Tag Archives: film

There are 1.8 billion of us. And none of us have any good TV. (Until now)

filmmaking, Islam,

My dearest friend, assalam alaikum!

I should put my glasses on for this, right? Hold onto yours if you’re wearing them.

What?! You’re looking at your phone in bed?! Go to sleep, child. I’ll be here in the morning.

Fine. I’ll just tell you.

An idea has been knocking around in my head for quite a while. It’s wild. Well, no, not really. But it seems hard. Especially with what I’ve learned.

“What have you learned?” I hear you ask from beneath your covers.

I’ve learned that we Muslims don’t trust each other.

I sent a survey out a few weeks ago to three of my favorite Muslim WhatsApp groups. I loved them and they love me. I assumed.

I asked them very simple – absurdly simple! – questions about their viewing habits. I want to know what makes Muslims tick when it comes to visual content. These 60 or more people whom I already had a relationship with might be the easiest and most willing mine, right?

Wrong.

Maybe this means I need to work on my friendships. Fair assumption.

Maybe this means Muslims in general do not trust the mainstream media. This would explain why I got crickets when I asked the local Muslim community for help on my latest film. (To be clear – I wasn’t asking for money. I was asking for locations and discounted catering, if they were up to it. No one was up to it.)

This suspicion is understandable. I mean people like me made Homeland.
Fox News.
Donald Trump. (Yeah it was us.)

But it’s also distressing. And I’ve been wondering how to bring down those walls. What are your thoughts on why we trust each other so little?

Here’s what I think: we need to build a worldwide Muslim filmmaker network. Dare I say it – a MAFIA. Movies and TV could be a powerful dam to stem the tide of Islamophobia.

When you actually engage with a story, you’re inviting strangers into your house. You’re giving them a cuppa. You’re asking them where they’ve been. If we get more people to do that with Muslim stories, we may lose a few enemies and gain a few more vocal allies.

I mean take the LGBTQIA2s+ community for example. The fact that I even know that acronym means that, at least among the ‘liberal progressive’ media, people are sympathetic to the queer cause. I ask people for their pronouns before speaking with them or about them. Through shows like Queer Eye and Soldier’s Girl (Lee Pace is insane in this one), I was given a peek into the life of a transgender person.

Do people have that level of knowledge about Muslims? There are 1.8 billion of us!
Do people know what halal meat really is?
Do people know why or how we pray? (Watching Homeland, the answer is definitely no.)
Do people know why women wear the hijab and what’s the appropriate etiquette when meeting one in the wild?

Movies and TV could change that. But we need to band together to do that. We need to start trusting each other.

These are all ideas that Lena Khan, a fellow hijabi and filmmaker, has floated in her talks.

  1. Muslim organizations and businesses need to support local Muslim filmmakers. That means money. If not money, free in-kind services. If not that, free locations and free consultations on their areas of expertise
  2. We need to have grants for Muslims films, TV and web-series. See above: money. Film-making is an expensive business. A few less Audis, a few more films.
  3. We need to support each other with time, resources and expertise. And money.
  4. We need to recognize the value of using visual art to change things.
  5. We need to NOT sell out. We need to be as loud and as proud and as MUSLIM as we can.

What do you think? How can we create a thriving global Muslim film scene?

Okay. You can go to sleep now. With that bee in your noggin.

P.S. When you wake up, watch these shows.

Yes, my friends made them/are in them, but I have no affiliation with the projects. So many hijabis. Wallahi, it warms my heart.

What I said before – all nonsense.

Islam, life, Screenwriting, , , , , , ,
Bismillah ir Rahman ir Raheem

I’m so full of feces.

I’m trying to distill life and death and guilt into bolded bullet points for your easy digestion.

When I’m fighting everyday at this keyboard trying to write something that feels honest. That cannot be contained by a three-act structure.

(That maybe does happen in three acts for clarity’s sake, but alludes to something bigger. Also because tying my brain in knots isn’t my idea of fun. And I want to make people laugh. And that means making sense. This is a long parenthetical.)

When my mom died, I learned that I don’t know how to grieve.

