Ja'far 'Abd Al-Hamid

Born in Iraq, Ja'far moved with his family to other parts of the Arab world before settling in London in the mid 1980s. While reading social sciences at the University of London, Ja'far began to assist in independent TV and radio productions in London. After attending courses in film production at London's Lux Centre, Hoxton, he began to write film criticism for the Arabic daily 'Al-Hayat" newspaper, and later for the Paris-based "Cinema" magazine. After completing an MA in 20th Century Historical Studies and "discovering" the work of Frank Capra, Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov within the context of "political cinema", Ja'far began an MA in Film Studies, after the completion of which he worked on a PhD thesis on film adaptations. During his film studies, he worked on a series of TV pilots and programmes for small community-based TV stations, making "Test Drive" (16mm) in 1999, and shooting the short film "Eyes Wide Open" (16mm) which was finally edited in 2005, and making "A Two Hour Delay" (BW 16mm) in 2000, which screened at a festival for independent cinema in 2001. Ja'far has also helped organize film festivals in London and the Gulf, most notably, programming assistant at the Raindance Film Festival in 2006. Mesocafe is Ja'far's directorial feature debut.