Four Eyes

My first feature film, Namour (2016), is now streaming on Amazon. It's been a long time coming, and I'm glad my film now has a home.

Namour in many ways began with this Tumblr.

When I wrote Namour, I was thinking about the existential crisis that overcame me and people I know (guys I dated) in my 20s and how isolated I felt, especially at a time when the world was telling me I should be so happy to be young.

I started posting film stills and writing about films on Tumblr that I felt captured the isolation I was feeling. And a small community began to form, of cinephiles, filmmakers, writers. They supported me when I ran a Kickstarter for Namour, after potential investors told me that my film needed to include a storyline about a wedding or a terrorist if my protagonist was an Arab-American.

And this community supported me when Namour was distributed by Array and began streaming on Netflix. You watched it, posted about it, wrote about it.

I don't post as much on this Tumblr, but the community that I found here was special and I don't think Namour would exist without it, so thank you.

Can. Not. Wait. For. This. Book.

The best fiction resists binaries. Comedy and horror exist in one story. The main character is monster and hero, liar and truth teller.

Julie Dash Tells the Story Behind the Making of 'Daughters of the Dust' on Vogue Video

I stumbled on this photo years before I’d seen Two for the Road (1967, dir. Stanley Donen) and realized it was taken on the set of that movie. At the time, I was in awe of Audrey Hepburn’s timeless style, more specifically how she wore those loafers with socks.  Still am. 

But after I saw Two for the Road, I found out Hepburn briefly left the film because she was pregnant. Stanley Donen considered re-casting her with Julie Christie, but then Audrey Hepburn returned to the movie after she had a miscarriage. 

This story made me look at this photo so differently. You never know what’s going on in someone’s life, how the work is touched by what someone is going through, or how someone’s style is influenced by what they’re experiencing in their body.  I found the photo and her style all the more compelling. 

“Our primary function is to create an emotion and our second function is to sustain that emotion.”

-- Alfred Hitchcock on directing