Saturdays & Sundays, November 6 – December 9, 2021
Virtual + In-Person Workshops
A month long filmmaking program for emerging Arab artists.
Registration fee: $125
Capacity: 12 participants
Facilitator:
Lobna Mahdi
Lobna Mahdi is the Outreach and Development Coordinator at TAF and the co-lead of the Nahda FilmLab. She holds an MA in Adult Education and Community Development and a Bachelor’s in Equity Studies and Psychology, both from the University of Toronto. During her graduate studies, she conducted research on the works of lower-class Egyptian women filmmakers of the early 20th century, demonstrating their pioneering role in the Egyptian and Arab arts and their influence on nationalist and feminist discourse of their time. With a vision of sparking an Arab-Canadian film renaissance/Nahda, Lobna is dedicated to creating learning and training opportunities for the next generation of Arab filmmakers as well as providing Arab youth with safe spaces to imagine a world beyond imperialism, capitalism, and orientalism.
Instructors:
Rolla Tahir, Filmmaker, TAF Co-founder & Artistic Director
Rolla Tahir is a filmmaker and director of photography based in Toronto. She’s lensed short, narrative and experimental films, which screened across Canada and internationally, including the UK, Germany, and the United States. Obsessed with the durability, longevity and spontaneity of the analog film medium, Rolla has worked with Super 8, 16mm and 35mm to explore the analog process and its possibilities.
Maha Al Saati, Filmmaker
Maha Al-Saati is an independent, experimental filmmaker interested in exploring women’s stories in the Arab World. She is TIFF Filmmaker Lab 2020 and TIFF Writers’ Studio 2021 Alum, and honorary recipient of the Share Her Journey Award and The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) residency 2021. Her short films include Hair: The Story of Grass (18), an official selection of Fantastic Fest 2018, Slamdance 2019, and HollyShorts 2019; Cycle of Apples (19); and Fear: Audibly (17). Her feature project Hajj to Disney was selected for development by the Red Sea Lodge in partnership with TorinoFilmLab.
Nehal El-Hadi, Writer, Researcher, Editor
Nehal El-Hadi investigates the relationships between the body (racialised, gendered), place (urban, virtual), and technology (internet, health).
She completed a Ph.D. in Planning at the University of Toronto, where her research examined the relationships between user-generated content and everyday public urban life.
As a scholar, her hybrid digital/material research methods are informed by her training and experience as a science and environmental journalist.
Nehal advocates for the responsible, accountable, and ethical treatment of user-generated content in the fields of journalism, planning, and healthcare.
Her writing has appeared in academic journals, general scholarship publications, literary magazines, and several anthologies and edited collections.
Nehal is the Science+Technology Editor at The Conversation Canada, an academic news site, and Editor-in-Chief of Studio Magazine, a biannual print publication dedicated to contemporary Canadian craft and design. She currently holds a residency at Toronto’s Theatre Centre, where she is developing a live arts event that explores surveillance, privacy, and consent.
Nehal sits on the Board of Directors of FiXT POINT Arts & Media and Provocation Ideas Festival. She is a member of the Digital Communities Advisory Panel at the Centre for Free Expression. She was previously a Visiting Scholar at the City Institute at York University.
Ahmed Ismaiel Nour, Filmmaker
Ahmed is an award-winning filmmaker, film scholar, educator, and programmer based in Ontario. He started his career as assistant director where he gained valuable experience in the Egyptian main-stream film industry. His passion for innovative storytelling led him into independent filmmaking. For the past 18 years, he has made numerous shorts and features that played myriad international film festivals and picked several prestigious awards.
Despite being known for his 2013 hybrid picture Moug / Waves, Nour’s body of work encompasses many successful fiction, experimental, and documentary films. He has also produced and/or directed quite a few commercials and TV documentaries for renowned TV Channels.
Ahmed’s area of expertise comprises screenwriting, producing, video-editing, and directing. His work varies between experimental, documentary, and fiction films. However, his particular interest is in hybrid nonfiction filmmaking.
Nour is a short film programmer at Kingston Canadian Film Festival, and the founder and director of the 18 mm program, a yearlong film training program for youth, funded by KCFF and KFO in the city of Kingston.
Ahmed is a teaching assistant at Queen’s University’s film and media department. His current research engages with theories of myth, feminist film theory, and hybrid documentary cinema.