Sara Ishaq

Sara Ishaq is a Scottish-Yemeni film maker. Ishaq was born on 29 May 1984 in Edinburgh, before moving back to Yemen at the age of two. She grew up in Sana’a, Yemen until the age of 17. She returned to Edinburgh to complete her education, only to return to Yemen a decade later and produce the critically acclaimed film Karama Has No Walls (2012).[1] The short film was nominated for the BAFTA Scotland New Talents, One World Media awards and for an Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject). In 2013, she completed her first feature film The Mulberry House,[2] which deals with her relationship with her Yemeni family against the backdrop of the country’s 2011 revolution.[3]

Sara Ishaq
Born29 May 1984
Edinburgh
NationalityScottish-Yemeni
Alma materYemen Modern School
Linlithgow Academy
University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh College of Art
Occupationfilm maker

Education

Sara Ishaq attended Yemen Modern School (YMS) until the summer of 2001. At the age of 17, she continued her education at Linlithgow Academy in Scotland for a year of high school (2001-2002) before her higher education. Ishaq then joined University of Edinburgh in 2003, where she obtained her MA (Honours) in Humanities and Social Sciences, with a focus on religious studies, social and political theory, International & Human Rights Law & Modern Middle Eastern Studies in 2007.

She returned to academia in 2010 to pursue an MFA in Film Directing from Edinburgh College of Art that she finished in 2012.

Humanitarian Pursuits

In 2011, Ishaq co-founded the #SupportYemen[4] Media Collective, an organizing and strategizing effort to advance social justice, build a democratic civic state, promote non-violence and break the silence on human rights violations in Yemen. At the headquarters in 2015, Ishaq co-devised and taught a two-week documentary-making film course called "Comra". Comra was targeted at young Yemini aspiring filmmakers. Adjacently, there was a 4-day Arts & Crafts workshop called 'Out of the Rubble' for children that had survived airstrikes.[5]

Between 2012 – 2013, Sara Ishaq was a member of the interventions team with OpAntiSh (Operations Anti Sexual Harassment), an effort to patrol the protests at Tahrir Square against organized sexual assaults on women.

Her earliest and most prolonged humanitarian pursuit occurred between 2009 and 2016, teaching rehabilitative yoga classes at the Nablus Women's Centre while volunteering with Project Hope (Palestine), as well as various studios across Cairo (Egypt), focusing on women suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In 2015 Ishaq was barred from entering Palestine to participate in the Palestine Festival of Literature and banned for another 5 years.[6][7]

Awards and grants

The Mulberry House (2013)

  • IDFA BERTHA Fund
  • AFAC Crossroads Fund
  • Jury Prize at This Human World Film Festival in Vienna
  • Audience Favourite Award at Berwick Film Festival UK

Karama Has No Walls (2012)

  • Nominations for Academy Award for Best Short Film 2014,
  • One World Media Award 2013
  • BAFTA Scotland New Talents Award 2012
  • Winner of 5 International Film Awards including Al-Jazeera TV Documentary Award & United Nations Association Film Festival Award

Filmography
  • 2013 The Mulberry House (Feature Documentary). Role: Director/Co-producer
  • 2012 Karama Has No Walls (Short Documentary). Role: Director/Producer
  • 2012 Marie My Girl (Short Drama). Role: Director

Television credits

  • 2007 Women in Black - BBC 2. Role: Location Coordinator/Researcher/Translator.
  • 2011 Yemen Uprising - BBC Newsnight & Our World Episodes. Role: Assistant Director/Camera Operator
  • 2012 Entrepreneurial Tribal Women – Media Trust. Role: Assistant Director/ Location Coordinator/Translator
  • 2013 Yemeni Child Prisoners On Death Row - Channel Four Unreported World. Role: Local Producer/Translator
  • 2016-2017 BBC Our World. Role: Documentary Development and Research

References
  1. http://oscar.go.com/nominees
  2. "The Mulberry House". www.themulberryhouse-doc.com.
  3. Robson, editors, Gabrielle Kelly, Cheryl (2014). Celluloid Ceiling. ; 21st Century Female Film Directors. Aurora Metro Publications Limited. p. 363. ISBN 9780956632906.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
  4. Break the Silence. "Support Yemen". SupportYemen. Retrieved 2016-11-28.
  5. "How art helped these children traumatised by war". British Council.
  6. "Yemeni Oscar nominee banned from entering Palestine for literature festival". Mada Masr. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016.
  7. "PalFest 2015: Annual Report - Palestinians - Palestinian Territories". Scribd. PalFest.
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