DIDIHOOD ~ Issue 67

Happy September Didis!

The summer may be winding down, but we're feeling very excited for fall. We wrapped up August with our latest Didi Talks event. Our panellists created a very open-minded and interesting discussion on what it's like being a South Asian digital content creator.

Thank you to our event partner Proof Strategies and everyone who attended! If you missed it, check out this short video on our Instagram! 

September in Toronto also means TIFF season and we're giving away two tickets to a screening of In Flames. Check out the details here. The film's producer, Anam Abbas, is also our featured Didi this month. 

Finally, we are also launching our fifth annual Didihood Mentorship program this month. We can't wait to see the relationships that this year's mentors and mentees will build over the next four months! 

Meet the Didi:

This month we're chatting with Pakistani/Canadian filmmaker Anam Abbas. She's worked as a producer, director and cinematographer. Her most recent project, In Flames, is a fiction feature, Urdu language, feminist genre film and will be screening at the Toronto International Film Festival. She is also one of the founding members of the Documentary Association of Pakistan, and the founder of Other Memory Media — an organization focused on creating platforms for women's voices and exploring life at the peripheries and transgressive spaces in Pakistan and the world.  

What inspired you to get into filmmaking?
Well one part was the works of Robert Bresson and Danny Boyle and Sofia Coppola and Claire Denis, but also absorbing all this gorgeous vibrant cinema and yearning for the same to come out of Pakistan where we had not much of anything for a very long time. I wanted to be part of an enabling community where we could create stories that pushed culture and made space for different perspectives and live experiences on screen than what the Pakistani mainstream media-scape allowed for. 

Along your journey, what were some of the hurdles you encountered as a WOC creator in the filmmaking industry? 
I really didn't see a place for myself in the Canadian landscape back in 2010 when I graduated from film school. I decided to build my career in Pakistan, where in some ways there were so many more challenges as there was no infrastructure at all. But the community I found was where I got my energy and motivation and where we together were able to create so much out of absolutely nothing. It's great to be back in Canada, with a decade of experience and success to face a very different industry where BIPOC people very much have asserted and pushed for our space and our voices. It feels magical and exciting. I think there is still a lot of work to do to build towards a place where, while the voices are BIPOC, the imagination of an "audience" still holds the same old conventions. International facing cinema from people of the global majority is still expected to cater to the white gaze — our successes prove the point that our community is a strong and worthy audience and filmmaking that doesn't centre white audiences can still be universal! 
As a woman producer it is sometimes hard to be in partnerships where your service is taken for granted but I am lucky to have grown from my experiences and privileged to now work with people who are collaborative and gracious. 

Your most recent film In Flames, for which you're a producer, premiered at Cannes and now will be coming to TIFF. Tell us about the project.
In Flames is a Talent to Watch project and a micro budget genre bending Urdu language film that examines a patriarchal society through the tools of genre. Our premiere at Cannes was so exciting and I was especially overjoyed that we got to showcase our young and indie talent to the world. It's the first time on screen for our lead Ramesha who is only 21! The film also features Bakhtawar Mazhar who is a celebrated theatre actor from Karachi and Adnan Shah Tipu who is a widely celebrated character actor from Pakistan and a champion of indie cinema. 
It is Zarrar Kahn's debut feature and we're both so pleased as Canadian Pakistanis to have our North American premiere at TIFF where we get to introduce this story and talent to our community in the GTA! Our cast will be in attendance and we can't wait for audiences to be able to interact with our team and the conversations that will follow! For aspiring BIPOC filmmakers I think it is really heartening to share the success of an arthouse Urdu language film from our region that steps outside of melodrama and explores an inventive and surprising new cinematic voice. 

Is this the first time one of your films will be at TIFF? What will that experience mean for you?
Zarrar's short Bhai was at TIFF last year but it's a first for me. We both have a history working/volunteering at TIFF so it really is a coming home/full circle moment for us. My cinema education was largely through the many many years absorbing films at TIFF — I was always keen to watch the cinematic offering from the "world cinema" section, now called centrepiece, and the films at midnight madness so it's surreal to be on the other side of this! While Cannes is an industry facing festival, Toronto has always been about the audiences so we can't wait to enjoy and experience the screenings in that light! 

