After a little hiatus on the road, I’m in New York City and it’s the opening day of Tribeca Film Festival! In the next two issues I’ll be sharing my top picks from the doc slate, starting with:
The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony directed by Habiba Nosheen
Stealing Magic directed by Matthew Testa
Kids Like Me co-directed by Cynthia Lowen and Jon Cohrs
How to Feed a Dictator directed by Andrew Neel
Vanishing Tracks directed by Hamed Zolfaghari
Colors of White Rock directed by Khoroldorj Choijoovanchig (aka HOGO)
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The birth of a gymnastics team in Pakistan provides an inspiring spark of light for a small group of girls on the margins.
My motivation for the film:
A few years ago, I began reflecting on how rarely we hear stories about the remarkable women and girls in Pakistan who are reshaping expectations with their courage, grit, and determination. I wanted to make a film that looked at young women in Pakistan with tenderness and complexity, a film that made room for joy, friendship, ambition, and the fullness of their lives.
That was the inspiration for The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony. In many ways, it is the film I wish had existed when I was growing up. As a Pakistani-born storyteller, this film matters to me because it challenges the notion that Muslim girls and sports cannot coexist. But it is not about girls pursuing sports as a path to the Olympics. It is about something much more intimate: the importance of girls from all walks of life having access to sport, and the impact that can have on their self-confidence, physical health, and sense of possibility. But the truth is, I didn’t find this story. It found me.
The journey began nine years ago, when I first met Tahera Hasan, the human rights lawyer in the film who started the gymnastics program for stateless girls. Tahera was my adoption attorney. She helps children who have been abandoned in orphanages get adopted by families. My daughter was one of those children.
Years after I adopted my daughter from Pakistan, I came across Tahera’s posts about girls in Machar Colony (Fisherman Colony) doing gymnastics. I was immediately drawn to them. The next time I went to Pakistan, I asked if I could visit the school, meet their families, and hear their stories. As soon as I did, I knew I had to make this film.
How my understanding of the subject changed:
I will confess that, even as a Pakistani, before working on this documentary, I had no idea about the struggle of Bengali stateless communities in Pakistan. Although Pakistani law allows birthright citizenship for any child born in Pakistan, in reality, many children in ethnic Bengali communities are not able to obtain citizenship documents or ID cards due to discrimination.
As a result, you have a whole generation of children born in Pakistan, like the girls on the gymnastics team, who are proud Pakistanis but cannot obtain the proper paperwork to have their citizenship recognized.
Without those documents, educational opportunities are limited, work prospects are limited, and even the ability to obtain medical care at a public hospital is limited. That continues the cycle of poverty and marginalization.
The scene that unlocked the entire film:
For me, the scene that unlocked the entire film was the moment when the girls are on their way to the beach for an outing. On their way to the beach they break out singing and dancing to a popular Pakistani song. It was just a reminder of how similar teenage girls are in every part of the world. Watching them do cartwheels in the water and collecting sea shells, I knew in that moment that the music, joy, and vibrancy of that beach scene were things I wanted to carry throughout the film.
While this was happening, to be honest, my biggest worry was that I was never going to be able to afford to license the song they were singing. But then I reached out to the producer of the song and told him about the film I was making. He was so moved that he wrote back and said we could use anything from his catalogue in the documentary for free. I think I cried when I read that, because otherwise we likely would not have been able to keep this scene in the film.
This scene really inspired us to think more deeply about the music in the film and how it could showcase the talents of Pakistani musicians. That’s what led us to collaborate with Eva B, a Pakistani woman hip-hop artist, on an original song for the film that is featured in our trailer.
I know the girls live within a level of poverty that would be disingenuous to sanitize but I also wanted to make sure the film showed that these girls are not defined by their circumstances or the stereotypes that are put on them. That beach scene was this really beautiful moment in the filmmaking process that inspired us to capture the vibrancy and hope of these girls, cinematically and musically, in the filmmaking process.
What I hope this film gives to audiences:
As a Pakistani-born filmmaker, this film is important at this moment because it depicts social change in Muslim countries through a nuanced and authentic lens. It shows Muslim girls who are inspiring, complex, and who are creating real change that comes from within the community.
I am very troubled by the ways brown people have been dehumanized over the last few decades, through one war after another. This film is part of a larger effort to correct those narratives. It asks audiences to see brown Muslim girls not only in moments of death, war, and tragedy, but in their full humanity: laughing, training, dreaming, fighting for space, and imagining a future for themselves.
We so often see images of brown children when they are suffering. They also deserve stories that show their joy, complexity, ambition, and dignity.
