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Mathivanan Rajendran

@mathivananr

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📍Berlin / Goa
🪴Producer
Building Media Accelerators @storicultureworld @root.ax
Innovation @museumofimaginedfutures
Impact @earth.bound.life

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Could there be a Culture stack like how UPI created open rails for payments?

India has a million cultural worlds, but capital seems to still flow through narrow, top-down routes.

Over the last few years, working with Europe I’ve been really inspired by Creative Europe and the various Arts Councils on how the public funding systems can can support diverse creators and allow crazy experimentation with stories that (seem to) defy market logic.

Where is the innovation in finance for cultural projects?
Where are the recoverable grants, match-funding models, community funding structures, CSR-backed cultural funds and revenue-share experiments for culture?

There is always tension (righfully) at both ends.
Capital often feels like Creators don't respect capital structures and Creators feel like they are being talked down to by Capital.

Capital wants projects to scale. Creators want ideas to scale (My favorite insight!) One side speaks ROI. The other speaks long-term cultural value.

This was at the heart of our 'Last Call for Tomorrowl salon for @earth.bound.life with @anilarjun.k @tarana_nana and Eisha Hussain and a passionate group who tried to bridge the two worlds.

While we disagreed and agreed on various topics we agreed on one thing,
India’s culture economy won’t grow through current winner takes all models.
We need a decentralised and equitable and importantly an imaginative structure that can see culture not just as content or IP. taken in Darry’s House Mumbai by @mathivananr

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3 months ago

Inviting game makers creating games and playful experiences that help us imagine the future of cities to showcase at PLAYABLE PANJIM.

Three thoughts we’ve been having:

1. Impact games need to meet their audiences.
There are so many games that help us think through ecology and society - but they rarely get to meet enough of the people or places they’re actually about.

2. Research needs ways to be experienced.
There’s so much important research helping us understand the challenges and possibilities ahead - from climate and ecology to how our cities might change. But research can’t just sit in reports. It needs formats that invite people to engage with it.

3. Cities need games.
Ways to explore their futures that are participatory, tangible and playful.

So we’re bringing all three together.

@earth.bound.life and @museumofimaginedfutures, in partnership with @transitions_research, are curating PLAYABLE PANJIM - an arcade of games contextualised through city-based research, helping us imagine Panjim’s future.

Game makers, apply! I can’t wait to see what you’ve made.

Email: taranareddy@storiculture.co by @mathivananr

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6 days ago

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a month ago

On Chennai’s streets, two women drivers turn everyday struggles for space and dignity into a larger fight for equality. ‘Auto Queens’ follows Mohana and Leela Rani as their contrasting spirits and unwavering bond help spark a growing movement of women drivers.

#idsffk #idsffk2026 #18idsffk #chalachitraacademy #csd taken in Trivandrum, India by @mathivananr

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a month ago

Join us for a special screening of Auto Queens in Chennai, followed by a conversation with one of the protagonists Mohana @dhill_autoqueen_mohana and producer @mathivananr!

📍 The Lab @ Shanta, T Nagar
August 28, 2026 | 7:00 PM
🎟️ Free entry - RSVP required (Harish: 09940620268)

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Our fundraiser is now LIVE to help us:
•⁠ ⁠Screen Auto Queens in more communities
•⁠ ⁠Professionally train more women to become rickshaw drivers and claim the streets

We’d love your support in taking this journey further, link in bio 🛺 taken in Chennai by @mathivananr

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a month ago

What if it’s not culture that needs to become more “commercial,” but capital that needs to become more cultural?

A critical and unlikely subversion of the status quo emerged when we brought finance leaders, artists, researchers, lawyers, and cultural practitioners under the same roof. Who would have thought coffee and snacks would have such a radical impact on people! Kidding.

Here are critical provocations that emerged from our salon in Mumbai on the future of culture economy in India:

1. What if capital measured its contribution to culture instead of asking culture to constantly justify its economic value?

2. What if the missing piece to unlocking cultural growth isn’t scale, but locally rooted, community-led models?

3. And what if culture and capital aren’t unwilling collaborators – but simply lack the infrastructure to work together? A culture stack – the right data, legal structures, distribution channels, and discovery platforms.

