no, thanks

January 27th
4:14 PM EST

32 notes

I think I’ve mentioned this before but my friend Ahlam’s husband, Musa Syeed’s Valley of Saints” premiered at Sundance this year. Check out the trailer above and this interview with Musa:

I always dreamt of making a film about my parents’ homeland, Kashmir. It was where they spent their first years as a young couple, but it was also where my father endured jail as a political prisoner. While researching the region I came across news about Dal Lake, the pristine, unique waterworld where thousands of inhabitants row themselves around island shops and villages.

I discovered that the lake was now under serious threat from pollution and overdevelopment; some predicted it could disappear entirely. I realized that it was the perfect symbol not only for Kashmir but for all human resilience: beauty surviving in the face of destruction.

September 19th
1:58 PM EST

29 notes

Kinyarwanda in Central Park - No Admission Charge

At the time of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the Mufti of Rwanda, the most respected Muslim leader in the country, issued a fatwa forbidding Muslims from participating in the killing of the Tutsi. As the country became a slaughterhouse, mosques became places of refuge where Muslims and Christians, Hutus and Tutsis came together to protect each other. KINYARWANDA is based on true accounts from survivors who took refuge at the Grand Mosque of Kigali and the madrassa of Nyanza. It recounts how the Imams opened the doors of the mosques to give refuge to the Tutsi and those Hutu who refused to participate in the killing.

An official selection of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival – and winner of that festival’s World Cinema Audience Award - KINYARWANDA interweaves six different tales that together form one grand narrative that provides the most complex and real depiction yet presented of human resilience and life during the genocide. With an amalgamation of characters, we pay homage to many, using the voices of a few.

Check out the trailer here. I’ll be there!