Park City,USA

“You know Eyad gave me the best piece of direction I had ever received,” I was sitting with Ian Tran who played Fasiq in the The Taqwacores movie. It was near the end of the week at Sundance and the house was just about empty. Ian and Volkan Eryaman, who plays Amazing Ayyub, were waiting for their ride to take them to the airport.

Miami,USA

Tell the average American that football has nothing to do with outrageously beautiful women, and he’ll scoff. With their cheerleaders, supermodel wives, and “lingerie leagues,” football teams have always managed [...]

Mumbai,India

Richard Bona sang everyone into a melodic high (especially his Bona-fied fans) at Blue Frog for his album launch – Ten Shades of Blue, presented by Carslberg last week. I [...]

New Brunswick,Canada

There are going to be a lot of languages spoken at this weekend’s Winter Olympics. And since we’re in Canada, of course one of them will be Chiac — a [...]

Park City,USA

“You played Amazing Ayyub exactly how I pictured it in my head,” I said to Volkan Eryaman. His character is the wild, tweaking, half naked misfit with a tattoo of “Karbala” around his neck. In the movie he looks like he is constantly on something, and ready to run at a moment’s notice.

Park City,USA

Since I was at Sundance with a punk entourage and to promote the punk movie The Taqwacores, I thought it only would make sense that I check out the other punk movies in the running at Sundance 2010.

Park City,USA

As the lights dimmed down for the world premiere of The Taqwacores, there was a uproar of cheers and clapping. My heart flip flopped like mad. I was sitting between Marwan of Al-Thawra and Imran of The Kominas. But beyond them, I was surrounded by The Taqwacores family.

Vancouver,Canada Vancouver,Canada

I was lucky enough to be living in Beijing during the Olympics in ‘08, and there I learned a very important lesson… The Olympics Are Not About Sports. They Are About Parties. This might be a shock to some of your systems. So I’ll explain: Probably all you see of the games are what’s broadcast on TV: too-clean races, interrupted by nasal announcers. So if you don’t really care about Sports, all you’ve got to entertain you are the team costumes that came prancing out during Opening Ceremonies than in anything the athletes did.

Park City,USA

I was sitting at the Filmmakers Lodge on Main St. at Sundance, and across from me was the pretty Gingger Shankar. I had been introduced to her by the team at Rukus Avenue label who insisted that we connect at Sundance. Gingger was a musician, not a filmmaker, and she has been involved with Sundance since 2007 when she got into Sundance Institutes Composers Lab.

Miami,USA

Last night I joined a slew of Americans and hunkered down for a tradition: Watching the Super Bowl. The beloved football finals are the country’s must-see-TV event, surpassing the ratings [...]

Park City,USA

With The Kominas, Al Thawra, and The Taqwacores cast members in tow, the first Saturday night of Sundance we snuck in our entire posse into DJ Rekhas party. DJ Rekha is well known in the Desi bhangra circuit and the founder of Basement Bhangra. I ran up to DJ Rekha after I got in she was spinning hot bhangra beats on the turntables.

Park City,USA

You know you’ve made it big when you are on Oprah. Allright, so The Taqwacores wasn’t on Oprah, exactly. It was the radio show the Derrick Ashong Experience that was premiering on Oprah’s Sirius network channel that day. The Taqwacores entourage followed Eyad Zahra and Mike Knight to the basement of a pop-up radio station set up in particular for Sundance.

Park City,USA

Mike Knight, his wife Sadaf and I were standing on a red carpet with a huge video camera shoved up to our face. We were trying to get into a party that my friend DJ Rekha was spinning at. Except, they wouldn’t let us go into the party without being asked a few questions first.

Global

Man the Japanese can be weird. They have their ganguro girls and their cringe-inducing horror movies and their bizarre television tastes and now they’ve unleashed this catastrophic medley of impossible weirdness on us. (Sure, they also have great food, beautiful women, some great video games, one of the greatest film directors of all time, and my good friend Aiko who’s from Tokyo. I don’t mean to hate.)

Park City,USA

At the bar, Riz Ahmed asked us all if we wanted a drink. Five of us passed. I looked around, realizing that half of us were the non-drinkers. Only around taqwacore types would being a non-drinker be alright. Riz Ahmed is an old skool Taqwacore, in from the UK for his film Four Lions which also showed at Sundance. His movie is a comedy about jihadists – it’s one of the other “Muslim” movies at Sundance. So basically, at the bar, we had all the Muslims at Sundance, ironically.

Park City,USA

Mike Knight was sitting on the edge of a modern art deco-ish sofa next to his wife. Loud club music was blasting from the DJ spinning on the patio, and dim blue lights were illuminating all of us. We were at a party at the Sky Lodge, surrounded by pretty happy people. We nursed our non-alcoholic beverages, unable to talk to each other because of the loud music.

When I saw a girl who wears clothes like a doll sometimes, I thought it would be a sort of cosplay. But I realized that I misunderstood. THAT is a [...]

New York,USA

SRK + Kajol were such good sports — after a full day of interviews, they still agreed to hop into a New York City cab and drive around for an [...]

Park City,USA

“Did you hear? The locals are all upset that a graffitti artist is in town,” the woman behind the register said. “Rumor was being spread that it was because of The Taqwacores. That it was some of their people graffing,” someone else in the store said.

Park City,USA

The punk house is packed. And the first thing you notice when you step inside is the ridiculous amount of shoes in the front foyer, and the smell of all the dirty punk rock boys. Air mattresses are strewn about and everyone is looking for a missing phone charger. It’s messy, it’s chaotic, and madness. But. You know there is a poorly strung acoustic guitar that the bands had bought at a pawn shop along the way to Sundance. And on that guitar, you can always count on some musician in the house to start strumming. Music in the punk rock house is constant. And amazing.