An Urban Peacock's Cultural Discovery:

An evening of Films, Art & Poetry with Filmmaker Kavita Bali

Filmmaker and artist Kavita Bali

(Photo by: Christian Knoblauch)

LINCOLN, Nebraska - University of Nebraska at Lincoln in association with The Artist Diversity Residency Program presents a public event for the whole family: 'An Urban Peacock’s Cultural Discovery' An Evening of Films, Art and Poetry with Filmmaker Kavita Bali. '

Thursday, November 14, 2002, 7:00pm at the University of Nebraska @ Lincoln, Richards Art Building, Room 15. Films to be screened: To Serve One's Country, Birth of a Butterfly, Distant Souls, Namaste Papaji.

Kavita, a graduate of the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design and an Indian-American pioneer in the field of UI Design, will be the Artist in Residence from November 11 - 19th at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln visiting from Palo Alto, CA. During this time she will be conducting a series of thought-provoking workshops shedding light on her cultural and creative journey while growing up as an artist, designer and filmmaker in the United States. In the early 1980's while most of her peers were pursuing traditional careers in medicine and engineering, Kavita was traversing the worlds of 3-dimensional design, photo-iconography, color and semiotic imagery.

India West Magazine has referred to Kavita as "the kind of artist whose passion for artistic integrity and the creative process is unbounded and infectious".

Roger Lee of the Chinatown Community Arts Program in San Francisco states "Kavita Bali captures the world with a definitive eye, stopping the flow of time and space through her lenses. She shares with us some transcendental moments, where the feminine body locates itself against a world that parades at times against a canvass of demands, and in other times, strolls in the lazy glow of memory."

Kavita's films recently have been screened at Seattle's North West Asian American Film Festival; The Girls on Film Series: 'Women on the Verge: Articulating Identity'; the World Affairs Council's 'Women of the World: Different Path's to Freedom' screenings in San Francisco; University of California at Berkeley's '17th Annual Empowering Women of Color Conference 2002' where she also lead a workshop titled 'An Urban Peacock's Quiet Defiance: Creating Images of Modern Women who Positively Define their own Cultural Heritage' to a packed, multi-cultural audience; Mills College, SOMARTS Art Gallery, WORKS/San Jose Art Gallery, and at the Red Devil Lounge in San Francisco as part of the 'Viv and a Movie' film series.

Kavita's shorts 'Birth of a Butterfly' and 'Distant Souls' will also be showcased on Sunday, November 24th at 2:30pm as part of the Dallas South Asian Film Festival highlighting works by some of today's promising south asian filmmakers.

Born in India, Kavita arrived in the US in the early 1970’s. Raised in the lush greenery of upstate New York, Kavita grew up eating farm fresh apple turnovers and hot cider. Growing up in an environment with few other Indians, she always saw herself as just another kid, where friendships were based on common interests. Raised with the conviction that she could be anything she wanted to be and a passion to seek her own personal truths in life, Kavita has pursued a career in design, art and film. Her films seek out a balance in understanding between her immediate environment with a desire to discover her elusive cultural heritage.

She is the founder of Urban Peacock, a global community of conceptual adventurers who believe creativity and art can unify people of all cultures. Currently she is working on developing a virtual united nations utilizing the Internet and her skills in developing large scaled navigational information structures, while simultaneously writing her first feature film and providing design expertise to Silicon Valley’s high tech community.

Her philosophy is simple: She believes no matter where you come from, there are universal truths and a core humanity that binds us together, and the more we learn about each other, the more we ultimately understand ourselves. Kavita states, "Strength comes in many shades, each of us has a unique voice, let's share our worlds with others to bring forth greater understanding between each other. Our humanity is universal ".

To learn more about Kavita and her art, please visit: (http://www.urbanpeacock.com)