In the last two years you also released your debut feature documentary, This Stained Dawn. How did this project come to life? 
This Stained Dawn precipitated from my close involvement with the Aurat March in Pakistan, from the birth of the concept to performing with my short lived band in Karachi year one of the march in 2017. As the movement grew so did the misinformation and backlash around it — I thought it was important to make a film that could celebrate the act of community that is the primary function of organizing, archive an alternate history as it was unfolding and also demystifying the contemporary feminist moment in Pakistan. I went into the production solo and self-financed, but had so many female filmmakers volunteer and help with the process.
Eventually the film was supported by Canada Council of the Arts and we premiered at Sheffield International Doc/Fest in 2021. I can't wait for the film to screen more in Canada, especially where I can connect with South Asian audiences. So much of our politics are still informed by our connections to our home countries so I believe that a lot of impact work can be done through the film within the diaspora. 

One of your documentaries, Showgirls of Pakistan, was also picked up by VICE. What went into that project and what was the response like? 
Showgirls of Pakistan was in many ways the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. The project was completely self-financed and I as producer and cinematographer and Saad Khan as director, made for a small team facing a closeted and dangerous world. During production, there were a few times I found myself in extremely dangerous situations but the sense of responsibility I had to tell the women's stories and to fight puritanical ideological violence, and perhaps the naivete of being a young person, kept me going. It was also my first feature and a vehicle for me to understand the documentary landscape — what I found was even more violence, western broadcasters and many funders continued to have imperialist agendas when it came to stories from the Muslim world. Seven years later, when we had finished the film, and when many BIPOC people had now come into decision making power at these institutions, we finally were able to approach people at VICE who just got it and were excited to share the film with the world — a happy end to a wild adventure. 

Are there any other projects that are currently in the works that you'd like to share with us? 
I am developing an animated personal documentary and another documentary about Pakistan's catastrophic floods from last year and the spiritual legacy of Sindhu. In the fiction space I am writing a limited series about young activists in Karachi with my friend Sadia Kahtri. I am also working with Zarrar on his second feature! And as always, programming and scheming with my co-founders at the Documentary Association of Pakistan. 

You've had some incredible accomplishments, what goals do you still have for yourself in your filmmaking career? 
There's always so many projects brewing and each one presents a challenge to get financed and distributed and has its own learning curve. There are also so many ways to challenge myself as a creative that each project or opportunity brings. I also have my eye on a few young directors that I would love to work with. At the end of the day awards and successes are a byproduct and always in service of connecting to audiences — my goals still remain nested in the storytelling and process of making films. 

What advice do you have for Didis that are looking to pursue a career in filmmaking?
Be discerning. I think one thing that grounds me is the clarity I have on what kind of projects I want to say yes to. Whether I am working pro-bono, or investing my own resources, or a director/producer for hire — it's always the content, and the politics of what is being created and how it has been created that is a priority and what has motivated me and has helped me find a creative community based on shared values that has given me comfort and longevity and eventually an identity within the industry. It's hard to say no to opportunity and sometimes I still struggle with that, but every time, as my friend Fawzia Mirza tells me, "I say yes to myself," my world has always opened up in a positive way. Also make your own opportunities! We are serving meals we cooked at our own darn table! 

What we're reading:

"I didn't hate cooking palak paneer, I hated the patriarchy," by Hina Imam in The Walrus

"Maitreyi Ramakrishnan is all grown up," by Joanna Fox in Elle Canada

What we're watching and listening to:

Three must-read debut poetry collections recommended by Toronto poet Natasha Ramoutar on CBC's The Next Chapter

This Place, a film by Didi V.T. Nayani is now available to stream in Canada and the UK

Didi Tanya Hoshi's first feature film We Will Be Brave will have its world premiere at the Calgary International Film Festival on Sept. 24

— Nikkjit Gill

Issue 67
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