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May 11, 2012
Diverse Muslim Voices Exchange at Shangri La
On April 4–5, 2012, 22 emerging documentary filmmakers, television producers and members of the Independent Television Service (ITVS) gathered at Shangri La as part of the Diverse Muslim Voices Initiative funded by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Arts’ Building Bridges Program.
Convening participants in front of the Playhouse at Shangri La
Award-winning documentary filmmaker Musa Syeed (Valley of Saints, Bronx Princess, A Son’s Sacrifice) opened the meeting with a talk on media portrayals of Islam and Muslims in the United States today. Of Kashmiri descent, Syeed grew up in Indiana, which made him adept at seeing cultural issues from a variety of nuanced perspectives.
Next, the emerging filmmakers got a chance to pitch their latest projects to representatives from major funding organizations—among them Orlando Bagwell, director of JustFilms media content fund at the Ford Foundation; Ryan Harrington, director of documentary programming for the Tribeca Film Institute; Leslie Fields-Cruz, vice president of operations and programs for the National Black Programming Consortium; and Sapana Sakya, public media director at the Center for Asian American Media. The experts provided valuable insight and feedback, as well as pointers about marketing, partnerships, and funding.
Here are just a few of the great projects presented at the meeting:
Heavy Metal Islam, a film by Jed Rothstein, was originally envisioned as a documentary about the heavy metal music scene in Egypt. In 2008, midway through filming, Egypt’s Arab Spring erupted and the film became a story about a revolution.
Two Children of the Red Mosque, a film by Hemal Trivedi and Mohammed Ali Naqvi, examines the very different lives of two children enrolled in the Red Mosque madrassa, one of Pakistan’s most notorious institutions.
Filmmaker Idris Abdul-Zahir pitching his film project Iladelph Break Boy to the panel
Convening participants departing Shangri La following a fruitful day of dialogue via the Mughal Garden at Shangri La
Five Broken Cameras, a film by Emad Burnat, chronicles five years of West Bank protests and the extreme difficulties of everyday life in Palestine through the eyes and experiences of a Palestinian photographer and his family.
Iladelph Break Boy, a film by Idris Abdul-Zahir and Usame Tunagur, follows an African-American Muslim from Philadelphia who achieves international fame as a break dancer, but then must return home and redefine his life.
Islam on the Inside, a film by Justin Mashouf, documents the experiences of three Muslim converts transitioning out of incarceration on the Southside of Chicago.
Mashouf reflected on the convening: “Coming from a television background in LA, where documentary concepts spark, fizzle, and are replaced in an instant, I often find the task of producing sincere stories about Muslims to be impossible. The Diverse Muslim Voices Exchange allowed us an opportunity to better produce these stories and to share moments of solidarity with one another as we face many of the same challenges.”