Ian Iqbal Rashid

Ian Iqbal Rashid (born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania) is a poet, screenwriter and filmmaker known in particular for his volumes of poetry, for the BBC TV series This Life and the feature films Touch of Pink and How She Move.

Writer and filmmaker Ian Iqbal Rashid photographed in October 2020, London.

Life

Of Indian ancestry and Ismaili Muslim religion, Rashid's family lived in colonial East Africa for generations. Different years of birth are given for Rashid in different sources, but academic work gives the year as 1968.[1][2]:201 In 1970, his family was forced to leave Tanzania. After failing to secure asylum in the UK and US, they settled in Toronto.[1]

Rashid began his career as an arts journalist and critic and events programmer, particularly focussed on South Asian diasporic, Muslim and LGBTQ cultural work.

In the early 1990s, Rashid returned to London, Britain, where he lives today with his partner, the writer, curator, and academic Peter Ride.

Works

Journalism

In the late 1980s, Rashid was a regular contributor to the Canadian LGBT magazine Rites, and the cultural journals "Fuse" and "TSAR". In 1995, he was the Guest Editor for Rungh magazine's Queer Special Issue.[3] His curatorial essay for "Beyond Destinations", a show he curated at the Ikon Gallery in 1993, was reprinted in Rungh under the title Fluid Identities: Beyond Destinations Curatorial essay in December 2019.

Poetry and short stories

Rashid published his first poetry collection, Black Markets, White Boyfriends and Other Acts of Elision, in 1991.[4] Two more followed: the chapbook Song of Sabu in 1993[5] and The Heat Yesterday in 1995.[6]

His poems "Another Country", "Could Have Danced All Night", "Hot Property" and "Early Dinner, Weekend Away" appear in John Barton and Billeh Nickerson's 2007 anthology Seminal: The Anthology of Canada's Gay Male Poets,[7] and others were included in the 2009 anthology Forbidden Sex, Forbidden Texts: New India's Gay Poets.[8]

He wrote and read his short story "Muscular Bridges" for BBC Radio 4's HMT Windrush Anniversary.

Film

Self-taught as a film-maker, in 1991, Rashid made the short film Bolo Bolo! with Kaspar Saxena.[9] The film, part of an HIV/AIDS cable access series called Toronto Living With AIDS, resulted in the series being pulled from Rogers Television after complaints about sexually suggestive content, though it had a long and healthy life at film festivals.[10]

Rashid went on to write two award-winning short films, Surviving Sabu (1999, Arts Council of England)[11] and Stag (2001, BBC Films).

Touch of Pink, Rashid's first feature film, spent 12 years in development.[12] In 2003, he finally had the chance to direct the project as a Canada-UK co-production. It premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival to great acclaim,[13] a bidding war, and eventually, a sale to Sony Picture Classics. The film has attracted extensive scholarly commentary.[14][1][2]

How She Move received a similar reception at Sundance Film Festival. Directed by Rashid in 2007, the film is set in the world of step dancing. It was nominated for a Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury Prize and purchased by Paramount Vantage. The film opened to positive reviews[15][16][17] and strong box office.

Television and radio

Rashid began working as a writer in UK television in the late 1990s. His credits include the soap London Bridge (Carlton Television for ITV) and the cult hit BBC2 series This Life, for which he received the Writer's Guild of England award.

For BBC's Woman's Hour Programme, Rashid wrote and directed Leaving Normal, a comedy serial about gay adoption starring Imelda Staunton and Meera Syal.[18]

As of 2020, his current projects include creating television series in many genres for international markets. In the U.S., Rashid has created and is writing a family dramedy for Amazon Prime Video. He is also writing a young adult fantasy series for Red Arrow Entertainment Group, a German production company. In Canada, he is co-executive producer and writer on Sort Of a new comedy series for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and HBO Max to be aired in 2021. And in the UK, he is writing a romantic comedy series for ITV.

Curating and festivals

Rashid has also curated film programmes and exhibitions for venues such as the National Film Theatre, the Institute of Contemporary Arts and Experimenta. He was the founder and first director of Desh Pardesh, Canada's first arts festival focusing on diasporic South Asian arts and culture.

Awards

Amongst many awards and festival prizes, Rashid has received the Writer's Guild of England Award for Television Series Writing and the Aga Khan Award for Excellence in the Arts. Ian was selected as one of 2010's Breakthrough Brits on the prestigious UK Film Council (BFI) programme alongside Riz Ahmed, Yann Demange, Daniel Kaluuya and others.

References
  1. Alberto Fernández Carbajal, Queer Muslim diasporas in contemporary literature and film (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), pp. 62-64. ISBN 9781526128119.
  2. Gilad Padva, 'The Epistemology of the Ethnic Closet: Interracial Intimacy and Unconditional Love in Ian Iqbal Rashid’s A Touch of Pink<nowiki>', in Intimate Relationships in Cinema, Literature and Visual Culture, ed. by Gilad Padva and Nurit Buchweitz (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 199-212.doi:10.1007/978-3-319-55281-1_15.
  3. Rashid, Ian Iqbal (1995). [s://digital.lib.sfu.ca/rungh-775/rungh-south-asian-quarterly-culture-comment-and-criticism-33-1995 "Naming Names or How Do You Say 'Queer' in 'South Asian'?"]. Rungh - A South Asian Quarterly of Culture, Comment and Criticism. 3 (3): 1–40. ISSN 1188-9950 – via https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/rungh-775/rungh-south-asian-quarterly-culture-comment-and-criticism-33-1995.
  4. Toronto: TSAR Publications.
  5. Calgary, AB: DisOrientation.
  6. Toronto: Coach House.
  7. John Barton and Billeh Nickerson, eds. Seminal: The Anthology of Canada's Gay Male Poets. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2007. ISBN 1551522179.
  8. New Delhi and New York: Routledge.
  9. Ian Iqbal Rashid Archived 26 June 2015 at the Wayback Machine at the Queer Media Database.
  10. "Rogers drops AIDS show". The Globe and Mail, 27 March 1991.
  11. Mendes, Ana Cristina (2018). "Surviving The Jungle Book: Trans-temporal Ventriloquism in Ian Iqbal Rashid's Surviving Sabu". Journal of British Cinema and Television. 15 (4): 532–552. doi:10.3366/jbctv.2018.0441.
  12. Murray, Rebecca. Jimi Mistry on Touch of Pink About.com, undated.
  13. Honeycutt, Kirk.Touch of Pink The Hollywood Reporter, 21 January 2004.
  14. Shamira A. Meghani, 'Queer South Asian Muslims: The Ethnic Closet and its Secular Limits', in Imagining Muslims in South Asia and the Diaspora: Secularism, Religion, Representations, ed. by Claire Chambers and Caroline Herbert, Routledge Contemporary South Asia Series, 85 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015), pp. 172-84. ISBN 978-0-415-65930-7.
  15. Seitz Zoller, Matt. Dance, Fight, Laugh, Cry and Read Great Literature The New York Times, 25 January 2008.
  16. Denby, David. Young and Restless: How She Move and The Witnesses The New Yorker, 4 February 2008.
  17. Anderson, John. How She Move The Washington Post, 25 January 2008.
  18. Rashid, Ian Iqbal. Leaving Normal: a new comedy about gay adoption BBC Radio 4 Blog, 7 June 2010
  • Ian Iqbal Rashid on IMDb
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