Krishnan Vasudevan is an assistant professor in visual communication at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. He uses research and filmmaking to interrogate how capitalism shapes peoples’ lives through labor practices, consumer design and digital media. He also examines how members of marginalized social groups, such as taxi drivers, resist exploitation through the creation of alternative media, technologies and democratic organizations such as worker cooperatives.

Krishnan received his MA in News and Documentary from New York University and worked as a multimedia journalist for the New York Times and Slate. He received a 2015 Austin Film Society grant for the forthcoming transmedia project called “East of 35” (originally titled “Our Voices Matter”), that examines the work of Black Austin based artists to create space through their art for community celebration, healing and mourning.

ABOUT THE FILM:  One Driver, One Mic

The feature-length documentary chronicles how a group of immigrant taxi drivers in Austin, Texas started their own democratically owned cooperative to take on Uber, Lyft and the city’s existing taxi franchises. The film draws on over 100 hours of cinema vérité footage, archival footage, and interviews with taxi cooperative members, their advocates, and city council members.