Name Mara Ahmed Role Filmmaker | Movies The Muslims I Know | |
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Indy tv 4 interview with filmmaker mara ahmed
Mara Ahmed is a Pakistani American filmmaker and artist based in Rochester, New York. Her production company is Neelum Films.
Contents
- Indy tv 4 interview with filmmaker mara ahmed
- Memory the possibility of reconciliation an interview with mara ahmed
- Early life and education
- Film career
- Art exhibitions
- Activism and writing
- Articles
- References
Memory the possibility of reconciliation an interview with mara ahmed
Early life and education
Mara Ahmed was born in Lahore, Pakistan. She has lived and been educated in Belgium, Pakistan and the United States. She has an MBA and a second master's degree in Economics. She worked in corporate finance for many years before launching her career in film. It was in 2004 that Ahmed resigned from her job as a Senior Financial Analyst at a Rochester company in order to focus on art and film.
Film career
Ahmed's film training began at the Visual Studies Workshop and later continued at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She began to shoot her first documentary, The Muslims I Know, in 2006. The film is a reaction to the post 9/11 negative stereotyping of Muslims in mainstream media. The Muslims I Know premiered at the Dryden Theatre in 2008. It received fiscal sponsorship from New York Women in Film and Television.
Ahmed's second film is the short documentary, Pakistan One on One. It is a survey of public opinion in Pakistan about issues of interest to Americans. The film premiered in 2011 at the Little Theatre. Both films have been broadcast on PBS and have been screened across the US and also abroad.
A Thin Wall, Ahmed’s third documentary, premiered in April 2015. It focuses on the Partition of India in 1947, but derives lessons that remain relevant today. Shot on both sides of the border, in India and Pakistan, A Thin Wall is a personal take on partition rooted in stories passed down from one generation to another. It is written and directed by Mara Ahmed and co-produced by an Indian filmmaker. Both filmmakers are descendants of families displaced by the 1947 Partition. They used crowd-funding through Indiegogo to be able to reach a wider audience. A Thin Wall was screened in May 2015 at the Bradford Literature Festival, UK. It was introduced by British poet John Siddique, whose work is featured in the film. It was also an official selection of the Seattle South Asian Film Festival and San Francisco's 3rd i Film Festival. Ahmed was interviewed about A Thin Wall on Rochester Indymedia, Voice of America and RCTV.
Art exhibitions
Mara Ahmed works in a variety of media including film, photography, painting, collage and writing. Her work was featured in the 2005 documentary “Identity Through Art” along with five other Asian-American artists.
Ahmed’s artwork was exhibited at the Kinetic Gallery, at SUNY Geneseo, in 2008. “Synthesis” was a multi-media exhibition that captured Ahmed’s journey from Pakistan to the US through the fusion of diverse cultures and materials.
More recently, in 2014, her collage work, which incorporates painting and photography with fabrics from Pakistan and India, was exhibited at the Colacino Gallery, at Nazareth College in New York. Titled “This Heirloom”, it was a multi-media exhibit that combined art and film and endeavored to forge a link to the past via personal and collective histories.
Activism and writing
Ahmed is involved in social justice and community work. She writes and presents regularly on topics related to Pakistan, Islam, diversity education and cultural competence.