Written and designed by - @hussain_eisha
Edited by - @tarana_nana

Can the same metrics used for capital measure value creation in culture? by @mathivananr

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a month ago

This friday, 28 Aug, catch Auto Queens, a documentary about work, friendship, courage and claiming space!

Entry Free. RSVP must.

#autodrivers #womensupportingwomen #VeeraPengal taken in The Shanta Ayurveda Hospital by @mathivananr

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a month ago

Industry Days was built around a simple idea: that some of the industry’s most important questions are better explored together.

Across two days, the conversations moved between projects, people, markets and possibilities - bringing producers and industry voices into the same room to ask where we are, what needs to change, and what we can build together for what comes next.

What began with 14 projects from Co.Pro Access grew into a wider exchange across 10 working roundtables, 11 countries and a community of 100+ producers.

Not a one-off event, but the beginning of a larger conversation, and, hopefully, a few collaborations that continue well beyond the room.

A look back at Industry Days 2026.

📷: @portraitsbyharnish
Set design: @apoorvanna

@ifiofficiel @tasveerorg @eave_producers @producersguildofindia @southasianfederation @ktmdoclab @docproducingsouth @docresi @greenstoriespitch @canadainindia

@tarana_nana @mathivananr @zena.sagar @nikireddy17 @sarabhimaybe @aryamanwiz @satyadeep.singh_ by @mathivananr

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a month ago

Hosted by @krishnafilmmaker who is a filmmaker and @butterbeer20 who is a doctor. Could they be more multitalented??

Besides the fantastic meal, we also had a very relaxing, focused, mindful evening. 10/10 recommend as a friendship / romantic date activity if you’re bored of doing the same old overpriced under-vibed bars and restaurants in Chennai.

Comment below with 🤤 if you think they should do it again and open up invites and with “MENU” if you want the recipes in your DMs 😉 (The savoury cake was my FAVOURITE)

#supperclub #supperclubindia #supperclubsaturdays # taken in Chennai,Tamilnadu by @mathivananr

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2 months ago

In a city full of autos, a woman behind the wheel still makes people look twice.

For the 300+ women of the Veera Pengal Munnetra Sangam (VPMS) @veera_pengal_munnetra_sangam , driving an auto is more than a livelihood. It is a way of being visible, navigating the city on their own terms, and challenging the idea of who gets to occupy public space.

Auto Queens grew from an ongoing relationship with these women, and from the friendships, humour, disagreements and solidarity we encountered along the way. At its heart are Mohana and Leela Rani, whose relationship reminds us that collective struggle is also held together by something deeply human: the ability to stand beside one another.

Auto Queens is a film about women moving through a city, and quietly reshaping it as they go. 🚕✨

#AutoQueens #ChennaiEvents #Women #solidarity taken in The Shanta Ayurveda Hospital by @mathivananr

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2 months ago

Been enjoying making little films from footage of my daily life.

Last weekend, we visited our friends in their cute little cabin outside Berlin and had a magical evening. Reminded us of life’s simple pleasures: nature, animals, a shared meal and great company.

Some days, that’s all you need. This was one of those days. I’ll keep this feeling with me in my pocket for the others.

What are your simple pleasures?

✨✨✨

PS: Sound on 🔉
Song is “Land” by @ganavya who I am an absolutely rabid fan of currently. Used only for personal artistic purposes.

Shot on iPhone 17, edited and even colour graded on the Edits app - consider me impressed. Go out there and shoot your lil films! by @mathivananr

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3 months ago

Calling 5 Indian and international companies building across the media value chain to join our Innovation Platform at ProducerLAND Industry Days 2026.

Step into a curated room of 50 producers and industry stakeholders from 11 countries, and gain access to the wider ProducerLAND alumni network (100+ producers, curated over 10 editions and 5 years).

We’re inviting companies in AI, finance, production tech, media infrastructure, rights & IP, distribution, audience intelligence, gaming, XR and the creator economy — building locally or internationally — who want to engage with one of the world’s largest and most curious film industries.

📍 IFBE, Mumbai
🗓 Aug 6–7

5 spots for the first cohort. Flexible participation options.
Apply: mathivanan@storiculture.co / poojanadar@storiculture.co by @mathivananr

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3 months ago