Tala Hadid (born in London) is a film director and producer. She is also a photographer. Her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, The Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis,[1] The Smithsonian National Museum,[2] The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C., L'Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris and other locations.

Tala Hadid
Born
London, England
Occupation(s)Film director and producer; Photographer
Notable work
  • Sacred Poet
  • Windsleepers
  • Itarr el Layl
  • House in the Fields

Early life

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Hadid was born to a Moroccan mother, Kenza Alaoui while her father was Foulath Hadid, an Iraqi writer, and expert on Middle East affairs.[3][4] Her paternal grandfather, the Marxist economist Mohammed Hadid was imprisoned under Saddam Hussein. Her aunt was the noted architect Zaha Hadid.[5][6]

Hadid co-produced and directed her first full-length film while she was studying as an undergraduate at Brown University. The film, Sacred Poet,[7] focuses the lens on the Italian poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini with rare interviews with Laura Betti, Bernardo Bertolucci, Sergio Citti and Ninetto Davoli.

The author of several short films, in 2000 while she was working on a project on the Macedonian Roma community in Naples, Italy, she was awarded a fellowship to study film at the graduate film department at Columbia University in New York City.[8]

Career

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In 2001 she directed Windsleepers, a film set in St Petersburg, Russia, with poets Genya Turovskaya[9] and Vladimir Kucheriavkin.[10]

In 2005 Hadid completed her thesis film, Tes Cheveux Noirs Ihsan. The film, shot in Northern Morocco and in the Rif Mountains, was awarded the 2005 Cinecolor/Kodak Prize and in June 2005 received a Student Academy Award.[11] It has screened at numerous Film Festivals including the New York Film Festival[12] at the Lincoln Center,[13] the Sundance Film Festival,[14] the Rotterdam Film Festival[15] (where it was nominated for a Tiger Award), the Fajr Film Festival in Tehran, the Kyiv International Film Festival,[16] the Sydney Film Festival, the International Film Festival Oberhausen and L'Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. The film went on to win numerous awards including the Global Lens Prize,[17] A BAFTA special mention and a Special Jury Prize and best Actress Award at the Tangiers International Film Festival.[18] In February 2006 the film won the Panorama Best short Film Award [19] at the Berlin Film Festival.

Hadid's work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)[20] in New York City, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis,[21] the Smithsonian National Museum,[22] the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C, L'Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, the Goteberg Kunsthalle in Sweden, the Goethe Institute, Cairo,[23] the Seville Biennale in Spain, the Jonathon Schorr Gallery NYC, the Los Angeles County Museum (LACMA), the Cinémathèque Française in Paris, the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia [24] as well as the Photographer's Gallery [25] in London and the Cinémathèque de Tanger.[26]

In 2010/2011 Hadid worked on an independent project entitled Heterotopia, a series of photographs documenting life in a New York City brothel. In 2012 she was awarded the Peter S Reed Foundation Arts grant[27] in support of her documentary film work in Morocco. In the autumn of 2013 a small volume of a selection of her photographs was published by Stern Fotografie Portfolio series of emerging photographers.[28]

In 2014 Hadid completed work on Itarr el Layl (The Narrow Frame of Midnight), a feature film about a man in search of his missing brother. The main character Zacharia, played by Khalid Abdalla, journeys through Morocco to Turkey and eventually to Iraq during the second Iraq War. The film premiered at the Toronto film Festival[29] and went on to screen at various film festivals and venues, including the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center at the Lincoln Center in New York,[30] the Rome Film Festival,[31] London Film Festival[32] and the Walker Arts Center[33] among other places. The film stars Marie-Josée Croze, Fedwa Boujouane, Hocine Choutri and Hindi Zahra. In early 2015 the film won best film and critics prize at the Tangier National film festival,[34] Jury Prize at Pleins les Yeux in the Netherlands, Credit Agricole Prize in Nice, France and the audience award for Best Narrative feature at the Mizna Film Festival in Minneapolis.[35] In September 2015, Hadid's project House in the Fields was selected to screen as a work-in-progress at the 72nd Venice Biennale International Film Festival where it was awarded two prizes.[36] In February 2017, the film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival where it was nominated for the Glashütte Original Documentary Award.[37] The film was also the recipient of the Commune di Milano Prize for Best Feature Film at the FCAAL Milano Film Festival 2017,[38] the Firebird Award for best Documentary at the Hong Kong International Film Festival 2017,[39] the Fiction/Non Fiction Best Film Award at the Millennium Docs against Gravity International Film Festival in Warsaw 2017,[40] the 2M Grand Prize at FIDADOC 2017, the 2017 John Marshall Award in the US,[41] the Special Jury Prize at the 2018 National Film Festival in Tangiers, and the Grand Prize of the city at the 2018 International Mediterranean Film Festival of Tetouan.[42] In 2019 Hadid photographed and produced the installation project Floodplain based on Tablet XI of Gilgamesh for the 2019 Rabat Biennale.[43] Hadid’s work is part of the Ruben Bentsov Moving Image Collection [44] at the Walker Museum in the US. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.[45]

