Education
Doha Film Institute has the honor of being supported by many great mentors who help shape our educational and financing initiatives.
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© Brigitte Lacombe
Rahab Elewaly
FILMMAKER & ANIMATION ARTIST
Rahab is an Egyptian-American filmmaker who studied cinema in Cairo - Egypt, …
Read More… majoring in Animation and Fine Arts.
She has worked as an animation artist for Warner Brothers, Fox Searchlight, the Independent Film Channel, MTV and PBS. Rahab co-produced documentaries for BBC London and the Al Jazeera Documentary Channel, directed a variety of arts programs for Arab Radio & Television satellite channel, and worked as a graphic designer for a Microsoft international ad campaign.
Rahab has directed and animated films screened at the Sundance, Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and D.C. Independent film festivals. She won Best Animated Film, Cairo International Film Festival, and was invited by the University of Texas, University of Florida, Northwestern University, and Virginia Commonwealth University to hold animation seminars. Rahab is currently teaching animation workshops for the Doha Film Institute Education Programs in Qatar. -
© Brigitte Lacombe
Ben Robinson
FILMMAKER & SENIOR EDUCATOR
Ben Robinson has been making films since he was 10 years old. Following a busy career in the UK Film ... …
Read More…... and TV industries since the late-90s, he moved to Doha in July 2009 and specializes in teaching Camerawork, Lighting and Directing for 'Genre' Filmmaking techniques (Horror, Sci-Fi, and Action).
In 2006, Ben won the BBC 'Funny Hunt' Award for his TV Comedy Pilot “HOORAY FOR HOLLOWAY!”. In the same year, he Co-Produced and served as Director of Photography on multi-award-winning Short Film “NIGHT OF THE HELL HAMSTERS”.
In 2008, he shot and directed the behind-the scenes documentary coverage for Terry Gilliam’s “IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS”. In the same year, he Co-Produced Horror Anthology “HORRORSHOW” with Horror legend Norman J. Warren (HORROR PLANET), and his Horror-Comedy Shorts “SLASH HIVE” and “NEON KILLER” were Official Short Film Selections at: 19th Horror and Fantasy Film Festival in San Sebastien; Channel 4 Frightfest in Glasgow and London; and Phoenix Fear Festival, Arizona.
2012 will see the premiere of Ben’s ambitious Science-Fiction Comedy Short “COSMIC PHOENIX”, which he wrote and directed in Qatar over the last 12 months with students from his Mythology Lab; which ran successfully throughout 2011 at DFI (and received coverage in Variety Arabia). “COSMIC PHOENIX” is an Arabic-language production featuring over 105 complex Visual Effects shots; and crewed entirely by DFI students and actors.
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Justin Kramer
FILMMAKER & SENIOR EDUCATOR
Justin Kramer was born in New Jersey. He started his love for filmmaking in Philadelphia PA …
Read More… and eventually ended up in Brooklyn NY for 6 years before moving to Doha.
In New York, he started the independent film production company, Elwood Gentry Productions LLC. Through his company he worked for television and film companies including HBO, MTV, VH1, AMC and CNN. He worked on shows such as The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Vh1 Hip Hop Honors, Fashion Rocks, and CNN Heroes.
His cinematography has been seen in numerous award winning short films, television shows, feature documentaries, and commercials.
Justin continues to direct music videos as well as produce live music films for bands, most recently working with Portugal the Man and The Avett Brothers.
His current projects include a documentary feature film currently in production in Cairo, Egypt as well as developing 2 narrative feature film scripts. -
Jackie Salloum
ARTIST & FILMMAKER
Jackie Reem Salloum is a New York based artist and filmmaker. Drawing on her Palestinian and Syrian roots …
Read More… her pop-infused work focuses on challenging the stereotypes of Arabs in the media. She has directed several shorts exploring this issue, including Planet of the Arabs, which received the International Editing Award at the 2005 CinemaTexas Film Festival and was an official selection the 05’ Sundance Film Festival. After receiving her MFA from New York University, Salloum began directing her first feature length documentary Slingshot Hip Hop. Five years in the making it made its premiere at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival-Documentary Competition. Salloum’s work is also the basis of a youth education program on Palestine, and she frequently speaks at universities and conferences internationally.
