I’ve been teaching at Colorado State University for over 7 years and I’m so honored to be receiving this award.
The 14’er Award: This award recognized innovative achievements demonstrating unique vision, creativity and grit.

My first film for this year is titled Soon.

I was thinking about Super 8mm film and my own childhood and all these home movies my father shot and then transferred to a variety of video tapes and systems, and how those moving images mutate and glitch into its own form. The transformation is part of it, the memory, the pain and the history manifesting visually.

I was also thinking about living through war and how trauma is not something you have to suffer through alone, other people who have gone through difficult times can connect to this.

I … Read the rest

These are selections from my art-journals from 1988 -1989 when I was 18 years old.
I was a romantic weird guy, trying to figure out my life by working out my stuff in drawings and words. 30 years later I decided to publish this embarrassing work as a peak into my headspace as a young man. I think of this as a type of time-machine that can fuse my past and present into something new.

This is a hardcover zine (11 X 8.5 inches) with 80 sides and 40 pages.
Purchase Boy from War

I edited a new trailer for my 2002 first feature film Soak. My friend Tom had never performed in a film before but he wanted to help me. I always prefer to work with non-professionals actors, or people that have never acted before. It helps that my film crew is so tiny—in this film it was mostly me and the camera and the performer— that it allows for a certain tone to blossom. No deadline, no money, no worry. We were free.

It had only one public screening as a world premiere at the 2002 Chicago Underground Film Festival.… Read the rest

I set up a showcase page on Vimeo and added some recent work and older films, including my first documentary Nice Bombs about my trip back to Iraq in 2004. Click here https://vimeo.com/showcase/usama

As I reflect back I realize I don’t fully understand this life and reality. But I’m trying to let go of worry, let go of bitterness, let go of negative patterns, and to embrace wonder, kindness, laughter and compassion. I think there is something profound and also absurd about being human. I’m content with this beauty and chaos swirling in me. I used to think I needed so much, and I realize that I don’t need much, and I love being alone. But I am spending more time with my daughter—trying to spend more time in the forests and … Read the rest