Films/Videos

This is a portfolio of recent and ongoing video projects.


Moon, Stars, Sea, Mountains (2021, in progress)

“Poetry is the register of the Arabs,” goes a famous saying, referring to the legendary oral traditions of the roving bards of the Arabian desert that later survived the intervention of Islam, giving birth to a rich poetic corpus that continues to this day. These poets were prone to describe epic adventures of warrior-heroes but also everyday concerns like life and death. Moon, Stars, Sea, Mountains (قمر نجوم بحر جبال) is an ethnographic film exploring the contemporary continuity of oral poetic traditions by Bedouin inhabitants of the Sinai peninsula in Egypt. Sinai has become an area synonymous with tourism for vacation-goers from Cairo and Israel, on the one hand, and also heavy securitization by the Egyptian state for spurts of Bedouin separatist activity. In spite of this, younger generations of Bedouins continue practicing their ancient poetic tradition in a still stunningly beautiful ecosystem. What place is there for traditional oral poetry in this utterly changed social and material landscape?

Filming began in late-2021, with grants from the Maryland Institute College of Art and the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at Johns Hopkins University.

This is a preliminary trailer for the project.

Totem's Wedding (35 mins.) is an ethnographic film about attending a wedding in the city of my childhood after thirty years. It explores Bengali folklore and tradition, kinship and family life, and sections of the city of Kolkata.

This is one of several videos from a series called Khayal, produced for the Johns Hopkins University Program in Islamic Studies. The series profiles artists and musicians in our contemporary world who engage with Islamic theology and its aesthetic tradition in their craft. Khayal means “imagination” in Arabic, Persian and Urdu, and in India and Pakistan describes a style of classical music that allows more improvisation and ornamentation than other styles. It is characterized by generally short songs of two to eight lines that are often based on themes of romantic or divine love. Like the musical style, the video series is composed of short fragments that touch on the theme of the divine, and the love with which these artists and musicians approach the process of creation. This video features Juan Ibrahim Castrillón.