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Musa Syeed, 23, vividly recalls the first time his parents took him to the movies.
“I was eight years old and we went to see “Malcolm X” by Spike Lee. It was a powerful movie that ingrained the images and experience of African Americans into my mind. The raw visceral level the film produces is what an artist works toward,” he says.
Since that time, Musa has been committed to making movies that reflect his own Kashmiri background while reaching a broader audience. Whether it was the first movie he made on the family camcorder or the sci-fi movie he produced with his brother, he believes his role as a filmmaker is to seek truth and tell the truth.
“I just want to tell the truth about the human experience so you can see what Islam is really about. I don’t want to be pigeon-held or tokenized,” he says. His most recent film, “A Son’s Sacrifice,” was executively produced with his close friend from New York University’s Tisch School, Yoni Brooks.
Despite their different faiths--Brooks is Jewish--they decided to do a film about a halal slaughterhouse not because of a commitment to a specific religious or racial experience but because it’s a coming-of-age story with familiar characters. The story centers on a Puerto Rican Pakistani Muslim young man who is trying to gain the respect of those in the Queens, NY community his father’s slaughterhouse serves.
“’A Son’s Sacrifice’ is universal in the fact it is a father-son story and everyone has a parent or father. A lot of Muslims didn’t want to support the film because they just saw Muslims slaughtering animals but ignored the human element, the story of the family,” says Musa.
The film won Best Documentary Short at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival and premieres on PBS in January 2008.
“I think that when Muslims see a true authentic representation of themselves, it’ll increase their confidence and their place in America.”
Posted November 2007
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