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Arif Ali-Shah
British film and screenplay writer
Arif Ali-Shah is a British film writer and screenplay writer. Following in his distinguished family's footsteps, he is also a teacher in the NaqshbandiSufi mystical tradition.
Life and work
Of Afghan Indian origin, SayyidHashim Arif Ali-Shah studied and received a degree in Literature at the University of Exeter in England.[1]
Ali-Shah is credited as the writer and screenplay writer of the award-winning film Bye Bye Blackbird (2005),[2] an early 20th-century period drama directed by Robinson Savary and starring Sir Derek Jacobi. In the film, a man lives out his dreams by learning to fly on the trapeze. In the end he is unable to continue living on the ground.[3]
The film won the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2005 Taormina International Film Festival and was nominated for the Tokyo Grand Prix at the 2005 Tokyo International Film Festival.[4] The director Robinson Savary previously won a Gold Plaque for Best Experimental Short Film, À suivre (1988), at the 1988 Chicago International Film Festival.[5]
Ali-Shah is also credited as writer of the animated film Papelucho y el Marciano (2007), directed by the Chilean Alejandro Rojas Téllez.[6]
He has worked with film-makers Sir Derek Jacobi, Jodhi May, James Thierree, Niklas Ek, Izabella Miko, Michael Lonsdale and Andrej Acin.[7]
Sufi lineage
Arif Ali-Shah comes from a family line of Afghan nobles and teachers in the Sufi mystical tradition. His father Sayyid Omar Ali-Shah Naqshbandi (1922–2005) and his uncle Sayyid Idries Shah (1924–1996) were both prominent writers and teachers of modern Sufism.[8] Arif Ali-Shah has guided study groups led by Professor Emeritus Leonard Lewin of CU Boulder, as did his father and uncle.[9]
Arif Ali-Shah is the grandson of the Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah (1894–1969), an Afghan author, poet, diplomat, scholar, and savant. His great-great-great grandfather was the Afghan warlord, noble and Sufi teacher,[8] the NawabJan-Fishan Khan (d. 1864) who significantly assisted the British in the First Anglo-Afghan War and the subsequent Indian Rebellion of 1857.