The story of Ezra, a child soldier

Filmmaker Newton Aduaka shows clips from his powerful, lyrical feature film "Ezra," about a child soldier in Sierra Leone.



Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi asks, "What makes a life worth living?" Noting that money cannot make us happy, he looks to those who find pleasure and lasting satisfaction in activities that bring about a state of "flow."




Why do people succeed? Is it because theyre smart? Or are they just lucky? Neither. Analyst Richard St. John condenses years of interviews into an unmissable 3-minute slideshow on the real secrets of success.



(i) On Storytelling at The Black Iris

Visionary producer and more

In 2002, Adnan Awamleh sold his 19 year old production company, Arab Telemedia, to his son Talal, but remained active on key productions and as chairman of the board. Why did he do that? Because Adnan realized that it's time for a whole new attitude and generation to take the business forward. And because he knew that the spark in Talal's eyes and his knack for the industry was interesting and brave and very much needed.

And so began the journey of the young man who grew up dabbling with his father's business, and was now ready to blaze a trail thru unchartered waters. Talal is a producer at heart. Passionate about his business, visionary about the industry. He looks for compelling stories that Arab audiences are hungry to see. He works with regional broadcasters and every year brings audience favorites to the satellite TV screens.

Last year he independently produced a 30 episode TV series called AlIgtiyah. Seeming as the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is the region's most complicated and pressing issue, he believed broadcasters would be very interested in acquiring the series for their Ramadan 2007 programming and beyond. But they all said it was too sensitive for them, and they turned it down. LBC however saw an opportunity and jumped on the series. They aired it last Ramadan with a rerun later that year. The only broadcaster who saw the value of the series from a story point of view as well as production value. LBC believed in the production and said yes as they knew it was important for their audiences. In Q2 this year, Libyan TV saw value in AlIgtiyah and acquired it for their audiences.

The lack of enthusiasm and the over cautious regional broadcasters disappointed Talal but did not dishearten him. His faith remained strong and he knew the value of AlIgtiyah and so decided to submit it to the International Emmy® Awards. Last week AlIgtiyah won this prestigious award for outstanding achievement in the telenovela category - the first ever Arab production to be nominated. The first ever Arab production to win. Talal Awamleh's visionary and brave attitude towards his business reaped this well deserved award - an international endorsement for good, hard, quality work produced by a Jordanian company.

Is that all it achieved? No actually.

AlIgtiyah's Emmy® win put Jordan's name on a prestigious slot in screen entertainment history, internationally.

Now that is big.

What is Talal doing now to take his business to the next level? He is spearheading Jordan's biggest and most ambitious independent broadcasting project. If you're interested in screen media in any way, you're going to love his new plans!


Related:
We're not good at celebrating accomplishments by Dr. Nabil Al Sharif

Jordan takes home first ever International Emmy® Award

This year Jordan has been sharing Jordanian produced screen stories with the world. The result? A long list of awards are being reaped by first time filmmakers and veteran producers and many in between :)

The latest win gives Jordan a place in history with a first ever International Emmy® Award!

At last night's New York Gala, the TV series Al Igtiyah was honored the International Emmy® Award in the Telenovela category. Produced by Talal Awamleh, Arab Telemedia Productions, the story is set in the West Bank against the back drop of the atrocious invasion of the Jenin Camp by the Israeli Army's 'Operation Defensive Shield'. Al Igtiyah is a story of life, love and struggle of everyday Palestine far beyond the stereotype of news reports. Mustafa, a Palestinian fugitive and the Israeli Jew Yael fall in love against all odds, sharing a story of humanity despite occupation, violence, prejudices and the struggle for survival. Written by Riyad Saif. Directed by Shawqi Al Majeri. Starring Abbas Al Nouri, Saba Mubarak, Iyad Nassar, Nadera Emran.

Some of you may be asking how come you've never heard of Al Igtiyah and that you haven't seen it across your satellite screens. Well, that's because broadcasters refused it! When Talal Awamleh produced it independently and offered it to stations in the region, they all said no, except for LBC who screened it twice. Last night's win is an incredible endorsement. 2008 is ATP's 25th year of business producing out of Jordan. This Emmy® win is a fantastic way to celebrate a silver jubilee!



The rewards of creating and producing our own screen stories and sharing them with the world are huge. The impact of the screen production industry is big on our local economy, and provides one of our most important export products to markets everywhere.

Screen stories have no boundaries. And as this year has proven, they do in fact change everything!

Vids Ur Gonna Luv

Nollywood - 3rd largest film industry in the world....2000 films made in 2006. WOW!



LOL. Who said Jordanian's can't be funny?!



'Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.' -Carl Sagan. Cosmos was great television. One of the most awesome storytelling voices!

Related

On Storytelling

The Black Iris tribe

Naseem blogs The Black Iris and has just posted #2000.
Why is he a remarkable blogger?
He is an incredible leader of quite an eclectic tribe.
At 25, he has changed the status quo.
He challenges many things out of a little country going thru very confusing times.
He inspires the anonymous, he inspires a King, and he inspires many a wandering soul.
The tribe Naseem leads is looking for something.
We don't agree on everything at all. That's a great thing.
One absolute that we do agree on though is that we all want and believe in this journey.
I wait for his lead because I respect his voice. I am in awe of how he crafts his words. I am curious about what makes him tick. I am moved to action by how he views this world of ours.
I know I can find a place among this tribe to be the unedited me.
The Black Iris empowers me to contribute.
I am intrigued by the other tribe members who brave unchartered waters. They strengthen my faith.
What an honor it is to be part of The Black Iris tribe.
Naseem, thank you for leading us.

