Hameed Haroon

Hameed Haroon is the Chief Executive Officer and publisher of the Dawn Group of Publications and the former president of the All Pakistan Newspaper Society as well as a man of art, culture, theatre, music and film. He owns one of the most extensive collections of art in Pakistan, and co-curated the widely acclaimed retrospective exhibition in Karachi of the Pakistani master Sadequain. He has been associated with the theatre in London, and has directed stage plays in Karachi. His passion for the documentation and promotion of sufi shrine music at the Bhit Shah shrine of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai earned him, in 1994, the Latif Award, the highest cultural award in the Sindh province. He is also currently involved in documenting and issuing the collected works of the famed Pakistani singer Noor Jehan. On the board of a number of art and culture institutions, Hameed has also served as the Chairman for the National Task Force on Culture in the Federal Ministry for Culture (1999) and was recently awarded the Order of Merit by Italy. He has grown up watching and following Pakistani cinema and has a deep and abiding interest in international cinema.

Premendra Mazumder is a film critic, festival consultant and film society activist based in Calcutta, India. He has written extensively on cinema for various publications in India and other countries in different languages and is on the board of editors of the Asian Film Dictionary, published from Paris. He has also edited two film journals, authored a book on Indian cinema and has worked as a consultant and programmer for many film festivals at home and abroad. Premendra has served as a juror in several international film festivals and is the General Secretary of the Indian Federation of Film Societies. He is also a member of the international film critics’ association, the Federation Internationale Presse de Cinematographique (FIPRESCI), and is the Indian subcontinent correspondent for the Cannes Critics’ Week.

Shireen Pasha

Shireen Pasha is a filmmaker based in Lahore. She began working with Pakistan Television as a documentary producer in 1975 and produced some memorable films such as the award-winning “Cholistan” (1980) and “Life in the Walled City of Lahore” (1991). She left the organization in 1991 to work independently from her own studio. She is widely acclaimed for her sensitive and creative approach to social issues in her documentaries and dramas, often based on painstaking research. She currently heads the newly established Film & TV Department at the National College of Arts in Lahore.

Farjad Nabi

Farjad Nabi is a Lahore-based filmmaker whose recent work includes a music video “Kari Jo Geet” (Song of the Kari) and documentation of the last remaining poster artist of Lollywood, S. Iqbal, in “The Final Touch.” His previous films include “No One Believes the Professor” (1999, joint winner of the Best Documentary at Himal Film Festival, Kathmandu), “Cricket Lives in Lahore” (2000) and “Nusrat has Left the Building...But When?” (1997, winner of the Best Documentary at the 1st KaraFilm Festival). He is currently training community workers on video whose work can be seen under Shehr Kahani on www.bbcurdu.com.

Saqib Malik

Saqib Malik is one of the leading advertising and music video directors in Pakistan. Having studied communications and advertising at Syracuse University in the US, he returned to Pakistan in 1988 to join an advertising agency as a copywriter, quickly rising to the level of creative director. He left in 1996 to pursue filmmaking full time. Since then he has become one of the most sought after directors for advertising commercials and has directed a number of award-winning music videos for bands such as Awaz, Fuzon and musicians such as Ali Azmat. Saqib also has a deep and abiding love for Pakistani cinema, and wrote as a film critic for the Herald for a number of years. He is currently in pre-production on his debut feature film.

Lisabona Rahman

Lisabona Rahman, born in Lisbon, Portugal, is a Jakarta-based freelance writer and researcher. She writes articles on visual arts, film and literature for Indonesian magazines and newspapers. Since 1999, she has been involved in organising and managing various film programmes for the Goethe-Institut in Jakarta. In 2004, she participated in the Berlinale Talent Campus 2004 for Film Journalists and Film Critics. In the same year, she was honoured as the 2nd best film critic by the Jakarta Art Council. Since 2005, she has contributed film criticism for the Sunday Jakarta Post. Her projects include interviews on the history of Indonesian film – in collaboration with Italian filmmaker Maurizio Borriello – and oral history research on Indonesian literature in exile. She has also been a contributor to the International Film Guide.

Harris Khalique

Harris Khalique is a development activist currently working with participatory organizations and communities all over Pakistan and has previously worked with Amnesty International in Eastern Europe. He is also a poet and writer who has been anthologized and published internationally and has seven volumes of poetry in Urdu and English, a book of creative nonfiction as well as a few political essays to his credit. His latest collections of poetry are Ishq Ki Taqveem Mein (Urdu) and Between You and Your Love (English). He has also been a guest speaker at universities in South Asia, Europe and North America. While literature remains his forte, he has a special interest in cinema, having closely witnessed the making of critically acclaimed documentary films by his father, the late Khalique Ibrahim Khalique. He has also worked on a few film projects as concept writer and executive producer.

Philippe Jalladeau

Philippe Jalladeau initially trained as an oceanographic engineer, graduating in France and obtaining a masters from Princeton University in the United States. He then attended and graduated from the Stanford Film Institute at Stanford University. Back in France he was appointed head of the Cinematheque Francaise in Nantes and wrote occasionally as a film critic for several magazines. He also created classes for cinema in Nantes University and taught history of cinema till 2001. In 1979, he founded the Festival des 3 Continents and has served as its director to date. He has served as a consultant for film development and script-writing in number of Latin American, Arab and other Muslim countries and has also been on the jury of festivals in those countries.

Sheherbano Hussain

Sheherbano Hussain is a Karachi-based artist. She obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi, in painting and printmaking and later proceeded to Texas A&M University in the US for extended studies in metaphysics. After returning to Karachi in 1997, she did a variety of freelance assignments – as illustrator for the Book Group, editorial assistant for Xtra magazine and script supervisor and narrator for documentaries. Currently teaching an art theory class at the Indus Valley School, Sheherbano has also taught painting, both at Indus as well as the University of Karachi. A regular contributor as an art critic to Newsline magazine, she has also been involved in curating art shows. She has exhibited her work both in Pakistan and abroad.

Naiza Khan

Naiza Khan is a visual artist based in Karachi. Her work explores the relationship between the body as a site for the personal, the cultural and the ritualistic. Naiza is also coordinator of the Vasl International Artists’ Workshop, an artists-led initiative. She has been part of the fine art faculty at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in various capacities since 1991, including as head of the painting department. Naiza has exhibited her work nationally and internationally.

Bani Abidi

Bani Abidi is a visual artist who works primarily with video. She obtained a BFA from the National College of Arts, Lahore, in 1994 and an MFA from the School of Art Institute of Chicago in 1999. Since 2000 Bani has shown her work extensively in exhibitions and film festivals internationally. Her group exhibitions include the Singapore Biennale 2006; Artists Cinema at the Frieze Art Fair 2006 in London; the Asian Contemporary Art Week at the Asia Society in New York, 2006; Contemporary Commonwealth 2006 in Melbourne; 3rd Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale in Fukuoka, Japan 2005; and LA Freewaves Festival of Film, Video and New Media in Los Angeles, USA 2004. She has also had her work screened at the 1st KaraFilm Festival (2001) and the 3rd KaraFilm Festival (2003). Her short film "Mangoes" won the Best Short Film Award at the 1st Kara Film Festival.

Muna Khan

Muna Khan is a journalist and has been with the Dawn Group of Newspapers since 2001. She edited the Dawn Review for three years and is now an editorial writer. She also supervises the weekly entertainment magazine Images. During her career as a journalist, she has also covered the entertainment industry, especially film and upcoming filmmakers.