Great news.  Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam took Best World Documentary prize at the Harlem International Film Festival last week.  This was heartening to me for many reasons, the most obvious being that it simply makes me feel valued.

But more important than that, Harlem has always been a special place to me.  It's where I began really starting to film the documentary, following Michael Muhammad Knight as he prayed at the Malcolm X mosque, visiting the Allah School of the five percenters after midnight with Knight and Omar Waqar and Shahjehan, nervously clutching my cheap video camera. 

The Five Percenters call Harlem 'Mecca.'  Its where we filmed a pivotal scene in the doc, where Michael brings his Taqwacore friends to visit with Allah B at the Allah School and connections are made between out there 'taqwacore' Muslims and out there 'five percenter' Muslims. 

There is a spiritual harmony to the film finding favour in the one place on earth where a man named Allah would shake hands with Muslim punks.

Taqwacore, being a small but thriving subculture, needs to exist on the margins to stay vital.  While I always dreamed of it becoming the next breakout underground phenomenon (I know that's an oxymoron), I never imagined that it would hit a point where this would occur:

I'm still not sure what this is....I'm certainly intrigued.  I also can't help but wonder, what kind of monster have we created here?

Oh well, let it continue to devour pop culture with glee.  Check out the site here.

The Kominas are the Ian Dury and the Blockheads of the Taqwacore scene.  Both groups were mongrel entities in a purist genre.  If Taqwacore is supposed to be Punk Islam, then what the hell do we make of The Kominas new EP Escape to Blackout Beach - available for download here. 

In Punk 77 U.K, Ian Dury and the Blockheads were a bunch of mangy pub rockers doing disco, and finding that funny as hell - the punkest of them all in a way.  Amongst Taqwacores, The Kominas are the same kind of creature - some punjabi bhangra mixed with classic rock riffs, a dash of floyd, maybe a little thin lizzy, some indie rock, and a touch of gwen stefani-esque reggae.  (If any of this sounds insulting, I assure you I intend quite the opposite). 

Basim Usmani channels an Iggy SInatra crooning style merged with Engelbert Humberdink and the lead singer of the Vital Signs.  Shahjehan is the fiercest punk I know whose secretly into nerd rock.  Arjun is the group's Lee Scratch Perry, Phil Spector, Pete Townsend but way more mad.  Imran is of course the dreamy indie-rocker listening to all the cool reggae songs, and all the latest cult classics from Pitchfork.  All this is the chemical formula for the brilliance that this group represents. 

I don't know if the guys are going to beat me over these description (I can't really blame em), but I had fun writing it, and you'll have fun listening to it.  So listen to it, punks, party all night and then perform juma before passing out.

I still cannot fathom how my interest in Taqwacore has brought me in such close orbit with the great guitarist and songwriter Richard Thompson.  He is curating this year's Meltdown Festival in London, and as part of the program, he has devoted one rowdy Saturday night to Taqwacore - a full on showcase featuring The Kominas, Al-Thawra, Michael Muhammad Knight along with a screening of the doc to be held at the Southbank Centre.  Click here for full details. 

In my mid-twenties, I really got into Richard Thompson, especially the Richard and Linda Thompson classic Shoot Out the Lights, which every few years goes back into high rotation on my listening list.  The brilliant guitar playing, the tragic beautiful lyrics and moody complex songs feel timeless.  But in that decade, I was too busy worshiping other rock and roll idols to pay much attention to Thompson's story.  Years later I became aware that Thompson had converted to Islam (via Sufism) in the late seventies, and continues to keep faith to this day.  Admittedly, it was hard for me to reconcile his music to my notions of what being Muslim felt like and I felt a bit confused about it.  Richard Thompson's songs felt dark, troubled, and neurotic, and most practicing Muslims I knew acted and behaved like they had all the answers.  They were either too smiley, too happy, preaching subtly or not so subtly, or they were angry, pious, judgmental, condemning so many things I truly enjoyed, and occasionally a strange mixture of both.

This challenged my perceptions about being Muslim.  One could search for faith and meaning in Islam and not feel compelled to convert, or appear holier than thou.  The only other precedent I'd had was Cat Stevens, who converted and changed his name to Yusef Islam.   This was the other extreme - in Cat Steven's case, a full transformation. But with Thompson, his spirituality felt integrated and didn't interfere with his artistry.  Songs on Shoot Out the Light document the destruction of his relationship, and are full of bitterness, depression and resignation.  Other material of his waxes nostalgic for simpler times, or has satirical bite.  Yusef Islam, on the other hand, went to live in Afghanistan writing songs using only drums, claps and vocals out of deference to strict religious interpretations and wrote only of worship, Islamic teachings and material bordering on jihadist zeal.  One senses that Yusef Islam despises and rejects Cat Stevens, whereas Richard Thompson remains himself - complex, yearning, questioning but comforted by his spiritual journey. 

