Ruhi Hamid

Ruhi Hamid is a British filmmaker, born in Tanzania of Asian origin, who has made award-winning documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4, Al Jazeera International, and other UK, US and European broadcasters. Her films have covered international stories — in Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, the USA, and the Middle East — dealing with social and political issues about women religion, poverty, health, and human rights.[1] A graduate of London's Royal College of Art, she is also a graphic designer.[2]

Biography

Early years

Ruhi Hamid was born in Mwanza, Tanzania, to Asian parents,[3] and moved to England at the age of 12.[2] After earning a BA in Information Graphics from Middlesex Polytechnic in 1980, she attended London's Royal College of Art, and on graduating worked as a graphic designer: in the Netherlands with the influential Studio Dumbar,[2] in Zimbabwe as part of a collective of young black designers and photographers, the Maviyane Project, and in London at the BBC for several years.[4][5]

Film career

She began her filmmaking career with the BBC's Community Programme Unit on the BAFTA award-winning series Video Diaries and Video Nation,[6] before leaving in May 2000 to work as a freelance producer/director.[7] For her debut as a freelance, she gained unprecedented access to the Pakistani criminal courts to make the three-part Channel 4 series Lahore Law (2002), which was nominated for a Grierson Award.[7] Specialising as a solo director/camerawoman, often at significant personal risk,[8] she went on to make other well regarded films for the BBC, Channel 4, Arte and Al Jazeera International, including Women and Islam (2004), The Rockstar and the Mullahs (2003),[4] and Women, Weddings, War and Me (featuring Nelufar Hedayat, 2010).[9][10] Hamid has also collaborated with prominent broadcasters including Jonathan Dimbleby and BBC Three's Reggie Yates.[11]

Her films have been described as "informative journeys into the world of people and their cultures",[5] her projects having included documentaries about the Hmong people trapped in the jungle of Laos[12] (she filmed the first ever footage of their plight and went on to campaign on their behalf at the United Nations, the US State Department and at the EU Commission in Brussels),[8][13] farmers in China, New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,[3] gang crime and violence in Cape Flats, South Africa,[6] and At the Epicentre, a film on the aftermath of the Asian tsunami in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, that won the Rory Peck Award in 2005.[4][14] She has also campaigned through video for greater awareness of people with HIV/AIDS in rural India.[3]

According to ESPN,

"Hamid's empathy and gift for understanding the ordinary person has enabled her to gain access to peoples, cultures and institutions around the world, including the Amazonian Indians, Shamans in the Siberian forests, refugees in Uganda, women in Afghanistan and the British Foreign & Commonwealth office in Pakistan. Hamid is able to work with children and old people alike and turn her skills to more populist programmes working with rock stars, untried and professional presenters and celebrities like Michael Palin on a film about transport, explorer Benedict Allen, newscaster Samira Ahmed, the food writer and broadcaster Stefan Gates and more recently a film in a three-part series on Africa with Jonathan Dimbleby.
Hamid's interest lies primarily in telling intimate human stories of people caught up in complex political or social conditions in our world today. She has a talent for gaining the trust and collaboration of those sensitive and suspicious of the media.... Her documentaries are always character driven with strong narratives."[7]

Together with her partner Misha Maltsev, also a film and music professional, she runs Partisan Films.[15][4]

Selected filmography
YearTitleDuration
2015Reggie Yates: Race Riots USA(60 mins)[16]
2015Mexico's Baby Business, Unreported World(60 mins)[17]
2015Reggie Yates' Extreme Russia: Teen Model Factory(60 mins)[18]
2014Pharmageddon(60 mins)
2013Reggie Yates's Extreme South Africa: Knife Crime ER(55 mins)[19]
2013Return to Somalia: Aliya's Story(30 mins)
2013L'Arbitre(08 mins)
2012An African Journey with Jonathan Dimbleby(60 mins)[20]
2011Breaking into Britain, Panorama(60 mins)[21]
2010Women, Weddings, War and Me(60 mins)
2010Child Slavery
2007Inside a Shariah Court(59 mins)
2006The Hurricane That Shook America
2006The Governor, Back to School & Looking Good
2005At the Epicentre - Post Tsunami Aceh' ' (50 mins)
2005Living Positive
2005It's My Country Too: Muslim Americans(58 mins)[22]
2004Frontlines Laos(30 mins)[23]
2004 Women and Islam: Islam Unveiled(88 mins)[24]
2003The Rock Star and the Mullahs(56 mins)[25][26]
2000Lahore Law: A Suitable Husband, Episode 3(50 mins)
2000Lahore Law: Illicit Affair, Episode 2(50 mins)
2000Lahore Law: Murder at the Shrine, Episode 1(50 mins)
1999The Bones of Colonel Fawcett

Awards

References
  1. "Ruhi Hamid (British)", 2014 Finalists, Rory Peck Awards.
  2. Carole Enahoro, ": War is backward: Ruhi Hamid--graphic artist", Women Artists Slide Library Journal, Issue 30, October–November 1989.
  3. "About the director", Brooklyn Film Festival, 2007.
  4. "The Rockstar & the Mullahs + Live Performance by DJ HERETIC — Ruhi Hamid", t2f.
  5. "Hamid Ruhi", International Journalism Festival.
  6. "Ruhi Hamid", Independent Journalism 101.
  7. "L'Arbitre | About Ruhi Hamid", ESPN, 5 July 2011.
  8. "Ruhi Hamid, film maker, LondonR, Redhotcurry.com.
  9. Tom Sutcliffe, "Last Night's Television - The Delicious Miss Dahl, BBC2; Women, Weddings, War and Me, BBC3", The Independent, 24 March 2010.
  10. "Women, Weddings, War and Me (2010)", BFI.
  11. "Ruhi Hamid" at The Talent Manager.
  12. "Human Rights Forgotten - The Hmong people, Laos — Interview with documentary maker Ruhi Hamid", Amnesty International UK, 25 May 2004.
  13. "Human Rights in Cambodia, Laos & Vietnam", Report prepared by Forum Asia Democracy for the Hearing on Cambodia, Laos & Vietnam. European Parliament Subcommittee on Human Rights, Brussels, 12 September 2005, p. 5.
  14. Kate Losowsky, "Rewarding the work of freelances", Newswatch / About BBC News, 1 November 2005.
  15. Ruhi Hamid at LinkedIn.
  16. "Reggie Yates: Race Riots USA", BBC Three, 22 October 2015.
  17. "Mexico's Baby Business", Unreported World, Channel . Quicksilver Media.
  18. "Teen Model Factory", Reggie Yates' Extreme Russia, BBC Three.
  19. "Knife Crime ER", BBC Three, 10 July 2015.
  20. "An African Journey with Jonathan Dimbleby: Episode 2", BBC Two, 20 August 2012.
  21. "Breaking into Britain", Panorama, BBC One, 16 June 2011.
  22. "It's My Country Too", This World, BBC Two, 11 March 2005.
  23. "Wires from the front line: Laos", BBC News, 18 May 2004.
  24. "Women and Islam: Islam Unveiled ", Educational Media Reviews Online.
  25. Umber Khairi, "When the rock star met the mullah", BBC News, 15 December 2003.
  26. Jon Pareles, "TELEVISION REVIEW; A Rock Star's Struggle Where Militant Islam Rules", The New York Times, 17 July 2003.
  27. "The Rock Star and the Mullahs: Cultural Tensions within Pakistan", Films Media Group.
  28. "The Grierson Awards 2010: Shortlist", The Grierson Trust.
  29. "International line-up of Rory Peck finalists show us why freelance journalists deserve recognition, support and protection", Sony UK, 10 September 2014.
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