Kaleem aftab biography for kids
Exploring contemporary Pakistani youth
Slackistan might be one of the wackiest titles of the year, but it perfectly describes Hammad Khan's debut film about slackers in Islamabad. Paying homage to Richard Linklater's seminal Slacker, Khan depicts a group of middle-class kids a year after graduating from college who realise their dreams and aspirations are unlikely to be fulfilled.
The easy analysis would be that this is just because Islamabad affords little in the way of opportunity, but Khan's clever movie posits that the problem might just be the attitude of the protagonists. Their feelings of alienation and dissatisfaction, he suggests, are shared by twentysomethings throughout the world. The movie feels like it's part of the American independent scene rather than anything cinematically that has come out of Pakistan.
It could be argued that the quirky ticks of the characters can upon occasion be seen in the writer-director Khan. The 34-year-old was born in Pakistan before moving to England, aged three, after his father had to flee the country after opposing the military dictatorship.
"I grew up in exile and couldn't go back for 11 years," says Khan, who is based in London. "I grew up with Pakistan being a fantasy-land that I wanted to go back to; then I went back and fell in love with it."
The principal protagonist Hasan, who delivers a lethargic, funny voiceover, dreams about becoming a movie director. Khan admits that this, like many other aspects of the story, comes straight from his own biography. "I was living there when I was 21 and really wanted to do something worthwhile while I was there - and that is really the case for many people. They want to do something; they all have dreams and aspirations. In my day, the difference was that the internet wasn't so advanced and we were a little bit behind the times, so the scene where he tries to rent Mean Streets from a DVD store was based on my own frustration from back in the day."
What Khan was als Features correspondent How does the portrayal of 'The King' in Baz Luhrmann's new biopic compare to the reality? Kaleem Aftab explores the complex debate around Presley, civil rights and cultural appropriation, or assimilation. Baz Luhrmann's Elvis, which was released last week, is an immensely entertaining look at the life and times of Elvis Presley, made with all the razzmatazz and whiplash-inducing camera pans that one would expect from the acclaimed director of Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge. The story is narrated from the perspective of Elvis's manager Colonel Tom Parker, played by Tom Hanks. Parker is portrayed as an unreliable narrator, who helped Elvis go from a poor background to become the "King of rock 'n' roll". More like this: - 'A hyperactive sensory overload' - Inside Kate Bush's alternate world - The music embedded in our psyches Hanks's Parker is a savvy businessman who, alongside Sam Phillips (Josh McConville) of Sun Records, sees in Elvis a musician who can bring rock 'n' roll, a sound developing in black underground clubs, to the mainstream US. Warning: This article contains language some readers may find offensive Luhrmann shows how Elvis turned songs – including Hound Dog, initially performed by Big Mama Thornton, and Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's blues classic That's All Right – into Billboard chart hits. Elvis was renowned as a white singer who "sounded black". Commentators at the time said that he borrowed some of his infamous performance techniques from black musicians; his gyrating hips became the talk of the nation earning him the nickname Elvis the Pelvis. Austin Butler uncannily emulates Presley in a performance likely to make the actor a household name. The film port with Kaleem Aftab Film criticism is not only a description of the latest film in cinema and how the journalist evaluates it, it can rather be understood as an important contribution to open a dialogue, for the audience as well as for the filmmaker him/herself. NUFF is an important arena for this dialogue. The British film critic Kaleem Aftab will arrange a seminar where he explains film from his perspective of film criticism. This seminar will develop into a series of Q&A’s with films and their young filmmakers selected from the NUFF film competition and culminate in a Q&A session with the professional Danish-Palestinian filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel in connection with a screening of his short-films. 2 young film students from Al Kalima University in Bethlehem will particularly follow this process and contribute with their experience as young filmmakers under the situation of occupation in Palestine. Kaleem Aftab is a film producer, writer and critic of 19 years standing. Internationally renowned for conducting engaging interviews, observing cinema trends and populating film festivals, He is an engaging, critical and inimitable feature of the film world with an international fan base. Mr. Aftab authored the official Spike Lee biography, That’s My Story and I’m Sticking To It. The seminar will aim on the importance of film criticism, how and why we criticise film the way we do. What is important when evaluating a film, and how should you as a filmmaker handle criticism? Is there a right or a wrong way of criticising film? And why do film reconcile different with different audiences? The seminar will take about a Features correspondent Two decades ago, a transgender sex worker-turned-novelist became a sensation – but he didn’t exist. As a new film about the con is released, Kaleem Aftab meets the person behind it. From pseudonyms to fanciful memoirs, the literary world has always been full of deceptions. But the most brazen, bewildering and bombastic hoodwinking of them all is surely that of JT LeRoy, the transgender HIV-positive teen who, at the turn of the millennium, became a worldwide sensation with his apparently semi-autobiographical novels dealing with childhood abuse, broken families, and sex work. As emerged in late 2005, LeRoy’s books were in fact the work of a middle-aged US author named Laura Albert - who was not HIV positive, transgender, or a sex worker. In turn, she had asked her then sister-in-law Savannah Knoop (pronounced Ka-noop) to don a peroxide wig, fedora hat and dark sunglasses to pose as the author in public and for media appearances, including on the cover of several renowned magazines. More like this: - Ten books to read this April - Is it time to rewrite fairy tales? - Ten films to watch this April To make matters more convoluted, Albert would accompany LeRoy on public appearances as his British assistant Speedie. Everywhere, that is, except the UK, where, likely worried that her English accent wouldn’t cut it, she instead appeared by LeRoy’s side as his childhood friend Emily Frasier. LeRoy was regularly photographed out with Hollywood’s great and good, travelled the world on book tours, and graced the Cannes red carpet for a film adaptation of his novel The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things in 2004. A bizarre interview Looking back, it seems preposterous that they could pull this hoax off so publicly. Yet I was one of the very people they duped up close – in fact, in April 2005, I conducted one of the last Who was the real Elvis Presley?
With this project we expand our work for the first time in this direction. We want the young participants coming from diverse cultural backgrounds to increase their range and competency in discussions with professional film critics and other filmmakers. We anticipate an enrichment especially against the background of politically motivated films.JT LeRoy: The US's greatest literary scam