New York

I have arrived... videos coming soon

New Hotness

I heard about this when it was in the works. When I heard about the idea of a blog that focuses on modern and mostly western Shia Muslim viewpoints (politics, religion, culture, etc) I was immediately interested. I was going to write for them but the film(s) destroyed my free time which I could have spent writing blogs. It's a great idea and has so far been very good.

Check it out

Critical Shia

and a recent favorite entry

Fitnah wins wars

Reposting this after I saw it on Kabobfest



also
[LINK]

upsetting

Heard this on NPR today. It draws quite a realistic picture of what life in Iraq is like right now.

LINK (click listen)

Also, Samarra is suffering after a curfew was imposed on the town on May 6th. BBC quoted an Iraqi aid worker who said, "the humanitarian situation in Samarra is terrible."

Where is the security? Where is the freedom? Where is the oil?

anxious

...a story told with pictures

this happens

When I was in Florida this last December I noticed quite an anti Muslim sentiment in the air almost where ever I went. Especially since I was with covered Muslim women for the majority of my trip I felt like the chance of me having to scuffle some hick was extraordinarily high.

When I recently saw this it made me shake my head in disappointment and anger.

(Link)

culmination point

Hours of lost sleep, suffering relationships, bathing, cleaning, and having free time climaxes right here and right now... but I hope this is only the smallest step for my 2 films.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran

His book sounds like an interesting read.. peep the interview on VBS

domain names

I wish I owned some so I could afford better DV tapes and not cheap Sony "Premium" tapes that may or may not HAVE NO TIMECODE after I shoot and now I have to sit here and manually capture every clip and have no assurance that the footage won't crash leaving me with my timeline of unlogged clips.
AAAAAAAAAAAA!

Found Footage Film 2006

Made from found footage both 16mm and 8mm. Most of it came from my uncle(paternal) who filmed the black and white Iranian footage and my grandfather(maternal) who filmed most of the 8mm footage. The rest is from assorted educational films on Islam, science, and Mexico.

Remember

Always to remember to format your hard drive to a Mac when editing with Final Cut Pro. It will save you the hours of tedious recapturing that I have recently fallen victim of. :(

Internship at WITNESS

I was recently chosen to work as an intern at WITNESS in NYC this summer. I am pretty excited since it was definitely my #1 choice of internship. I leave AZ at the end of May and will be in NY until the first week of August God willing. From what I hear, I will be working on the new video hub feature of WITNESS. I'm anxious to start working to say the least : D


.in other business. good article on the Save Darfur issue.

Evils of technology

It has got me thinking... between my roommate who falls asleep in front of his laptop monitor 6/7 nights a week and myself and JorDan working non stop this last week on our film (constantly on the phone, emailing, texting, drinking coffee and then repeating) it makes me realize that technology has allowed us to either work ourselves too hard or not do anything productive at all.

VICE

I just discovered this little online network. I was familiar with the magazine but didn't know they had an internet video channel. It is pretty awesome though so check it out.

New Year

Norooz Mobarak

1. I have been too busy to do anything festive for the new year so next year I have to do something cool.

2. I have had a splitting headache for almost 2 days and I very rarely get headaches.

3. While rehearsing our actors today for The Runners we did an exercise to become more comfortable with each other and I shared something so personal that I felt guilty burdening people with the info.

4. I have effectively given up on school until this movie is at least done shooting. I have no motivation to do schoolwork when I know there is work that needs to be done for the movie.

5. I am supposed to have an idea of what I want to do as my Senior capstone film, but the script I wrote last semester and want to shoot is way too politically controversial to do so early in my career. I'm not trying to get myself on the Hollywood blacklist yet.

6. I drank so much coffee today that I felt dizzy.

7. I have to buy live chickens from the feed store tomorrow for the movie. : )

What do you know about the exaflood?

Thought this was interesting..

The Runners aka my life for 2 months

My new film, The Runners, will be my life for the next 2-3 months. JorDan Fuller and myself are co-directing it. We shoot late March and the 1st day of April. I'm still looking for a Norteña band for the soundtrack and financial sponsors for the film. If you want to sponsor the film contact me at krillan(at)comcast.net
You will get a link on our production blog, credit in the film, and my undying love.

Check out the production blog. I will be updating it much more often than this blog.

Letters From the Other Side (2006)

Producer & Director: Heather Courtney

On Wednesday Heather came to my documentary class to screen some of her work and answer some practical questions about documentary. She showed us clips from her Masters thesis film called Los Trabajadores "The Workers" (2003) about Mexican day laborers in Austin, Texas. Her new film Letters From the Other Side is about the wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters of men who have left Mexico to work in the US.

The whole film was screened at the University to the public in a filled auditorium. The film is very powerful. Heather lived in Mexico for a year to shoot the film. In the film, she delivers video messages to male family members in the US of the women in Mexico. Some of the women in the film have not seen their husbands or fathers for more than 8 years. Heather told our class that she was hesitant to deliver the video messages between her subjects because she felt it was intervening with the "truth" of the subject. Ironically these video letters are the heart of the film and serve to bring the issue of Mexican immigration to a personal level for the viewer.

Heather really impressed me as a great person and filmmaker. After the screening I gave her a copy of the script of my new film which is related in subject matter to hers. In exchange she gave me a DVD of the film. :)

Trailer
Order the DVD

Living with us is dangerous

Mahdi and myself made this little number as a continuation of our series of startling sleeping victims series (SSVS).

Born into Brothels (2004)

I just got finished watching Born Into Brothels. Someone did a presentation on it in my history of documentary class last semester and it inspired me to see the whole thing.

It won at Sundance in 2004 for Best Documentary and at the Academy Awards in 2005 for under the same category. The documentary is about children in Calcutta's red light district. All of the subjects of the film are living in brothels with their families and are at risk of being put to work on the streets themselves. The film follows one of its directors, Zana Briski, through her mission of trying to teach the children photography and get them into boarding schools.

By using the children's photography Briski and Kauffman tell the story with the children and do not limit them to being only subjects. It is no coincidence that the film only received such attention after the outstanding international interest in the photographs of the children.

The film makes no attempt to tackle the issue of prostitution and I think that was a wise choice, since prostitution only acts in the film as the inescapable reality of the children. For the children, it is a problem that always was and always will be.