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Köken Ergun
VIDEO ARTIST
Born in Istanbul, in 1976, Köken Ergun studied acting at the Istanbul University …
Read More… and completed his postgraduate diploma degree in Classics at King's College London, followed by an MA degree in Visual Communication Design at the Bilgi University. After working with American theatre director Robert Wilson, Ergun became involved more with contemporary art, specifically video and performance. He has exhibited internationally at institutions including Platform Garanti (Istanbul), KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Arts (Helsinki), Sparwasser HQ (Berlin), Digital ArtLab (Tel Aviv), Museum of Contemporary Arts Taipei, Casino Luxembourg, Art in General (New York), and Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam. His video works are also screened at film festivals, including Oberhausen, Rotterdam, Sydney and Zagreb Film Festivals. He is the 2007 recipient of the Tiger Award of the Rotterdam Film Festival for his short film The Flag.
Ergun’s video works are included in public/museum collections such as Centre Pompidou (Paris) and Greek National Museum of Contemporary Art (Athens).
Along with Clemens von Wedemeyer, Hito Steyerl, Yael Bartana and Guy Ben Ner he is the founding member of AFAVA, Artists’ Film and Video Association.
He is currently writing his PhD thesis in a joint research at the Istanbul University Theatre Department (Prof. Dikmen Gürün) and Interart Graduate College of the Freie Universitat, Berlin, (Prof. Erika Fischer-Lichte).
Ergun teaches at the International Art Academy Palestine, in Ramallah.
For more information on Ergun's work, click here. -
© Brigitte Lacombe
Ashraf Farah
ACTOR
Celebrated for his leading role in Najwa Al Najjar’s award winning Palestinian film …
Read More…Pomegranates and Myrrh, Ashraf Farah’s extensive film, television and theatre credits are testimony to his talent and versatility.
Born in Haifa, Ashraf graduated from the renowned Nissan Nativ acting studio before launching into an extraordinary career that has seen his considerable skills showcased in such prestigious films as God’s Soil Box and Moses; while his theatre performances have included key roles in Of Soil and Crimson, Antar Ben Shaddad, King Ferdinand and Truth and Reconciliation Commission, along with many more major productions throughout the region.
Most recently, Ashraf’s talent has gained him roles in the new Julian Schnabel movie, Miral, and in what is un-derstood to be the biggest historical TV series in the Arab World this year, Balkis. -
Lee Delong
Actress
After four years of theatrical studies at West Virginia University, Lee continued to study acting and …
Read More…voice privately in New York City with the late Clyde Vinson. Arriving in Paris in 1985, Lee rounded off her studies with two years at Jacques Lecoq’s l’ Ecole Internationale du Theatre. Lee subsequently returned to study in Lecoq’s Laboratoire des Etudes de Mouvement. Other studies include Clown and Writing for Clown with Alain Gautre, Commedia dell’ Arte with Carlo Bosso, Meetings at Bouffes du Nord with Peter Brook and Jean-Claude Carriere.
Before moving to France, Lee played in over thirty different performances in West Virginia, Illinois and New York City, two of which were her own creations, The Moon and A Woman and Another Woman. In Paris with the Company Espeho, of which she was a founding member, Lee created The Snow Queen, which toured all over France and the former Yugoslavia. Lee worked for five years with the Company ACT, touring eight different performances for young public, and creating for them her fourth creation, Sailing With Kipling. In 1990, Lee returned to Mostar, Bosnia to create the musical performance, Ne, with Darko Rudek, Sanda Hrzic, Sonia Savic and the Mostar Youth Theatre.
For the Company Quarks, of which Lee was artistic director, she created her fifth piece, Frieda’s Flight which played in the Avignon Festival, in Stuttgart and in Atlanta during the Olympic Games (1996). From 1994 – 1996, with the Company Quarks, Lee directed a project at the Academy of Dramatic and Cinematic Arts, Bosnia’s National Academy in Sarajevo, where she taught movement (movement to music, hero and chorus, the great emotions) and theatrical clown. At the end of the war, with the graduating students of the Academy in 1996, Lee created Macblettes, which also played in Atlanta during the Olympic Games at the 7 Stages Theatre, as well as in Sarajevo.
Lee has also conducted workshops in Charleville-Mezieres and Paris, France. With her students in Charleville-Mezieres, Lee created Myrmepolis, using giant puppets, stilt walkers, clowns and a 30-piece salsa band. This performance was played at the closing ceremonies of the Charleville-Mezieres International Puppetry Festival, 1997.
