SHAMS

A fascinating project showcasing creativity in a new city through the lives of three artists and a professor of Architecture. While the output is different for each, the approach and process is quite similar. All have challenges to overcome, motivation to sustain, influences to absorb.

The director, Malcolm Green, summarises his motivation for the project as follows:

"For me, to meet and explore how artists and ‘creatives’ work and express themselves, particularly in a society like UAE was an education. For those cast members who are not native to the country, I was interested about what motivated them, creatively and personally, to move to the UAE from Brazil, Europe, Syria and Canada. And for the cast member who is a born-and-bred Emirati, how does it feel to be the Head of a creative startup, who also happens to be a woman, working in what is traditionally a male-dominated industry and society?

‘Awesome’, as Fakhra would often say."

This required a quilt of different styles. As unexpected as it is diverse, we needed to keep surprising expectations. So we wove together everything from Brazilian Batucada to Bulgarian and Blues choirs, from rock guitars to synth lines, pulling layers from the narrative to weave it all together.