Ian Iqbal Rashid
Ian Iqbal Rashid (born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania) is a poet, screenwriter and film maker.
In his early childhood, his family were forced to leave Tanzania. After failing to secure asylum in the UK and US, they settled in Canada. In the late 1980s, Rashid was a regular contributor to the Canadian LGBT magazine Rites, published the poetry collection Black Markets, White Boyfriends and Other Acts of Elision, and made the short documentary film Bolo Bolo!.[1] The film, part of an HIV/AIDS educational series called The AIDS Cable Project, resulted in the series being pulled from Rogers Television after complaints about sexually suggestive content.[2]
In the early 1990s, Rashid returned to London, Britain, where he lives today with his partner, the writer and curator Peter Ride.
Touch of Pink, his first feature film, spent 12 years in development.[3] In 2003 he finally had the chance to direct the project as a Canada-UK co-production. It premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival to great acclaim,[4] a bidding war, and eventually, a sale to Sony Picture Classics.
How She Move received a similar reception at Sundance Film Festival. Directed by Rashid in 2006/7, the film is set in the world of step dancing. It was nominated for a Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury Prize and purchased by Paramount Vantage. The film opened to great reviews [5][6][7] and strong box office: another indie success story to emerge from Sundance.
Rashid's next feature project is American English. The film, a comedy, is written by Rashid and will be produced by The King's Speech's Oscar-winning producers Iain Canning and Emile Sherman alongside Christina Piovesan, producer of Amreeka and The Whistleblower.[8] He is also developing two television series for North America with Sienna Films, the producers of Touch of Pink and How She Move as well as creating an historical miniseries set in East Africa for Sonar Entertainment.
Self-taught as a film-maker, Rashid began his career in the late 1990s, working as a writer in UK television. His credits include the soap, London Bridge (Carlton Television for ITV), and the cult hit BBC2 series This Life for which he received the Writer's Guild of England award. Rashid has written two award-winning short films, Surviving Sabu (1999, Arts Council of England) and Stag (2001, BBC Films).
He wrote and read his short story "Muscular Bridges" for BBC Radio 4's HMS Windrush Anniversary. For BBC's Woman's Hour Programme, Rashid wrote and directed Leaving Normal, a comedy serial about gay adoption starring Imelda Staunton and Meera Syal.[9]
Rashid has written three award-winning books of poetry. The most recent is The Heat of Yesterday. His poems "Another Country", "Could Have Danced All Night", "Hot Property" and "Early Dinner, Weekend Away" appear in John Barton and Billeh Nickerson's 2007 anthology Seminal: The Anthology of Canada's Gay Male Poets.[10]
He has also curated film programmes and exhibitions for venues such as the National Film Theatre, the Institute of Contemporary Arts and Experimenta.
Amongst many awards and festival prizes, Rashid has received the Aga Khan Award for Excellence in the Arts.[citation needed] Ian was selected as one of 2010's Breakthrough Brits on the prestigious UK Film Council (BFI) programme.
References
- ↑ Ian Iqbal Rashid at the Queer Media Database.
- ↑ "Rogers drops AIDS show". The Globe and Mail, March 27, 1991.
- ↑ Murray, Rebecca. Jimi Mistry on Touch of Pink About.com, undated.
- ↑ Honeycutt, Kirk.Touch of Pink Hollywood Reporter, January 21, 2004.
- ↑ Seitz Zoller, Matt. Dance, Fight, Laugh, Cry and Read Great Literature The New York Times, January 25, 2008.
- ↑ Denby, David. Young and Restless: How She Move and The Witnesses The New Yorker, February 4, 2008.
- ↑ Anderson, John. How She Move The Washington Post, January 25, 2008.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Rashid, Ian Iqbal. Leaving Normal: a new comedy about gay adoption BBC Radio 4 Blog, June 7, 2010
- ↑ John Barton and Billeh Nickerson, eds. Seminal: The Anthology of Canada's Gay Male Poets. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2007. ISBN 1551522179.
External links
- Ian Iqbal Rashid on IMDb
- Articles with unsourced statements from September 2011
- British film directors
- British male screenwriters
- British television writers
- British poets
- 20th-century Canadian poets
- Canadian screenwriters
- Canadian male poets
- Canadian film directors
- Gay writers
- LGBT directors
- LGBT writers from Canada
- LGBT writers from the United Kingdom
- Living people
- 1971 births
- Canadian writers of Asian descent
- LGBT poets
- British male writers