While editing Taqwacore, I searched out the album recorded right after Thompson's conversion to Islam (1975's Pour Down Like Silver).  It features a close up on Thomspon on the cover wearing a turban, his eyes staring out in a kind of religious glaze.  I nervously began to listen to it, thinking perhaps it would be a forray into Yusef islam territory.  But had I not seen the cover, or known the story, this would have been another Richard Thompson album.  Upon closer listening, one hears Sufi inspired lyrics, and a sparseness in the album's production that gives it a more spiritual dimension, but there's no Qu'ranic verses, no mention of Allah, no preaching.  Its still some powerful singer/songwriter terrain.  Dimming of the Day and Night Comes In became songs I listening to over and over for inspiration while editing the film.  Despite being a Punk film, which I was hearing in the rushes, I wanted to conjure another mood, a spiritual mood that wasn't clichéd.  Richard Thompson's music helped me develop this mood in the film, and I now feel as if there is a sense of the divine in this circle becoming complete.

In previous columns, I've talked about influences for my doc TAQWACORE: The Birth of Islam.  First I mentioned the new wave documentaries of EyeSteelFilm, then went on to discuss Punk cinema, and now I'd like to conclude with Muslim themed films that have inspired me.

Without a doubt, the best diaspora Muslim cinema has come from Britain.  Probably a personal bias towards films that deal with Pakistan, but films associated with Hanif Kureshi really opened my eyes.  The queer/race politic of My Beautiful Launderette, the sexy poltiical junkyard mess that was Sammy and Rosy Get Laid, the epic masterpiece of The Buddha of Suburbia all made me realize the radical potential of my homeland and of Pakistani Muslim culture.  In particular, a film Kureshi wrote that was adapted to the cinema called "My Son the Fanatic" had a powerful influence on me.  It was extremely prescient about the current situation in the diaspora in which the younger generation is more traditional and isolated than the older more assimilated generation. 

The film East is East also brilliantly captured the duality of growing up Muslim in the west, without sentimentality and with great humour and affection. 

But I was most influenced by the work of Iranian New Wave directors like Abbas Kiarostami and the Makmalbaff family.  Mohsen Makmalbaf's Salaam Cinema and his daughter's masterpiece The Apple are stunning masterpieces that transcend religion and politics even as they address them head on.  Kiarostami's films are so subtle and beautiful, they made me strive for a hint of that quality in the more spiritual sections in Pakistan.  Mostly from Kiarostami, I realized the power of a moment of silence.  From this magificent body of work, Islam is treated with respect even as its political distortions are subtly critiqued or questioned. 

Finally a shout out to Marjane Sartrapi's Persepolis, both the graphic novel and the film also gave me the courage to explore these themes honestly.  Its truly the pioneering Punk Islam film out there.

In my previous post, I talked about influences very close to home - namely, my colleagues, producers and fellow filmmakers at the home office of EyeSteelFilm in Montreal.  I'd like to expand outward from that base to form concentric circles of influences.  A doc about Punk Islam is going to have to be influenced by films both Punk and Islamic, and a few fav's do come to mind.

Two years ago I saw Julien Temple's Filth and the Fury, and it blew my mind.  The style was almost New Wave, but had achieved a real punk sensibility without having to posture too much.  It dealt with the complexity of being an iconic band like The Sex Pistols, and argued like a great essay on how and why Punk came into being in that time and place.  It also had heart.  When John Lydon talks about Sid Vicious, in silhouette, obviously on the verge of tears, I understood the closeness between those two and the innocence of Sid. 

Another punk film masterpiece that came to my mind was Alex Cox's Repo Man.  Through this film, I learned one valuable lesson.  Punk has to be fun and wild and unfettered.  Between Cox and Temple, If I had an idea to rip off a French New Wave collage, or create a wild montage mixing humor and ridiculous moments, then I did it. Why?  Because it's fun.  No justifications necessary when you're trying to create punk.  You can't fake it, you just have to embrace it.  If it's funny, just throw it in. If it's weird, even better. 

