At Retold World, we collaborate closely with individuals, organisations, and funders to enhance our impact. Our films are crafted by a diverse global team of creatives, and our longstanding partnerships with the organisations and funders listed below reflect our commitment to quality and collaboration.
OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS
May 2019 to date
Retold World and Kannan Arunasalam has worked with OSF on diverse media projects and their dissemination since 2019. The Open Society Foundations (OSF) supports civil society groups around the world with the stated aim of advancing justice, democratic governance and human rights, and to support those who push back in the face of authoritarianism. They contributed funding.
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
September 2016 to date
Retold World’s Kannan Arunasalam has collaborated with Cornell University since September 2016, engaging post-graduate students on location in the film making process in Cuba and Trinidad & Tobago. The connection arose when Arunasalam taught Cornell’s Asia Department on a media and conflict course for post graduate students. His work with architecture professor Tao DuFour on several documentaries including most recently their feature documentary, a collaborative documentary film project with post-colonial scholar Natalie Melas titled “Possible Landscapes,” a two-year research project investigating environmental experience in the Caribbean with a focus on Trinidad & Tobago. Possible Landscapes, is now in post/production.
AL JAZEERA WITNESS
January 2013 - May 2022
Retold World has worked with Al Jazeera English’s flagship human interest strand Witness on two documentaries, News from Jaffna and Sri Lanka’s Rebel Wife. Kannan Arunasalam trained with the Witness team
in Asia, under its current Executive Director of Documentaries, Fiona Lawson-Baker, selected from filmmakers across Asia in Busan, South Korea in 2013.
SHADOW COURT FILMS
October 2023 to date
We have collaborated with Shadow Court Films on our new feature documentary, Republic of Amnesia. Shadow Court Film is a production company focussed on making high-risk, high-impact film, TV, and video content around the world. With over 50 years of combined experience working across North America, Europe, Africa and Asia, Shadow Court has developed significant capabilities to produce groundbreaking work in adverse conditions. Their projects have won awards at multiple festivals around the world and are on the front lines of fighting for people's rights around the globe.
SRI LANKA CAMPAIGN
May 2022 to date
The Sri Lanka Campaign (SLC) is a global, non-partisan movement that campaigns for human rights, war crimes prosecutions and a credible process of transitional justice and reconciliation in Sri Lanka. They are supporting the international dissemination of the documentary.
THE INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR ETHNIC STUDIES
December 2024 to date
Sri Lanka-based International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES) informs policy and practice through research, dialogue, the creative arts and other interventions, to foster conditions for an inclusive, just and peaceful society. They contributed funding and helped organise the feedback screenings.
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL ASIA
Retold World worked with Amnesty International on a project to disseminate The Tent, a dual projection installation film about Tamil mothers of the disappeared in the north of Sri Lanka. The film was optionally the focus of Arunasalam’s British two solo exhibitions, at The Tetley and Beighton Centre for Contemporary Art in from February to May 2019.
STATELESS MEDIA
April 2013 – July 2019
From 2013 to 2019, Kannan Arunasalam was a director at Stateless Media, a US based start-up. Together with award winning journalist Peter Savodnik, and Oscar nominated filmmaker Ed Perkins — the core three involved in Stateless Media, they revolutionised the online documentary form with their “shortreal”, a 10-minute film format that blends the depth of print journalism with the cinematic prowess and power of documentary filmmaking. Their concept changed the media landscape forever for platforms like The Guardian and The New Yorker, as reported in American Journalism Review, ‘Pushing the Boundaries of Storytelling Through the Shortreal’ and TechCrunch “Post-Print" Startup Stateless Media Creates Short, Smart Documentaries For The Web’. Our diverse films have had substantial impact, included ‘If I Die on Mars’ (probably still the most watched film on The Guardian), ‘The Brothers Shaikh’ (2013) (for The New Yorker and The Guardian and which helped lead to the trial and later incarceration of murderers who enjoyed impunity in Sri Lanka); ‘The People's Prophet’ (2015) (for Guardian Documentaries); ‘Thep’ (2015) (for Upworthy, garnering half a million views in under an hour), ‘Citizen Mars’ (2015) (documentary series commissioned by Engadget); ‘Trust Disrupted: Bitcoin and the Blockchain’ (2016) (documentary series commissioned by TechCrunch).
