Mai Iskander
“My mom grew up in Czechoslovakia during the Nazi and Russian communist invasions. She actually came from a wealthy family before the war, but after the communists took over she ended up working in a cotton factory. My mom had told me that my grandfather was also under house arrest for eleven years. I know that he helped a lot of people escape the Nazi’s at the time, including the son of our housekeeper who was Jewish. So it was a perilous life for my mother and her family behind the iron-curtain.”
“When my mom decided that she wanted a university education she really had no other option than to escape from Czechoslovakia. My grandfather was able to pull strings to help my mom escape to London. However, just when she thought se was safe, she was suddenly harassed by a communist agent trying to take her back again. The best the British could do for her was to arranged for her to go to the US. But they warned her, that she would be on her own!”
“Somehow my mom ended up at college at Stanford University, which must have been tough because she didn’t know much English at the time! My mother was this completely charming women with an ability to insert herself into the most eclectic group of people you could imagine.”
“My father was born in Egypt and ended up working as an economist with the World Bank in Washington. I grew up in McLean Virginia, where everybody just so happened to come from a different county. I also went to international schools, so I was exposed to different cultures all of the time from a very young age.”
“Being a child of two very different cultures, and then growing up in a third culture, as always made me feel like I need to explain these differences to the world. In a way, being immersed in all of these different cultures, inspired me to share those differences through film.”
“After finishing high school, I wanted to go off to study film at NYU. I didn’t have any connections in film, so my father really wanted me to have some sort of fall-back position if that didn’t work. So in the end, I studied a double major in both film and economics.”
“My big break came when I was accepted into the camera union while I was still studying at NYU! As I have said, my mom had this ability to somehow know the most interesting of people. She just so happened to know someone, who knew someone, who knew Miroslav Ondricek, the DP on ‘Amadeus’. Thanks to my speaking Czech fluently, I found myself working full-time for Miroslav, on a couple of feature films he was shooting.”
“At the end of the day, Miroslav just didn’t want to speak English anymore, so I quickly found myself right in the middle of everything he was doing - helping him communicate with Penny Marshall the director and the camera operators. The first film I worked on full-time was ‘The Preachers Wife’ with Whitney Huston and Denzel Washington. To work on something like this with Miroslav was amazing, because he was happy to teach me all he knew, from composition to the art of cinematography.”
“I then started working on all of these union features in the camera department. Feature films such as ‘Men in Black’, ‘Deep Impact’, ‘One True Thing’, ‘Arlington Road’ and ‘The Bone Collector’, before I eventually moved across to commercials. I then happened to meet Tami Reiker, who was the first women DP, I worked for. She said to not waste my time trying to climb the ladder, but to just go out there and shoot and the come back with a great reel.”
“This was about the time of September 11, when all of the commercials work really started to slow down. As I was pulling my reel together, I started to think about doing projects that were more meaningful to me as a person.”
“I always had in the back of my mind, this one idea about a garbage recycling village in Egypt. My aunt Laila helped start the Garbage Village as a way of helping the children in extreme poverty learn to read and write. Being the philanthropist that she is, Laila started a recycling school along with their educational schooling. She is the most remarkable woman because she uses her faith and compassion to do whatever she can to help people.”
“Whenever, we would visit my family in Egypt, she would take us to the Garbage Village. It reminded us of the position of privilege we were in being Americans. I remember as a child wanting to make a movie about the lives of the children of the village one day. So back in 2005, I decided it was time I made my own documentary about what I had experienced there.”
“When you are making a film like this, you can’t help but put all of your love and efforts into to telling their story. However, when it gets into the festivals it can feel a bit like a commodity. When I do a documentary these days, I just have to fall in love with the story and not care too much the festival side of things. You have to do it for the right reason, or it’s just not worth my time doing it.”
“After the success of ‘Garbage Dreams’ I then went and directed another documentary about Heba Afify. She is a young Egypt journalist who was reporting from the streets of Cairo during their recent turmoil. Heba is a truly courageous 22 year old, who I felt has an inspiring story to share with everyone.”
“After directing these two documentaries, I went back to shooting commercials in the US once more. That’s when I met Paula and Susan from goodstory films. They are experts in the field of brand story telling. They really believed in my approach to filmmaking and storytelling, and have been getting me some great directing opportunities. These days, I really enjoy the whole collaborative process that comes with TV commercials. The agency art director and copywriter are usually very story oriented, and as the director, you find yourself sitting in the middle of all of this creative talent. I am really enjoying being around energetic and passionate people everyday.”
“Like most people, there are a lot of things in my life that I am not confident about! But when it comes to directing and shooting, I can always know how to best approach a situation. I just love putting myself in a new situation, where you are the one that has to pull the whole thing together. I really enjoy taking those opportunities and doing them in my own, unique way. The thing I love about directing most, is that you just keep growing and learning all of the time.”