Shannon Silva is an Assistant Professor in the Film Studies Department at UNC-Wilmington. An experimental and documentary filmmaker, her principal interests include issues of gender and poverty, consumer culture, the connection between written, aural and visual arts, and community-building creative initiatives.

She holds a BFA in Art from Texas State University and an MFA in Film and Video Production from the University of Iowa.

Her teaching experience includes: Experimental and Documentary Film Production, Materials of 16mm Film, Film Festival Management and Introduction to Film and Video Production, as well as workshops in stop-motion animation, optical printing and cameraless and hand-processed filmmaking techniques.

In addition to directing over 30 short films and videos, she has worked as Screenplay Competition Director for the Austin Film Festival and as Associate Producer for the 35mm feature Monster Hunter (Asylum Home Entertainment).

Her films have screened at festivals internationally and her community work includes co-founding Iowa City Microcinema, an organization dedicated to bringing visiting filmmakers and free filmmaking workshops to the eastern Iowa public. Over the past decade she has served as a festival screener for many festivals including: Cinematexas, SXSW, Austin Film Festival, Ann Arbor and Cucalorus.

She is currently directing and producing an experimental documentary, MKA: Buy Buy Love, Buy Buy Happiness, which utilizes expert interviews, historical research, animated reenactments and found footage to look closely, and critically, at the tween markets evolution and the role of Dualstar (Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen's company) in the markets explosion.