User:A-AhmadA

Autobiography:

I was seven years old when it happened. I was sitting between my father and my brother inside an enormous, dark hall, and my attention was drawn to one of the walls where people were talking and moving in different places, yet strangely never leaving the wall. I was immediately captivated by the entire concept of cinema

The screening was done, and we left the theater, and on the way home I knew that I belonged to that world which existed on that white wall.

Because of security incidents, my family left the Palestinian refugee’s camp in Syria to another one in Lebanon. A few years later the war broke out there. So we had to go back again to Syria, but unfortunately things over there were not good either. And so we left Syria again to Jordan. This was not a strange or an unfamiliar thing to my family after they were forced to leave Palestine in the 1960s. I think those different circumstances of travelling and living in many refugee camps, and the harsh conditions of war impacted me a lot, especially in my perspective outlook in life or in my taste for the type of story which I would like to tell in movies.

In Jordan I enrolled in a university to study directing, and those years spent there were very important to me. I tried to compensate for the lack of materials in that school by keeping myself productive and getting involved in extensive production sets. I participated in more than fifty short student films as a director, or as a writer, or a cinematographer, or as an editor. It was a wonderful and a rich experience to me, and I learned a lot by experimenting and making mistakes. During that time my skill in visualizing stories improved, and I eventually was able to receive the best film prize in the Yrmouk film festival. Therefore, that achievement enabled me after graduation to get an immediate job as a director in a production company in Amman, the capital city of Jordan. That chance was a great opportunity to work in a real industry and interact with professional people, and to work on professional projects as well.

I participated in a variety of projects within different categories such as drama, documentary, commercial advertisements, and music video. During that time I became a member of Jordanian Artist Union. However, I was still yearning to learn more and discover the latest knowledge of this industry, so I traveled to Munich, Germany and joined the Masters of Art program in Media and Theatre at Erlangen University for two years. I improved my skills during the program, particularly the theory side of media, and I had chances to make good connections with some professionals in film industry. When the opportunity came to travel to United Sates to join an MFA program, I did not hesitated, especially after I checked it out carefully and discovered how the curriculum of Motion Pictures and Television at the Academy of Art University combines both theory and practical applications. Up until the present time I have shot four projects, including a short documentary film, and three other narrative short films. One of those films, called Happy Ending, received a prize in the Academy’s Super 8 film festival.