Santilla Chingaipe is a writer, filmmaker, and historian.
She is the writer, producer, and presenter of the acclaimed SBS documentary Our African Roots, which won several awards, including Best Documentary (single) at the AIDC Awards; Our African Roots marks the first-time on Australian television that an African-Australian journalist and author has interrogated the nation’s colonial history.
She has written and directed several documentary films and series for the ABC including Third Culture Kids, and more recently, the documentary short The Pizzicato Effect.
Current Work:
Santilla is currently developing her narrative feature film debut, being produced by acclaimed Australian filmmaker, Robert Connolly.
Santilla’s nonfiction book, Black Convicts: How slavery shaped colonised Australia, is forthcoming with Scribner Australia.
The recipient of several awards, she was recognised at the United Nations as one of the world's most influential people of African descent in 2019.
Santilla is the founder of Behind The Screens, an annual program supported by Film Victoria, aimed at increasing the representation of people historically excluded from the Australian film industry.
Video
Storytelling with Santilla Chingaipe
Footscray Community Arts Centre (FCAC) presents a masterclass on storytelling with Santilla Chingaipe. Join film-maker, author, and journalist Santilla Chingaipe as she explores what drew her to the craft of telling powerful stories. Santilla is renowned for her multi-faceted narratives, which she delivers through numerous forms. Facilitated by Footscray Community Arts Centre as part of Victoria Together, Santilla discusses the benefits of mastering various forms of storytelling, how she began her career, and some challenges she faced as well as the ethics behind using social platforms to spread messages. Ever critical creative and inspiring, this talk is perfect for anyone who feels they have something to say.Our African Roots - Official Trailer | Santilla Chingaipe
Santilla Chingaipe presents at Wesley College
Our Public Questions Society (PQS) hosted award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker Santilla Chingaipe, as part of Wesley’s partnership with the Melbourne Writers Festival. In the Q&A session, our students asked thoughtful questions about working in the media, interviewing some of Africa’s most prominent leaders, and the process of making documentaries.Roxane Gay with Santilla Chingaipe
Roxane Gay’s latest book, a collection of short fiction called Difficult Women. The pages of the book are populated with resilient, perverse, bold, provocative, hilarious and heroic female characters. It’s some of these very same qualities that have propelled Gay herself to feminist stardom. As a writer, and as a distinctly 21st-century voice in American feminism, Gay embraces complexity and contradiction and packs a powerful rhetorical punch whether she’s writing for Twitter, Tumblr, the New York Times, novels or comic books. The academic, essayist and novelist rose to prominence in 2015 with the book Bad Feminist - part manifesto, part memoir, part cultural critique - and today has more than 190,000 Twitter followers, tuning in to her thoughts on everything from The Bachelor to American higher education policy. Most recently, she’s been working on an upcoming memoir, Hunger, and co-authoring a Marvel comic, Black Panther: World of Wakanda, with Yona Harvey and Ta-Nehisi Coates. At the Northcote Town Hall, hear the singular Roxane Gay talk Trump, diversity on Australian TV, Beyoncé and lifestyle feminism with Santilla Chingaipe.