References

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  1. ^ "Walker Art Center". Walker Art Center.
  2. ^ "Survey - Environmental Film Festival 2019 RSVP - National Museum of Natural History". go.si.edu.
  3. ^ Obituary - 'Foulath Hadid: Writer and expert on Arab affairs' - The Independent 11 October 2012
  4. ^ "Author Page". openDemocracy.
  5. ^ "Independent UK". Independent. 11 October 2012.
  6. ^ [1] Archived 19 August 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  7. ^ "Catalogo - Cineteca di Bologna". www.cinetecadibologna.it.
  8. ^ "Columbia University". Columbia.edu.
  9. ^ "Welcome octopusmagazine.com". Octopusmagazine.com. Retrieved 29 November 2015.
  10. ^ "Selected works". Panrus.com. Retrieved 29 November 2015.
  11. ^ "Columbia news". columbia.edu.
  12. ^ "NYTimes.com Offers Short Films from The New York Film Festival". Creative Planet Network. 15 February 2012.
  13. ^ "Out of focus". out of focus.
  14. ^ Hernandez, Eugene (5 December 2005). "Sundance Unveils Short Film Lineup for '06 Fest".
  15. ^ "Tes cheveux noirs Ihsan | IFFR". iffr.com.
  16. ^ "МОЛОДIСТЬ київський мiжнародний кiнофестиваль". Molodist.com. Retrieved 29 November 2015.
  17. ^ Global Film
  18. ^ "4e festival méditerranéen de Tanger: Le Palmarès de toutes les Surprises , Musique Arabe, Musique marocaine, Musique Rai, Musique POP, Musique RAÏ, MP3, Interview, Actualité du monde de la musique". www.lemaroc.org. Archived from the original on 26 September 2007.
  19. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 4 October 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  20. ^ "Global Lens". www.globalfilm.org.
  21. ^ "Tala Hadid: House in the Fields". walkerart.org.
  22. ^ "EFF at NMNH - National Museum of Natural History". go.si.edu.
  23. ^ "القاهرة - Goethe-Institut Ägypten". www.goethe.de.
  24. ^ "Itar El-Layl / The Narrow Frame of Midnight - Programs – Slought". slought.org.
  25. ^ "Cinémathèque de Tanger: Explorations in Film & Video". The Photographers' Gallery. 19 February 2018.
  26. ^ "The Forum @ Cinémathèque de Tanger". Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V.
  27. ^ "Peter S. Reed 2012". www.petersreedfoundation.com.
  28. ^ Amazon. Stern Gruner & Jahr. January 2013 – via amazon.com.
  29. ^ "Women and Hollywood". women and hollywood.
  30. ^ "HOT-fest-venue | African Film Festival Inc". Archived from the original on 22 April 2016. Retrieved 4 October 2019.
  31. ^ "Getty Images". getty images.
  32. ^ "Tala Hadid - The Narrow Frame of Midnight #LFF". Fred English Channel. 11 October 2014.
  33. ^ "The Narrow Frame of Midnight". walkerart.org.
  34. ^ "Telquel magazine". telquel.
  35. ^ "Mizna Arab Film Festival 2015 | Narrow Frame of Midnight". Retrieved 19 May 2023.
  36. ^ "Variety magazine". Variety. 9 September 2015.
  37. ^ "Berlinale archive". Berlinale.
  38. ^ "Vincitori del Festival del Cinema Africano, d'Asia e America Latina". news.cinecitta.com.
  39. ^ "Hong Kong International Film Festival". HKIFF.
  40. ^ "Millenium Docs against Gravity". archiwum 2017.
  41. ^ "Documentary Educational Resources". DER.
  42. ^ "Mediterranean Audiovisuelle". Mediterranean Audiovisuelle. 13 April 2018.
  43. ^ "Tala Hadid". Biennale de Rabat 2019.
  44. ^ "Fall Season at Walker Cinema Features Chilean Stop-Motion Animation The Wolf House with Filmmaker in Conversation, Djibril Diop Mambéty's Hyenas, Strand Releasing 30th Anniversary Tribute, and More". walkerart.org.
  45. ^ "Eight Columbia Filmmakers Invited to Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences". Columbia - School of the Arts.

General references

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