#doc short

Unfinished business is the worst and a couple things have consistently hovered over my conscience over the past few years. The first being a bundle of beautiful footage sitting unused on a hard drive (from a scrapped music video o' mine) - the second being the way I ended a rather delightful little summer rendezvous. Both contain content recorded during completely different chapters (even cities) of my life yet for some reason, when I connected the two, all felt right in the world and I'd even argue it was almost as if they were waiting on the other to be a complete(d) piece. That piece is now viewable in the form of a short titled “Note to Self."

All I will say as a disclaimer is that what it lacks in length I hope it makes up for in honesty, heart and vulnerability as it’s filled from start to finish with a good deal of mine.

Sincerely with Sincerity,

Oscar-[Winning] Short Doc. 'A Girl in the River' Shines Light On Honor Killings – AwardsLine, by Matthew Grobar

“How did Saba Qaiser’s story come to you?

I’d wanted to do a film about honor killings for a while now, but unfortunately all the victims of honor killings are perished—they do not survive. One day I was looking in the newspaper and it said that a girl had been shot and thrown in the river in what appeared to be an attempted honor killing, and that she survived and was in a local hospital. My team and I started tracking the hospital, calling the hospital, and we got permission from the hospital, run by this wonderful doctor who had daughters of his own and was appalled by what had happened to Saba. My team and I arrived just a few days after she had been taken into the hospital.” 

“What does an Oscar nomination do to help spread this message?

An Academy Award for a social justice documentary filmmaker means that the subject that you’re dealing with gets amplified. In this case, we have a real chance to change the laws in Pakistan, so an Academy Award nomination and having the film out there has really affected the national discourse about honor killings in Pakistan. It’s huge to be able to impact that—it’s every filmmaker’s dream to change a law, and I think that here, we have a real chance to do so. I think the nomination has a part to play in that because it’s brought worldwide attention to the film, so for the first time in the country, the Prime Minister came out and said that he would work on honor killings. On Monday, we’re doing the first ever screening of the film in Pakistan at the Prime Minister’s Secretariat, which is his office, and there are people from all walks of life—activists, people from the diplomatic corps, people who work on this issue, and parliamentarians—who are coming together to watch the film, and then see how best to move forward. It’s really a win because here we are, at this step where we are going to be impacting the law, and hopefully saving lives in the future.”  -- Read more.