik live between Los Angeles and Long Island; where they have a Net Zero Energy home, which has been filmed by various Radio & TV stations including NBC. Together, the couple tries to live as eco-consciously as possible. Swati is the Treasurer and Board Member of her local Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, which she helped turned around from potentially shutting its doors to a vibrant & welcoming community that welcomes people of all faith, belief systems and importantly all political affiliations. Swati connect people through her writing; personal essays and short stories that she crafts and shares at various Open Mics across Long Island; increasingly her stories are around the theme of depolarization and love for our country. She hopes to publish her sci-fi short story called “The Ninth Planet” soon. Swati is an avid cook and friends love her culturally themed salons with their international cuisine. She is an avid reader and currently enjoying the excellent book “The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World“ by William Dalrymple. She is fond of knitting and is currently learning Spanish on Duolingo. Swati and Mark are parents of foster-children, international exchange students and two adorable cats.
Last but certainly not the least, Swati loves the adrenaline rush of adventure activities; whether it is “sky-walking” on a Burma-bridge or stunt-driving, Swati is open to all of life’s exhilarating experiences…!
Swati is a member of New York Women in Film & TV (NYWIFT), Independent Film Project (IFP), Women in Motion Picture Salon (WIMPS), Women of Color Unite (WOCU) and Cinefemme.
See Swati’s IMDB Credits.
Mark Bartosik
Creative Producer / Software Geek / Builder of Things
An English man in New York (now occasionally in Los Angeles!), Mark spent his childhood in the heart of England. Son of a Polish dad and a British mom, Mark understood from a very young age what it means to be an immigrant – its rewards and challenges.
Mark started his career as an engineer working for nuclear submarines in the UK, and has spent the last two decades working in Fin-Tech, leading projects that transact hundreds of billions of dollars per day. A spot on geek, Mark revels in building things. As a teenager he first received national recognition as a Young Inventor. As a young professional, his team won first prize in the British Computer Society National Programming Competition. He went to to publish articles in international journals that have received citations and been reviewed by some of the most famous people in his field.
Mark’s hands-on attitude translates exceptionally well in the world of film, where Mark is not only able to strategize, but get down to the nuts and bolts of production. He thinks on his feet and comes up with practical solutions that he is often able to implement himself. He is much loved & admired by his crew on-set, as instead of the usual “ivory tower” producer, he is seen as someone who is able to get down into the nitty-gritty details to get the job done! His niftiness has time and again saved productions thousands of dollars.
One of his most recent, most fun projects has been to convert their 1960s home in Long Island, into a Net Zero Energy home. Mark has spent innumerable hours to make this transition, learning a lot about “building science”. The house has 4 solar systems. The first system that he installed was a building integrated system of roof tiles rather than the regular solar panels. At the time of installation, it was the first full roof residential retrofit of solar tiles on the east coast of the USA (and the largest residential retrofit of solar PV tiles in the USA). The house also has geothermal heating, super-insulated quadruple pane windows, beefed up insulation, cork-floors, network monitor system, sustainable made-in-USA furniture, yada..yada..yada. You will need to talk to Mark to get the whole list of features but beware, he will talk your ear off!
To learn more about Mark and his myriad projects, visit Mark’s Web Site.
