This block of short films showcases the necessity and beauty of telling our story through documentaries. Each of these films focuses on learning from the past to inform our future. Whether we're uncovering trauma from war, discovering a family's ethnic identity, or inserting Arab world history that is often omitted from history books, these short films share powerful narratives that deserve to be told and shared with the world.
Don’t Get Too Comfortable is a heartfelt introspective letter to my deceased grandfather. The letter questions the continuous pattern of movement amongst Yemenis in diaspora. The film fuses archival photographs, sourced footage, parallax animation, abstract videos to create an audio visual body of work that calls attention to the collective feeling of statelessness and sense of being felt by Yemeni (or non-Yemeni) migrants.
About The Filmmaker
Shaima Al-Tamimi is a Yemeni-East African visual stor yteller based in the GCC. Her work explores themes such as migration, identity, and culinar y culture through introspection and a deeply-rooted documentar y approach. Using photography, film, audio and writing as mediums, she merges historical and family archives with present-day portraits and visuals to create vivid narratives. Challenging mainstream and linear notions of identity, her work offers unique perspectives into the lives of her subjects and calls for a more nuanced understanding of native experiences. Shaima was a 2020 Social Justice & Photography fellow with Magnum Foundation, which resulted in the multimedia film “Don’t get too comfortable”. It received an additional production grant by the Doha Film Institute and participated in Qumra 2021. Shaima is a former participant of the Arab Documentar y Photography program through which she completed her project “As if we never came” in 2019.
She was also one of the forces behind the 2020 global “Prints For Yemen” sale with “Inti Bint”, collaborating with 14 Yemeni Female artists to raise funds for farmer families to grow crops sustainably in the rural parts of Yemen. In 2017 she co-directed “Voices from the Urbanscape’’, which premiered at the Ajyal Film Festival in Qatar and screened at film festivals and art galleries in Sarajevo, Berlin, and St. Petersburg. Her work has been featured in Gulf Photo Plus, Art 29, JDEED Magazine, Khaleejesque Magazine, CNN and Doha News. Shaima is also a long term contributing member to Everyday Middle East.
- Year2021
- Runtime9 minutes
- LanguageEnglish, Arabic, Swahili
- CountryYemen, Qatar, United States, United Arab Emirates, Kenya
- PremiereMichigan Premiere
- DirectorShaima Al-Tamimi
- ProducerMayar Hamdan
- CastSaleh Al-Tamimi, Saida Ali Al Tamimi
- EditorMayar Hamdan
- AnimatorMayar Hamdan
- Sound DesignNadim Maalouf
This block of short films showcases the necessity and beauty of telling our story through documentaries. Each of these films focuses on learning from the past to inform our future. Whether we're uncovering trauma from war, discovering a family's ethnic identity, or inserting Arab world history that is often omitted from history books, these short films share powerful narratives that deserve to be told and shared with the world.
Don’t Get Too Comfortable is a heartfelt introspective letter to my deceased grandfather. The letter questions the continuous pattern of movement amongst Yemenis in diaspora. The film fuses archival photographs, sourced footage, parallax animation, abstract videos to create an audio visual body of work that calls attention to the collective feeling of statelessness and sense of being felt by Yemeni (or non-Yemeni) migrants.
About The Filmmaker
Shaima Al-Tamimi is a Yemeni-East African visual stor yteller based in the GCC. Her work explores themes such as migration, identity, and culinar y culture through introspection and a deeply-rooted documentar y approach. Using photography, film, audio and writing as mediums, she merges historical and family archives with present-day portraits and visuals to create vivid narratives. Challenging mainstream and linear notions of identity, her work offers unique perspectives into the lives of her subjects and calls for a more nuanced understanding of native experiences. Shaima was a 2020 Social Justice & Photography fellow with Magnum Foundation, which resulted in the multimedia film “Don’t get too comfortable”. It received an additional production grant by the Doha Film Institute and participated in Qumra 2021. Shaima is a former participant of the Arab Documentar y Photography program through which she completed her project “As if we never came” in 2019.
She was also one of the forces behind the 2020 global “Prints For Yemen” sale with “Inti Bint”, collaborating with 14 Yemeni Female artists to raise funds for farmer families to grow crops sustainably in the rural parts of Yemen. In 2017 she co-directed “Voices from the Urbanscape’’, which premiered at the Ajyal Film Festival in Qatar and screened at film festivals and art galleries in Sarajevo, Berlin, and St. Petersburg. Her work has been featured in Gulf Photo Plus, Art 29, JDEED Magazine, Khaleejesque Magazine, CNN and Doha News. Shaima is also a long term contributing member to Everyday Middle East.
- Year2021
- Runtime9 minutes
- LanguageEnglish, Arabic, Swahili
- CountryYemen, Qatar, United States, United Arab Emirates, Kenya
- PremiereMichigan Premiere
- DirectorShaima Al-Tamimi
- ProducerMayar Hamdan
- CastSaleh Al-Tamimi, Saida Ali Al Tamimi
- EditorMayar Hamdan
- AnimatorMayar Hamdan
- Sound DesignNadim Maalouf