Elivia Shaw

Elivia Shaw

Elivia Shaw is the Frank Sinatra Assistant Professor of Communication and an award-winning filmmaker interested in what becomes visible when we look closely. Her work pairs intimate visual and sonic worlds with unconventional image-making to explore questions of care, environment, labor, and power through character-driven storytelling. Whether in medical clinics, agricultural landscapes, institutional spaces, or at home, her films ask us to examine our responsibility to one another and imagine new futures.

Elivia is currently directing The Invisible Valley, a feature documentary set in California’s Central Valley, with support from ITVS, SFFILM, the Redford Center, and the Berkeley Film Foundation. Incorporating infrared, microscopy, and other experimental imaging techniques to make visible the often unseen forces of environmental change, pollution, and illness, the film follows the intertwining lives of physicians, patients, farmworkers, community leaders, and first responders in one of the country’s most agriculturally productive and environmentally burdened regions.

Her short documentaries The Clinic, The Shift, Legacy Video, and Breathing Room have been distributed by The Atlantic and PBS and have screened at festivals including AFI FEST, AFI DOCS, DOC NYC, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, and the San Francisco International Film Festival, receiving numerous awards and honors.

In addition to her directing work, Elivia has edited and produced award-winning nonfiction films for theatrical, broadcast, and digital audiences. She is the editor of Paloma Martinez’s Ricky Leaves, commissioned by Latino Public Broadcasting, and co-edited and co-produced Leslie Tai’s How to Have an American Baby, which premiered at True/False and was broadcast on PBS’s POV. She also co-produced Natalia Almada’s Users, which premiered at Sundance and received the festival’s Directing Award, and has worked on several films by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Sam Green. Her work has also included productions for The New York Times, Al Jazeera, and National Geographic.

Elivia also creates mission-driven work for major institutions and nonprofits, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Latino Equity and Advocacy Project, and Bridge California.

She holds an MFA in Documentary Film from Stanford University and a BA from NYU Gallatin, where she studied cinema and the Middle East. She taught film production at Stanford for eight years and has also taught filmmaking at the University of San Francisco and in high school film programs.