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The Middle East Institute's Arts and Culture Center is proud to host a screening of 'Q,' a feature documentary by Lebanese-American filmmaker Jude Chehab.
'Q' explores the spiritual devotion of Chehab's mother to the Al-Qubaysiat, a secretive all-female religious order. In the film, Chehab examines the order's insidious influence on her mother, her family and the emotional rupture it provokes. Watch the trailer here.
Chehab took home the Albert Maysles Award for Best New Documentary Director at this year's Tribeca Film Festival for the film, which is her first documentary feature.
The 90-minute documentary screening at Eaton Hotel will be followed by a conversation with Chehab and editor/ co-producer Fahd Ahmed.
Creators' Corner is an interview series hosted by journalist Rhana Natour in collaboration with MEI. Creators' Corner features conversations with leading Arab and Arab-American actors, comedians, directors, writers and other ground-breaking creators highlighting their important contributions to the global cultural scene.
Because tickets are limited we ask registrants to cancel if they no longer plan to attend to up their spot to others.
Featured Speakers
Jude Chehab is a Lebanese-American filmmaker whose cinematic interests have drawn her to the exploration of the esoteric, the spiritual and the unspoken. Her richly layered visual and intimate personal shooting style developed under the mentorship of Abbas Kiarostami’s final student group. Chehab has worked as a DP internationally on films in Somalia, Sudan and Pakistan and has been credited in collaborations with the BBC, Hot Docs and Sesame Workshop. Her work has been awarded fellowships through CAAM, BGDM, NeXtDoc, Points North Institute, Firelight Media, Close-Up and Chicken & Egg. Chehab's first feature documentary has been supported by IDA, ITVS, TFI and the Sundance Institute and went on to win the Albert Maysles award for Best New Documentary Director at Tribeca 2023, as well as the Grand Jury Award for Best First Feature at Sheffield DocFest. In 2021, Filmmaker Magazine named her one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film.
Fahd Ahmed is a British/Pakistani editor and producer based in London. He is the founder and creative director of Studio Amorem, a studio in East London. He was the producer on the leading multi-series Arab Ramadan show, Kannak Tarah. He has edited for the BBC and was a story editor on the PBS-funded 3-part docuseries, 'A Town Called Victoria.' He is an editing fellow at the Gotham Edit Lab, Close-Up Initiative Edit Lab, as well as at the Sundance Story and Edit Lab. He has recently completed his first feature doc - Q (Jude Chehab, 2023) - on which he served as both editor and co-producer. Q has been awarded the Albert Maysles Award (Tribeca 2023) and the Grand Jury First Feature Award (Sheffield Docfest 2023).
Rhana Natour is an independent correspondent and producer whose work has appeared in PBS NewsHour, VICE News and ABC News. Her most recent work — "The Box" with the Aljazeera English program Fault Lines — chronicles the incredible saga of Dennis Wayne Hope who spent 27 years in solitary confinement in a Texas state prison.