Hijabtrendz.com Exclusive!

Check out the interview by Mariam Sobh with Iman Zawahry, a Muslim Filmmaker!

http://hijabtrendz.com/2009/03/30/hijabtrendz-exclusive-iman-zawahry/

New Muslim Cool: Filmmaker's Statement

“NEW MUSLIM COOL”

By Jennifer Maytorena Taylor

Tuesday, June 23, 2009 on PBS (Check local listings)

Filmmaker’s Statement

I had an accidental start as a documentary filmmaker. Injuries ended my modern-dance career before it really began, and during my recuperation I spent a few years teaching in New York City and San Francisco Head Start and special-education classrooms. I started to learn that everybody has a story worth listening to, if you can just take the time and really open your ears and mind. And “normal” is usually in the eye of the beholder.

I alternated those teaching gigs with time spent living in Brazil and Argentina, as both countries were transitioning to elected governments from the military dictatorships of the ’70s and ’80s. Watching my friends and relatives emerge from the trauma of those years, I was struck by how powerfully each country’s pop culture was helping people express themselves collectively and individually.

Flashing forward to the period right after 9/11 — I was working as a producer at San Francisco’s PBS affiliate, KQED, when offered the chance to do some pieces on South Asian youth in the Bay Area. In the course of my research I discovered a thriving Muslim hip-hop scene in Oakland, where an incredibly diverse group of young men and women from both convert and born-Muslim backgrounds were collaborating to create a culture that was both expressing their faith and reaffirming their American-ness.

It struck me that these young artists were using pop culture in much the same way those Brazilian and Argentine musicians were doing a decade before — to coalesce as a community after a terrible event, while making new spaces for individual expression that would further the evolution of a shared national identity.

Thinking of other seminal cultural and musical moments, I came up with a be-bop inspired title, New Muslim Cool; put together a team that includes my two amazing co-producers Kauthar Umar and Hana Siddiqi; raised some initial funds and started filming.

At first we thought we would make a “survey” film about American Muslim youth culture, a sort of ensemble piece with several intersecting characters on the road with a small Muslim hip-hop label. The film would explore the diversity and dynamism of this young American community, examine hip-hop as the lingua franca of youth everywhere, and show how young American Muslims — like so many other people — are using new technologies to bring faith and pop culture together.

All of those cultural themes still run through the finished film. But once we decided to focus on Hamza Perez and his family and community in Pittsburgh, the project took on a whole other life and deeper meaning. Hip-hop culture became less the focus of the film and more the context, and the real heart of the film became Hamza’s and his wife Rafiah’s day-to-day and spiritual life.
We followed Hamza, Rafiah and their community as they faced the ups and downs of life through three years. They confronted everyday challenges like getting to know the in-laws and having to cope with Rafia giving birth by C-section, and not-so-everyday challenges like possibly being under some form of surveillance that nobody could quite figure out. Often these disparate circumstances were laid directly on top of each other, so in the space of two minutes during an interview Rafiah would wonder about a mysterious panel van parked outside her house and then ask who forgot to put the lid on the peanut butter. It was a little surreal sometimes, but so is real life when you really think about it.

At the outset of this project when we were thinking it would be a cool and clever film about hip-hop culture, I’m not sure any of us — crew and characters alike — anticipated how deeply we would end up exploring the most elemental processes that make us human: the need so many of us have for some form of faith, to seek goodness, maintain hope, find forgiveness, fall in love. But that’s part of the magic of making long-form documentaries. You just never know where you’ll end up. And wherever that is you’ve been profoundly changed, for the better by the journey.

-Jennifer Maytorena Taylor, Director/Producer/Writer.

Taylor's Filmmaker Statement was originally posted for PBS's POV.

"New Muslim Cool: will be the opening night feature on the acclaimed PBS series P.O.V. on June 23rd. Check out local listings: http://www.pbs.org/pov/tvschedule.php

Bugs Life Wisdom

The short scene from A Bugs Life I want to discuss starts with a leaf falling in the middle of the long line of ants that leads to a huge pile of food. The colony was gathering this food for the grasshoppers. The falling leaf lands in front of one of the ants and all of the sudden, this ant couldn't see the line and didn't know what to do... he starts to freak out.

The Queen Ant comes to the rescue, bringing with her a Specialist in this crisis area. The Specialist quickly calms the ant down and tells him it wasn't a big deal, they were going to go around the leaf. The Specialist slowly leads the ant around the leaf right back into the line.

That's amazing. This short scene in the cartoon can be compared to people who don't know what to do when a small obstacle is put in front of them. And while it may seem large (the size of the leaf compared to the ants), in reality, it is really a simple solution.

However, the scene also portrays a specialist leading the way back to the goal - getting back in line to put the food for the grasshoppers. It is interesting that sometimes we go through this as well. We may get off the right path because we reach a seemingly difficult obstacle or obstruction, but once we take other's advice or look at things from a different perspective, we can see that it's not that difficult to get back on track to attain our goal, inshaAllah.

-ScreenRighter