For a long time, I wondered if my father was right. If I was selfish. Whether I even loved anything or anyone enough to grieve if it left me. Other than stand-up, improv and my personal freedom. Grieving all of that sounds even more selfish.

But then Mama died and my life went on as if nothing had changed. As if I hadn’t lost a limb.

I’m not going to sit here and tell you how to grieve. Everything I said before was utter nonsense. Well, I do all of those things but only to survive the day. But I have a feeling that most of us want to do more than just survive.

Muslims aren’t really clear about grieving either. Sure,  there’s the washing and wrapping of the body, the Janazah (the funeral prayer), etc. But being in America and my mother being buried in Sri Lanka, I could not partake in that ritual.

Leaving no clean break in my life between ‘with Mama’ and ‘without Mama’.

The best I could get from YouTube is don’t wear make-up or colorful clothes. Well, in that case, I’m grieving most of the time. Or my wardrobe is, anyway. Surely grief is more than sartorial choices?

So I’ve decided to drown myself in other people’s grief. After finishing #ZD30Script (in which I hammered out a holey outline) – I thought I’d treat myself by binging on House of Cards AND Breaking Bad.

But I figure they’ll wait.

I scrolled down my Netflix queue looking for a face of color.
I found perhaps 12 movies in hundreds.
Weak. But okay. Gotta start somewhere. And checking my privilege is a good way to start.

Fruitvale Station

Cried for a young man about my age, snuffed out before he could prove that he could be a father.

The Butler

My struggle with my father was much the same. Less nation-spanning perhaps. But just as earth-shaking. Still haven’t reached that emotionally satisfying resolution yet, though we are on speaking terms.

Decided to watch The Station Agent – a little person is underprivileged too. Though unlike the POCs in other movies, does his happiness come at so steep a price?

Well, I guess everyone’s happiness comes at a price. Uncertainty.

One of those quiet indie movies with quiet change happening over many quiet moments. The humor is pretty quiet too. The only two jokes in the movie are in the trailer.

My life has never been that quiet. It’s always been loud, messy, chaotic, out of control. Even if I wanted to be a hermit, no one would leave me alone. No one leaves me alone long enough to complete a writing sprint. It’s a struggle to quiet the voices in my head.

And of course, sex. Changes. Everything.

And alcohol.

And things change all in a rush – that part is true to my life. And suddenly we’ve found our place in the world and all that madness was worth it.

I liked that movie. I’d like to see a movie like that about people of color.

There’s a grief here I can’t explain. Would movies have saved my mother? Would movies have kept me from post-partum depression?

Movies can’t even seem to tell my story.

There’s a discord here that I really can’t shake.
I wonder if movies have ever told my mother’s story. If they will ever tell my story. If I will always be forced to find myself where I’m not, where I might not even be welcome.
Will my son face that discord too? Will he be in the world, but not really acknowledged by it? Will he care all that much? I didn’t have much else to do other than movies, books and TV growing up.
Perhaps this is yet another thing I need to do differently as a parent. Give my son something else to do.
Fact is, the world may or may not change. I can try and try, but it’s not me that holds the keys. This right here is grief.
I tried most of my life to understand my mother, to be friends with my mother, even best friends. But for a number of years, my efforts were decidedly less than futile. Even counter-productive. And by the time those years were over, ALS had taken her voice. And now, it’s taken all of her. And I can try no more. Though still I try. With my forehead on my prayer mat, I scream in my head to see her again. If it works, I’ll let you know.
I can try and try, but really there has never been any guarantee that things will change for the better.
Not for me. Not for my kids. Not for my mother.
This is grief.
Maybe this is why I’ve believed in God from such a young age. Something has to be stable to keep me sane. Something has to make sense. And someone, and yes, I do believe it’s Him (God has no gender really) has to reward the effort, no matter what the outcome. Nobody and nothing else does on the planet.
This is grief.
This is suffering. I know I’m not the only one.
May I be patient with myself. May I know right from wrong, even when no one encourages me to do the right thing. May I reach out to others who are grieving. May I keep hoping and keep trying. May God reward all our efforts, whatever the outcome. Ameen.