A new tribe in the making

Sha3teely is one of those creative people who knocked me off my rocker from the day I met him, and he just gets better! Check out the complete Meen 7adirtak on his blog here.

Lend your voice, join the tribe.

Read Wael Attili/Kharabeesh interview on JCR8.

Overheard

I hate Facebook.
Really, why?
Had a bad experience.
Like what?
My boyfriend broke up with me on Facebook.
What do you mean?
One day I logged on and saw that he had changed his status to 'no longer in a relationship' with that broken heart icon.
And then?
Nothing.
What do you mean?
Nothing. Never heard from him, never understood.
That was it?
Yup!

Last night I met someone over dinner who went thru this. It was my first human encounter of such a story. I'm so weirded out by it!

Remembering

Life is full of remarkable people who do wonderful things for others. Why? Because that's just the way they are. And because they want to contribute to changing the story. They also want to empower others to imagine, create and live their own remarkable stories.

Life is also full of incredibly soulful people who keep memories alive, for themselves, and for us. That is very important for strengthening the bonds among us. It's a reminder that we share the same pains and sorrows, and need each other to heal.

At Ruwwad, the Mousab Khorma Youth Empowerment Fund (MKYEF) is changing people's lives. This program is giving huge opportunities to young people who aspire for amazing. It is opening the world up to youth who never believed they had a chance to see. It is enabling young people to own and shape their future and co-author their history books. It is a program that delivers on hope and change.

The Mousab Khorma Youth Empowerment Fund honors the memory of Mousab Khorma who was killed in the Amman bombings Nov 9, 2005.

Storytellers change the world

When Axelrod imagined the Obama plan, his strategy was simple. He knew people are moved by stories and he knew Obama had remarkable ones to share. And when that bright, brave soul spoke about his vision, people were hearing those stories.

Some started to imagine a better place. Some started to taste hope. Some started to feel warm. Some started to see out of the darkness. Some started to touch the other. Some started to smell the freshness. Some started to find that which they had once lost. Artists were moved to create. Elders revisited their past. Kids shaped images of their future. And that spirit of storytelling got really, really contagious.

Obama delivered on that strategy, and invited questions and offered a collective journey towards the answers. He asked, how would you like to restore those torn pages, and how would you like to fill in the blank ones, and how about we do this together? He said, we are a tribe and here is our storybook.

That got people to listen. And it got people to take action. They were inspired. And they began to author their own story.

Once upon a time....

The insincere are outnumbered

This summer I got to know a man who eventually earned his seat in the hall of human disappointments. He made me think of bad things. He made me see ugly when I wasn’t looking.

He chose to deceive himself and those around him long before I fell into that pit of fraud it seems. It's his choice of life. I was just another page among many before me and after me. That makes me sad and mad. Not because of not gaining a new friend. Not because of stupidly erring and holding the door open. But because I know there is a brute soul grazing about out there.

This week I realized that the insincere are truly out numbered.

Apologies for this callous post.

I met a man yesterday

who....
awed me with his humility.
changed my perspective with his wit.
strengthened my hope thru his determination.
made me reflect thru his sincerity.
excited me with possibility.

For those 75 minutes, I am forever indebted to this remarkable man.

I met a woman on Sunday

who....
shocked me with her passion.
blew me away with her commitment.
tickled me with her silent naughtiness.
anchored my restlessness with her vision.

It is impossible not to have hope when you find out that people like her really exist.
What an exciting time to be alive!

404 error

Way back when we were building the Rolls Royce of Arab dot com portals, at a time when a handful of people in the region were online and were very happy riding a Skoda, our worst nightmare was server problems and broken links. The baddest message on a screen was a 404.

I haven't seen that bare page much since and up until Nov 2nd, when this blog was 404ing, every hour of the day until early this morning. Quelle nightmare! Between a custom domain transfer (because of the pressure from those who mock this second life name), Google/GoDaddy online support, Google Apps, SetUpMadeEasy, and a bad connectivity week in Jordan, I've been in cyber purgatory for days.

It's a horrible feeling of homelessness by the way. With a tinge of embarrassment!

Apologies for the broken links in the feeds out there and thanks to those who lent a sympathetic ear :)

The hero who resuscitated it, and to whom I'm very thankful is Manish from SetUpMadeEasy. Shukran!

Work, play or way of life?

Atto are obviously having fun at work. They're having a blast actually! Go ahead, build a beard.... you can have some fun too.

AND, Atto will give Kiva a dollar for your giggle.

If you know Kiva, you know the work they do is important. They're about person-to-person lending. I like that. And if like me you've just discovered Atto, you're going to love what they do.


On their site they share the 3 things people often say to them:
You sound nice. Can we talk?
You sound nice. Can I have a job?
Atto? That's not even a word.
Or is it?




(i) CoCreatr & Seth & 360east