Vikram Channa

Associate Dean of the Akira Kurosawa School of Film
Industry Expert

Vikram Channa serves as Associate Dean of the Anaheim University Akira Kurosawa School of Film. In the professional industry, as Warner Bros. Discovery Networks Vice President and Head of Content & Products for East and South East Asia, Vikram Channa leads all Discovery content, productions, broadcasts, and curation for the region. Since joining Discovery in 1995, he has taken on various roles within the company from on-air promotions to programming and production. Together with his team, he executive produced over 1,200 documentaries, several of which garnered accolades at events such as the Asia Television Awards, New York Festival, Omni Intermedia, and the Academy Awards. In addition to having a Master’s in Film and Television Production and a Master’s in History, he earned his MBA from the University of Chicago.

Message from Vikram Channa

It's very exciting to be part of the launch of an online film school that takes the life work of a genuine master of filmmaking as it's starting point. Akira Kurosawa was ahead of the curve; the original globalist. He strived to push the universal language of cinema into more robust visual directions. Just look at the way he approached movement in each of his shots to strikingly communicate the purpose of the scene. Simple and elegant, every Kurosawa shot used that old bedrock of filmmaking craft - beginning, middle and end to build his epic ideas step by step. His ability to so naturally 'motivate' a scene by generating 'momentum' in truly visual and visceral ways was original. It made his cinema borderless and yet so rooted in a Japanese context. These very qualities are the driving force of the Akira Kurosawa School of Film and behind a truly unique MFA program, so relevant for the 'glo-cal' world we work and play in.