Ram Subramanian

I am a writer, innovator, ad filmmaker and an art-ivist from India whostarted the Velfie(Video-Selfie) movement online and the#ProfileForPeace Campaign that showed how effective armchairactivism can be.

I started my career as a copywriter in Bangalore in 2000. Moved to Mumbai in 2001 and continued working as an advertisingprofessional in some of the biggest agencies in the country.In 2008 I quit my advertising job and starteddirecting commercials for Nirvana Films, a production house basedin Bengaluru. While at Nirvana Films I directedcommercials for Levis’, ING Vysya Bank, Economic Times, TataMotors, Thomas Cook, Nokia, etc.

In 2012 I left the company and joined Native Films as a partner but that partnership was short-lived.

In 2013 I started my own production house called Handloom Picture Company, which has offices in Mumbai and Delhi.

Enraged by the Nirbhaya case i wrote and directed a short film called ‘Mute’ in early 2014, before the Loksabha Elections, toinspire people to go out and vote in the elections.The video went viral and got appreciation from across quarters ofthe world.Few months later, I followed it up with another short film, asequel to my earlier endeavor, called ‘Unmute’. This film was amessage to the newly sworn in Prime Minister of India Mr.Narendra Modi.‘Unmute’ went viral too and more than a million people viewed it.

My style of work is Artivism, i.e. blending Art and Activism. In 2014, I was invited to speak at TEDx Gateway inMumbai and my talk, titled "Three commercials that led to arevolution" was about Armchair Activism and how that can make achange in our world today. I used the TEDx Gateway platform tolaunch my second sequel in the ‘Mute’ series called ‘Pause’.The film ‘Pause’ had a message of peace and friendship and itresulted in the concept of Velfies (Video selfies), which becamethe fuel for DearNeighbour Movement page on Facebook. Thepage is about friendship between India and Pakistan and it hasover 40000 people on it, from both India and Pakistan, asking forpeace.

#ProfileForPeace is a campaign that was startedon October 22, 2015 in response to a ban by a localpolitical party on artists from neighbouring country Pakistan to stopthem from performing in India.

The idea went viral and in a matter of days more than 300,0000 people from both India and Pakistan changed their profile picturesto promote the campaign.