The third film, another doc, that I often thought about as I went on the road with these pioneering musicians was the film DIG! by Ondi Timnor.  Not punk in terms of it's subject, this film has a kind of punk spirit to it in that Ondi obviously spent so much time embedded with these bands, and told the story straight from the heart of the issue - often jumping wildly through time and space, letting the themes and character profiles bridge all narrative gaps.  I liked that so much, because it liberated me from the constant need to explain and contextualize.  So these guys met here, and then they decided this, but before that they did that...bullshit.  A jump cut from the guys in the U.S. on a high from their performance at the Islamic convention cuts straight to them six months later in Pakistan regrouping.  No need for the boring stuff in the middle. 

Oh, and I ripped off a few bits and pieces from Wes Anderson (a part dandy/part punk filmmaker if I ever saw one), but no I'm just being silly. 

Stay tuned for INFLUENCES part three (Islamic Films)

For more information go to www.taqwacore.com

Someone recently asked me what my influences were in making TAQWACORE: The Birth of Punk Islam.  Influences?  Huh?  I spent the last four years furiously making the film, I hadn't really thought about my inspirations.  Although being a professed film snob and pretentious cinephile, I really should have some, right? 

So I've been thinking about it recently, and of course things are starting to bubble to the surface.  The first and probably strongest influence on the film was my creative environment.  Working in the bosom of my producer's offices - EyeSteelFilm, the hottest documentary producers working right now - I realized how much I gleaned from that punk-ass motley crue. 

Co-Founder Daniel Cross directed one of the all-time great punk documentaries with S.P.I.T. (Squeegee Punks in Traffic).  A portrait of drug-addled squeegee punk turned filmmaker activist, Eric "Roach" Dennis, inspired me with its balls-out D.I.Y approach to narrative filmmaking.  A patchquilt of different modalities laced with the poetry of the streets was a strong influence on me, and the film poster graced the wall of my editing suite.

In a totally different way, Yung Chang and Lixin Fan's masterful documentaries on life in contemporary China (Up the Yangtze, Last Train Home) taught me about the power of restraint.  Both films are exemplary in terms of masterful composition, cinematic narrative construction and the art of deliberate pacing.  I studied both films quite a bit when constructing my film's Pakistan sequences. 

Finally, there is the high-octane rollercoaster ride of RIP: Remix Manifesto.  Brett Gaylor's digital sermon on mash-up, copyright and the future of art.  For its exquisite marriage of glam-rock style with philosophical content, I stole (I mean remixed) many of Brett's ideas to fuel the engine of the U.S. Taqwa tour. 

Working on my film while all these docs came to fruition was an ideal circumstance.  I never felt like I worked in a vacuum.  It was the best kind of film school.  Trust me, I'm a film school drop-out. 

For more information go to www.taqwacore.com

Stay tuned to this blog, more influences to come.

Kourosh, Omar and Mila during Taqwacore Q&A at SxSW

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE TRIP TO SxSW:

•  Great write up in the Austin Chronicle, thanks Marjorie!

•  Hearing lots of people say "Yeah I heard about the scene and the films."

•  Hanging out with Kourosh, the premiere Taqwacore punk from the Iranian republic of San Antonio. Always good to spend time with that kid, he's a sweetheart.

•  Playing a sold out show at the legendary Austin cinema, The Alamo Ritz Drafthouse.   The coolest cinema in the world.

•  A packed audience cheering wildly during the ISNA scene.

•  Watching Eyad's take on The Taqwacores on the big screen.

•  The shy Desi kid who asked a question at the Taqwacores panel whose mind was apparently blown after seeing both films.

•  Watching Kourosh, actors Dominic Rains and Bobby Naderi form an Iranian posse mingling at all the panels, screenings and chic sxsw parties.

•  Walking down Sixth Street thinking, like Holden Caufield, that the world is full of phoneys, and then seeing a small Desi Qawalli party on the sidewalk giving it their all:  harmonium player, violinist, tabla player, two vocalists, hand clapping...the works.  That was some Taqwacore shit right there. 

•  Having friends from Toronto and Pakistan in the crowd, as well as a few Taqwacores. 

•  Meeting Ron Mann and Bruce McDonald and discussing Taqwacore with them. 

•  Getting four free packs of American Spirit cigarrettes from the stall on the smoking deck where they were giving it away.  So evil, but so good too.

For more information on the doc, go to www.taqwacore.com