Q&A with Aisha Amin
A conversation with Aisha Amin, the NYC-based filmmaker behind ‘Friday’.
When you decided to make this short film, where did you start?
This short film was fortunate enough to be funded in part and supported by the Jacob Burns Film Center Creative Culture Fellowship. I applied with a treatment for the short, and was awarded the Woman Filmmaker Fellowship for that year. Friday was born out of a photography project I did the year before where I explored storefront mosques in and around NYC. I thought the photo project would work well as a visual piece and short documentary that explored what it's like to practice religion in a cosmopolitan city.
What kind of hurdles do you face as a filmmaker working in short film?
I've made three short documentaries and each one has had its own struggle. For Friday, the hardest part of the film was figuring out how to craft a narrative arc since the film was mostly observational and visual. This came later, with off-camera interviews and tons of archival research. For all of my films, I found there to be a lack of adequate resources, a time crunch and the unfortunate fact that you're working with a smaller budget. What I've learned is that all of these downsides can turn into creative solutions and can really make the film stand out. You just have to have patience and open-mindedness -- especially in the edit room.
What projects are you working on next, and how can people who are interested best support or share that work?
I am finishing up my third short documentary now which was funded by the same Creative Culture fellowship program. It's about a youth chorus in Brooklyn, NY and is set to premiere this summer. I am also gearing up pre-production on another short doc that will follow a small Baptist Church in Louisiana. Lastly, I am writing a pilot for a narrative series I hope to begin pitching in the Fall of 2020 that is based on a true story. On the side, I am a freelance editor and director working mostly in the short-form! For those interested in learning more about my work you can visit my website and follow me on Instagram.
