Nov 25, 04: Claybird : About life in an Islamic School
Catherine and Tareque Masud discuss autobiographical film "Claybird" from Bangla Desh.
TAREQUE MASUD spent most of his childhood in a madrasa (Islamic seminary school) in Bangladesh. The war of independence from Pakistan in 1971 put an abrupt end to his religious studies, and after the war he entered general education, eventually completing his masters in History from Dhaka University. He was actively involved in the film society movement from his university days, and participated in numerous short courses and workshops on film in Bangladesh and abroad. He started his first film, a documentary on the Bangladeshi painter S.M. Sultan in late 1982. Since then he has directed a number of short, documentary, and animation films. In 2002 his first feature film, "Matir Moina" (The Clay Bird) premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. He is a founding member of the Short Film Forum, the primary forum for alternative filmmakers in Bangladesh, and in 1988 served as Coordinator of the First International Short Film Festival held in Dhaka. He has also attended international film festivals and seminars in Europe, the U.S., and Asia and writes occasionally on film-related themes for periodicals and journals. He and his American wife Catherine run a film production firm, Audiovision, based in Dhaka. Besides filmmaking, his special interests are folk forms and folk music.
CATHERINE MASUD was born in Chicago. She is a graduate in economics from Brown University, and did post graduate studies in fine arts at the Art Institute of Chicago, and film production in New York. Since 1995, she has been living in Dhaka, Bangladesh with her husband Tareque Masud. Under the banner of their production house Audiovision, she has produced and directed numerous films. She produced and co-wrote her first feature "Matir Moina", directed by Tareque, which won the International Critics' Prize at Cannes. In addition, Catherine has worked extensively with street children in Bangladesh, and recently completed a documentary based on their life stories, "A Kind of Childhood". Catherine is also an experienced editor, specializing in computer-based non-linear editing, and has set up computerized multi-media and audio-visual facilities as a freelance advisor. She also writes essays and fiction, which have been published in various journals. Besides her professional life, she pursues her interest in drawing and painting.
