Oxymoron Films is an independent film production company established in London in 1993 by Iraqi/British filmmaker, Maysoon Pachachi
This site provides details, synopses and reviews about films made by Maysoon for Oxymoron Films and other production companies - IRAQI WOMEN: VOICES FROM EXILE, IRANIAN JOURNEY, LIVING WITH THE PAST, BITTER WATER, RETURN TO THE LAND OF WONDERS and OUR FEELINGS TOOK THE PICTURES: OPEN SHUTTERS IRAQ. For a complete list of Maysoon's films, see the filmography.
Aside from making films, Maysoon has also taught film directing and editing in Britain and Palestine (in Jerusalem, Gaza and at Birzeit University). She is a founding member of the London-based group, ACT TOGETHER: Women's Action for Iraq. And in 2004, with her colleague, Kasim Abid, also a London-based Iraqi filmmaker, she co-founded INDEPENDENT FILM & TELEVISION COLLEGE, a free-of-charge film-training centre in Baghdad.
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The two screenings at the Arabian Sights Film Festival in Washington DC (Oct 9th and 10th) were sold out and there was another festival screening at the Arab Film Festival in San Francisco (Oct 16th).
The film was also shown at universities in different parts of the country, including Columbia University in New York, the University or Massachusetts in Boston, where the presentation of the film was accompanied by a PowerPoint slideshow of the photographic work by women involved in the Open Shutters Iraq project, Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, the Council for Middle East Studies at Yale University.
The film was also presented at the University of Texas in Austin at a special conference honouring Elizabeth Fernea, who passed away last year. BJ, as she was known to her friends, was a pioneer in women’s studies, a writer of influential books and maker of films about the Middle East - with special emphasis on the lives of women there. She was a remarkably generous supporter, encourager and enabler of other people’s development. An inspiration. Maysoon was been lucky enough to know her and to work with her on a film in Cairo (Living with the Past).
The last screening on the tour was at Alwan for the Arts, which promotes work from and about the Middle East. This screening, in a loft in lower Manhattan, not far from Wall Street and the World Trade Center, was full and as at all the other screenings, the discussion with the audience at the end was engaged and fruitful.
Everywhere, the film was shown there was an interest in scheduling further screenings in the US and in mounting exhibitions of the photographic work produced by the Open Shutters project. We are now working on putting these together.
In October 2009, it will be shown at the Arabian Sights Film Festival in Washington, DC and the Arab Film Festival in San Francisco, as well as at several US universities, such as Yale, University of Massachusetts, Clark, University of Texas at Austin and Columbia in New York. Maysoon will present the film at most of these screenings and be taking part in discussions afterwards.
The immediate future of Oxymoron Films involves the development of a fiction feature project and a documentary, as well as collaborations with INDEPENDENT FILM & TELEVISION COLLEGE in Baghdad in student training and with OPEN SHUTTERS, a participatory photographic project, in putting on several exhibitions of the work produced by the women involved in the Open Shutters Iraq project, which is the subject of company’s most recent documentary film (as above).
