Category: Blog

A film-in-progress with Usilia Warood.

Muffin

I made this short movie over 18 years ago on a cold winter night in Chicago. I convinced a good friend to buy me a Sony 3-chip mini-digital video camera, in exchange to stay in my crappy apartment for free. Back then, especially coming out of film school, video was considered low-brow, cheap and crass. But I loved video and enjoyed the possibilities it gave me. I could finally grab a camera and do it all myself. This early short movie set the DNA of much of my later work. The interview style mixed within a narrative, the crass and the beautiful, the self conscious approach. It was also a kind of accident. An actor to play the male was supposed to show up and didn’t make it. I had a few notes scribbled on a piece of paper for what I wanted. It was more like a feeling with certain lines, certain images and moods, but nothing concrete. I had a friend I went to film school with and he was going to help me with lighting. Instead Piotr Tokarski ended up acting in my film and we started a productive relationship with him starring in many of my short films and feature films. The other performer is my friend Becka Joynt. I believe we met at the Goldstar Bar and we talked about doing something together. This was all shot in her apartment, and with some direction and some dark chaos all operating in a boozy haze.
You can see here I’m experimenting with audio, editing… but also trying to conjure a hypnotic state… it was shot in one night and edited overnight in the basement of Peter Hartel’s house. I was just learning to use this new technology, and sat there in the dark, working alone, and created something I was craving to see.

Watch my short film The Flowering. Shot on Super 8mm film and a little bit of analog video. This film just premiered at the 25th Chicago Underground Film Festival.

Strepsata and I discuss the many issues with cultural appropriation. Is it ever okay to take from another culture that is not yours? We examine many examples like bellydancing, musician MIA, and movies such as The Party and Disco Dancer.

Author and journalist Porochista Khakpour supports Boy from War and you should too.

Gordon Quinn, founder of Kartemquin Films (Hoop Dreams), discusses Boy from War and the importance of this kind of work.

Alex Cox directed one of the greatest American cult films called Repo Man. It had a huge influence on me as a teenager growing up in Iowa City. Alex Cox supports my new film Boy from War.

There was nothing like his film at the time—  it was the notion, this sense that there was this bullshit world out there created by Reagan and his repressed and do-goody just say no to everything ideology of the 80s. We loathed Reagan and punk was an expression of defiance against the status quo. Everything that is wrong with the film Repo Man is what makes it great. The film was instantly familiar but also eerie in how it tapped into our anxieties over nuclear war and nuclear waste. As teenagers it just felt the whole system was rigged and full of shit. Capitalism was winning and any genuine, non corporate expression was seen as a threat by mainstream society.

Hello friends,

I want to tell you a story. When I was ten years old I was living in Basra, Iraq and war just broke out with Iran. I had already spent five years living in Iowa City and was adjusting to my new life in my birthplace. I also had a dog named Snoopy. Almost every night my family and I would hear the war sirens and the bombings would start. It would shake the ground and we would often take cover in our bathroom. I was deeply traumatized by the bombings and it’s something I never really recovered from. I was convinced that I was going to die. We eventually escaped Iraq and I ended back in Iowa City at the start of high school in the mid 1980’s. At that time, I tried to make sense of the world through my drawings, experimenting with psychedelic drugs, and embracing the subculture of punk rock. I was forming an identity through all this chaos and darkness to understand my life.

This story is not so unique. It’s the story of a kid that grew up displaced and tried to find his place. So many kids share this story.

So much of Hollywood ignores our stories and keeps broadcasting tired old stereotypes of the Arab terrorist or the ignorant foreigner. But the truth is that my story and all of those before me is what makes America what it is. That’s also why I returned to Iraq at the start of the United States invasion to make a documentary called Nice Bombs about life for Iraqis during war; and my second documentary American Arab about the rising bigotry toward Middle Eastern people. But with this new film I’m going back to my early years, the time of my childhood into a teenager and what that looked and felt like.

Animation is a powerful way to express a lived and traumatic experience. It can speak to the child in all of us and a way to move fluidly in time and space. Only animation can take us inside the world of this ten year old boy living through a traumatizing war.

We are a creative team of film producers and animators all working together, and what we first need to create is something called an animatic. Think of an animatic as a rough visual draft of the whole film. Once we get that done we can start pitching Boy from War to film studios to secure the final funding and make this a reality.

My mentors in Chicago, former historian and author Studs Terkel, and documentary filmmaker Gordon Quinn, taught me that if you tell your story truthfully and clearly you will connect with others. And I believe this. With so much media distortion out there about marginalized communities, it’s an act of rebellion to tell your story truthfully. This film needs to be inserted into our culture to shed light on these ignored stories. This is how we make the world a better place, by humanizing these ignored stories in order to connect and generate empathy.

We are currently living in a time of hostility and violence toward people from the Middle East and refugees escaping war. Our president has been framing us as the ‘other,’ as a people that are not part of America. To vilify refugees, to see people fleeing danger as a danger themselves, it’s evil. It says that we’ve lost something as Americans. This film will break through that nonsense and tell a true story, a real story about triumph and a shared human experience.

We have launched a campaign to start getting this animatic going and paid for. If you can help us financially to raise $15,000 we would be so appreciative. We are looking for direct contributions or matching contributions or just help getting the word out.

This film will be beautiful, entertaining and accessible to a wide audience. With your help, we can start telling real stories about our shared human experience. Even if you cannot help financially, I hope you can share this post with others through social media or email.

As a filmmaker, I keep returning to my own story as a vehicle to shed light on these issues. Everything helps and thank you for taking the time to read this. I appreciate you!

With love and respect,
Usama