Portrait

Muhammad and Jane

Muhammad Zeromski, raised in Iraq and Poland, returns to the U.S. after being away for almost a year. The climate he enters is ominous and confused. He meets a woman who calls herself Jane Doe. They share a common fear and are drawn to one another through their paranoia.

Nice Bombs

In Nice Bombs filmmaker Usama Alshaibi returns to Baghdad to reunite with his family after nearly 24 years. This documentary navigates through his unique relationship to an Iraq that is much different than the country of his childhood.

Profane

A young Muslim Dominatrix in the midst of a spiritual crisis.

Allahu Akbar

Rhythm and repetition plays an important role in the animated film Allahu Akbar by Usama Alshaibi. With this film, Alshaibi questions the confrontation between tradition and modernity by drawing inspiration from geometric motives of Islamic art. The artist offers a re-interpretation of these motifs through computer animation. By turning the shapes in different direction, new images are generated, freeing them from their fixed state. Traditional spiritual values feed the present and open up to a modern perspective.

Convulsion Expulsion

An adventure in pornographic surrealism.

Slaughtered Pigtails

A woman is chased across a field by an unseen assailant.

Filmmakers Unite (FU)

Anxiety Art

A young artist in a dark dorm room takes anxieties out of their brain and into their hands.

Soak

Formally, an intriguing depiction of video as forward motion, or as technology of road movies and dreams. Alshaibi intercuts footage of a Southeastern Asian trip with a young man’s venereal disease-influenced fantasies of a strange young woman.

Organ Molly

Usama Alshaibi-directed short film.

Trip Ziggurat

A road trip to a Ziggurat in Colorado sparks connection between Arabs in the state. Filmmaker, Usama Alshaibi, embarks on a journey to the Crestone Ziggurat. His personal pilgrimage intertwines with the stories of other Arabs in Boulder who find ways of bringing their homelands to the state.

American Arab

Iraqi-American filmmaker Usama Alshaibi shares his own story of experiencing racism in post-9/11 America. Showcasing the diversity of Arabs living in the United States, "American Arab" sparks a frank conversation about identity and perception, and argues for giving people "the space to be complicated."

The Apocalyptic Is the Mother of All Christian Theology

A psychedelic portrait of the founding theorist of Christianity, Paul the Apostle. His life, ideology and influence are reconstructed by piecing together 16mm footage, cassettes, animation, and Catholic liturgical music.

Gash

An experimental film focusing on the writhing form of Katinka.

Crying

Close-up of a woman crying.

Spoiled

Usama Alshaibi-directed short film.