In Sligo, Ireland, Lee conducted clown workshops with youth from difficult neighborhoods, joining them finally with the Sligo Youth Theatre to perform at Sligo’s Factory Theatre. Lee also gave Master Classes in Theatrical Clown at Trinity College, Dublin, during the Fringe Festival where she was performing a new Irish piece, directed by Bob Meyer, The Three-Legged Fool at Andrew’s Lane Theatre.
Also in Ireland, Lee wrote and directed Strange Glove, a comic duo loosely inspired from The Maids, which toured 21 cities in Ireland. Lee has been seen on-stage in Dublin, Cork, Galway, and other Irish cities performing with the Gare St. Lazare Players: Marie and Bruce by Wallace Shawn under the direction of Bob Meyer, and Worstword Ho by Samuel Beckett under the direction of Judy Hegarty-Lovett. Worstward Ho also performed at Bard College in New York State and in Paris at the Irish Cultural Center.
Lee has also worked with the Dorianne Moretus Company, Paris, on two different creations: Butterfly Blues and Bubble Bee Bzz, both of which toured Belgium and France extensively. These performances were a particular type of dance/theatre/creation fusion, invented by Dorianne Moretus.
With the Bathyscaphe Theatre Company, Paris, Lee has performed two of Marius Von Meyenburg’s pieces, Visage de Feu (Fireface) and l’Enfant Froid (Cold Child) which played in French National Theatres as well as at the Theatre de la Bastille, under the direction of Michael Serre.
Lee has recently been giving many of her clown workshops: for students from the various Academies in Bosnia; for professional actors organized by Jasmila Zbanic (Grbavica – winner of the Golden Bear, Berlin 2007); for students organized by Studenski Center and Circusanti in Zagreb; for Terra na Boca in Porto; for Doha Film Institute in Qatar. Lee was also acting coach on Jamila Zbanic’s new movie, On the Path and will coach Jasmila’s new film, *Love Island*.
For her one-woman show, *A Woman Alone*, by Dario Fo and Franca Rame, Lee was awarded the ‘best actress’ and the ‘public choice’ awards at MESS International Theatre Festival, 2007, in Sarajevo. *A Woman Alone* was also awarded the Mravac award in Mostar, Bosnia in 2009 for mastery in acting. This performance was originally created at the Theatre du Chaudron, la Cartoucherie, Paris, in 2003 under the direction of Bob Meyer.
On the silver screen, Lee has been directed by the late Phillip de Broca, by Patrice Lecomte, Christian Vincent, James Ivory, James Cahill, Luc Beraud, Chantal Hebert, Fabrice Cazaneuve, Julie Delpy and Luc Besson. For Besson, Lee played Mrs. Kerman in Arthur and the Invisibles and Arthur and the Revenge of Malthazard, where she had the honor to share the screen with Mia Farrow.
Extracts of Lee’s work can be viewed at www.myspace.com/delonglee http://www.volume57.com/volume57/actors/result.php and http://almacis.fr/top/Lee.DELONG.
On YouTube, see a short film (parts 1 & 2) of Lee’s clown workshops in Sarajevo organized by Deblokada…go to YouTube, Lee Delong, Sarajevo. -
Ahmed Atef
Filmmaker
Ahmed Atef is one of the innovative voices in Arab cinema. …
Read More…His feature films Omar 2000 and AL GHABA have been labeled one of the most courageous talent of his generation as said by several festivals and film magazines like Variety. His 10 documentaries and 3 feature films have been presented in more than 50 festivals worldwide such as Cannes and Rotterdam etc. Eager for knowledge and training, he received a BA from High Cinema Institute in Egypt and pursued courses in important film institutes in Europe and the UD, such as Berlinale, Eave and UCLA. He then study at the Master degree program of University of Southern California at Hollywood. He’s also a film critic for the prominent daily newspaper AL AHRAM and published several books among them his book of poetry BENT AL KHER. He’s also a former expert for the European commission and former director for several festivals like Ismaili and Cairo. He has also been a jury member in many festivals like Clermont Ferrand, Milan, Tangiers, Tehran and Carthage.
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Ula Tabari
Filmmaker
Ula Tabari is a Palestinian filmmaker, born in Nazareth, 1970, but currently based in Paris. …
Read More…She entered the world of art by pursuing her academic studies in theatre and visual arts, which eventually led her to the world of film. The mix of different media became her fertile source of work. In films and artistic production, she gathers different experiences and perspectives through acting, casting, dialogue coaching for fiction films, assisting in direction and production she had the chance to work with foremost film directors like Steven Spielberg, Olivier Assayas and Elie Suleiman, Michel Khleifi, Eyal Sivan…