The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony premieres on Monday, June 08 – 5:30pm at SVA Theatre
Someone is stealing the secrets behind magicians' greatest tricks and selling them on illicit websites. Magician Andi Gladwin leads an unlikely team of illusionists on an international caper to track down the culprits.
My motivation for the film:
When I learned that a group of magicians had become citizen detectives who were running around the world in order to stop the internet pirates who were stealing their magic tricks, it immediately sounded like a terrific premise for a real life caper film. But it was the idealism and determination of magician Andi Gladwin that convinced me that his effort was being fueled by a real love of this art form. Andi was not going to quit until some kind of justice was achieved and for me that was a journey worth following.
I think most documentarians harbor a belief that we can improve the world by exposing issues and shouting from rooftops and that was basically what Andi was doing when it came to the threat that piracy poses to magic. I could relate to his persistence and his sense that this injustice simply could not stand. I wanted to show audiences what a few determined people could accomplish in their pursuit of righting a wrong, even if they are largely out of their comfort zone in doing so. As a bonus, there was a clearly entertaining, propulsive and often funny storyline to pursue. I love a good mystery and it appealed to me to make a film that took a lot of fun twists and turns while addressing something important.
How my understanding of the subject changed:
Admittedly I was not much of a magic aficionado going into this project but I relished the opportunity to learn about this secretive world and to have rare access to some of the best magicians in the biz. One thing I found surprising that they shared with me early on was the idea that many magicians don't necessarily invent their own tricks. Certainly there are those who do and I don't want to detract from their incredible work, but there is also an entire industry of magic creators who spend their time dreaming up new routines, devices and gimmicks for magic performers to buy and use in their own shows. These creators are kind of like the hit-making songwriters behind many of the pop stars who are the face of the music industry.
I was intrigued by the kind of genius and skill it takes to devise new magic and by the notion of these brilliant unsung creators toiling away, often for years, to bring new tricks to market. These are the people who are most vulnerable to piracy. Their margins are slim and magic creation isn't a hugely lucrative field to begin with. But whether or not this art form evolves and progresses with the times is completely reliant on magic creators keeping at it. If they work for years to write a magic book or invent a marketable trick only to have it stolen and sold by pirates for pennies on the dollar, they are put in an unsustainable situation. The fact that many creators were quitting the business out of frustration with piracy gave our story some real urgency.
The scene that unlocked the entire film:
Without giving too much away, there is a sequence in the film where the magicians are on the road pursuing evidence that is changing minute to minute. We were all in Europe - a small film team and two magicians - with no idea whatsoever what countries we were going to end up in from one day to the next. It was thrilling, fun filmmaking, if not a bit scary, considering we didn't know how dangerous the pirates might end up being or if and where we might encounter them.
There were a lot of theories about where the pirates were based but a clue led us to an Eastern European country I won't name here to avoid spoilers. We hadn't planned to go there, didn't speak the language and weren't sure what we were getting into, but Andi knew a prominent magician there. So he called the magician up and was immediately made welcome at this person's magic shop. And that magician, who had also been impacted by piracy, ended up helping with the investigation in a meaningful way by going undercover. It was all totally unplanned but it was something you'd expect to happen in a scripted spy film or something. That moment cemented for me that there is a global community that is strongly connected by their love of magic. And this kind of thing ended up happening in other countries as well. Seeing this society of magicians coming together to help each other to combat a common foe was heartening and gave me hope that they could collectively stand up to piracy in a significant way.
What I hope this film gives to audiences:
Certainly I don't want anyone to think this film is anti-technology. Most magic creators are selling their work online and the internet has been a boon to learning magic virtually and making magic products available globally. But I also think we're in a time when human-powered art forms like magic are especially vulnerable when confronted by internet piracy and digital entertainment. Magic takes an impressive amount of craft, practice and commitment and has a long and venerable history. It's worth defending and I think that in our digital age there's a discernible yearning for the kind of wonder and joy that analog entertainment like magic can give us.
Piracy is a problem for a lot of industries, including luxury goods, gaming, movies, music, publishing and art. Some of those industries are large enough to absorb the financial hit, but artists like magicians can't. It's important that we value creative work and intellectual property and that we recognize how vulnerable it is right now. While there are law enforcement agencies tasked with protecting creative work online, we see in this film that they can be largely ineffectual. I hope that our story raises some awareness of the problem and the need for law enforcement to hold pirates and the internet services that enable them (like web hosting and payment sites) accountable. I also hope this movie shows audiences that artists deserve to be compensated and that it discourages people from using or sharing pirated material. And I hope it turns folks on to magic!
Stealing Magic premieres on Fri June 05 – 5:00pm at Village East by Angelika
