Silent River Film Festival Favorite 

Cinema is a popular medium for people to escape the real world. It provides comedy, drama, and endless entertainment. But Kalpna Singh-Chitnis saw an even greater potential for film. She believed that this art form could be utilized as a means to highlight social causes, so she created the Silent River Film Festival. This film festival began in Irvine, California in 2011, solely spearheaded by Singh-Chitnis, but as the festival grew, it developed a life of its own. Since it's origin, the non-profit Silent River Film Festival has been created to organize the festival on a larger scale.

The festival's self-proclaimed mission is to "bring "East and West" together to share their best work of films and 'Cinema for Causes' on one platform to raise awareness about the issues that are important to [them], and provide [filmmakers with] active support."

This Silent River Film Festival gives artists from around the world the chance to give their movement a voice. Singh-Chitnis believes the festival is powerful because it's about finding creative solutions. "There's a sort of creative activism here," she says. In 2013, the festival featured 87 films from 17 countries, and has grown to be the largest film festival in Irvine, California.