Faisal Lutchmedial - writer
culture, diversity, film, Indian Bride, Trinidad

Indian Bride

I am super excited to be travelling to Trinidad & Tobago soon to make a short film loosely based on a trip my mother took right before she was married. The film takes place in the late 1960s, a time when contact with the “old country” was limited and Indian Trinidadians were only starting to connect with the wider diaspora. Part of my process will be to interview Indo-Caribbeans about that time and hear what their impressions of India were before mass media made it so easy to see and connect with the country of their ancestors. I’d love to hear your stories about that period and what you imagined Mother India to be like. Please send me an email to get in touch. I am very fortunate to have received support from the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council to embark on this adventure and collect and then tell these stories that are so rarely seen on our screens.

March 29, 2023by admin
culture, diversity, family, My Cultural Divide, Ransom, Useless Things, writing

Being a Rookie TV Writer at 44

Here’s a twitter thread about what it’s been like becoming a television writer in my forties. It’s an emotional moment for other reasons and it makes me really feel the time it’s taken to get here even more.

May 2, 2019by admin
diversity, Ransom, writing

Ransom Season 3

This last year I’ve been working on the third season of the CBS / Global series RANSOM. This is the thread that I put up on twitter about the show and why it’s awesome.

March 16, 2019by admin
diversity

Asian Heritage Month Spotlight on Faisal

(This was copied from the facebook page of BIPOC TV & Film, a grassroots organization and collective of Black, Indigenous and People of Colour in Canada’s TV and film industry. It is a private site, so this is a transcript of the interview)

May 17 BIPOC TV & Film Asian Heritage Month Spotlight on:
Writer-Director Faisal Lutchmedial
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Twitter: @faisallutch
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Faisal is in pre-production for an Ontario Arts Council funded short film called Beneath Us, about two undocumented sisters trapped in an underground sweatshop. Please follow: https://www.facebook.com/BeneathUsMovie/
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Projects you’ve loved working on:
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As a director I loved working on my short film Mr. Crab, one of the few projects I’ve done where I felt we were able to get exactly what I wanted on camera. The finished film captures the fear and magic of a child’s imagination, and I am immensely proud of what the entire team helped create. Watch it here: https://youtu.be/k31zbt-fLZQ As a writer it has to be my time on The Listener as the Bell Media WGC Diverse Screenwriting Intern / Story Editor. The experience was really special because the entire writer’s room welcomed and encouraged me to participate in the process – I remember just having a big smile on my face every single day.
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Currently working on:
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I have a procedural medical drama series I’m mapping out right now, but it’s early days. I’m also re-writing a paranormal thriller pilot, converting it into a feature. The script is turning out different in all the right ways, and I’m having fun infusing it with some dashes of the Caribbean as well.
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What does being Asian in the industry mean to you:
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My parents come from two different places, Bangladesh and Trinidad & Tobago, and so I am both East and West Indian. Their backgrounds are radically different (religions too) so I feel like a child of many places. I think this is exactly the kind of story that defines Canada – and it definitely influences the kinds of stories I strive to create and share.
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Dream project:
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I have a feature film called Path of Light which I’ve been dreaming of making for ten years. It’s a love story about ex-lovers rekindling their relationship in India, but caught up in the nostalgia and pain of their past.
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Favourite way to procrastinate:
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I must admit I play a lot of video games. Find me on Xbox if you want to procrastinate together! (Xbox ID: Phizeal) It is possible I am creating a drama webseries that I am “filming” within a game. Is that procrastinating?!?

May 21, 2018by admin
diversity, film, garment workers, globalization, producing, short film, writing

Beneath Us

Beneath Us is a cautionary tale of what can happen when migrants looking for a better life are vilified and forced to live in an “underground” economy. People need to feel what it’s like working in a factory, lost in a life of debt and poverty, making the things we touch and wear everyday. This is the disconnect I’ve been trying to bridge with my films, first by being the second generation immigrant bringing viewers to back to my mother’s home country as I did in My Cultural Divide (2006), and now bringing the factory literally into our backyard. Do we choose to treat factory workers differently because they live a world away? Or is it that we don’t care where things come from at all, as long as they are cheap and plentiful?

I want to bring this dystopian but all too real world to screen, and fill it with believable characters with relatable human dreams and faults. Sometimes a fiction film is capable of allowing an audience to experience the reality of something better than a documentary, and this is what I hope to do with Beneath Us. The factory in the short may not exist within the borders of the United States or Canada, but the result is the same – workers are exploited and then ignored by the people who gladly buy the things they make.

OAC is only supplying some of the funding so our team will be reaching out to the community to try to finance the rest of the budget. Contact us through this website, and we’ll definitely keep you up to date when we start our crowdfunding campaign.

May 15, 2017by admin
diversity, film, film festival, Mr. Crab, short film, Trinidad

The Jungle Book / Mr. Crab Under the Stars Screening
The Jungle Book

The Jungle Book

My short film Mr. Crab is playing with The Jungle Book outdoors in Regent Park! When I was in college a Russian man on a bus once pointed at me excited and said “Mowgli! Mowgli!” When I realized what he was saying I was offended at the possible racism but then took it as a compliment. Because apparently Russians love the Jungle Book and I may have been the first Indian boy he had ever seen. I guess? Anyhow my friends then often referred to me as Mowgli ironically after this. Having my film with a young Indian Caribbean boy and an animated crab play with the new adaptation of The Jungle Book might be the best thing ever.

Free Screening August 3rd 7pm. Regent Park Boulevard, outside Daniels Spectrum.

Thanks to Caribbean Tales and The Regent Park Film Festival.

From the Facebook event page:

Did you miss The Jungle Book in theatres this year? Or love it so much that you can’t wait to see it again? Come out to the Big Park for a free screening of the 2016 hit The Jungle Book!

Watch the trailer here: http://regentparkfilmfestival.com/events/event/under-the-stars-the-jungle-book/

Make sure to come out at 7pm for the pre-show for lots of family friendly acivities! The movie will start at 9pm!

The Movie and pre-show activities are FREE!

Co-presented with CaribbeanTales International Film Festival. CTFF will be presenting the short film Mr Crab, directed by Faisal Lutchmedial, prior to the feature film. We know you’ll be moved by the story of a young boy who uses his vivid imagination to escape the realities of family life.

Music and dance workshops provided by UforChange!
Enjoy delicious food for sale at Taste of Regent Park from 5-8:30!

ArtHeart will be doing face paint – so come ready with your favourite animal!

Keeping with the Jungle Book theme The Children’s Book Bank Canada will attendance with books for kids. We will a donations bin set up so if you would like to donate bring out any lightly used children’s books that you may have.

Daniels Spectrum Summer Series is produced by Artscape in collaboration with our 2016 program partners and is made possible thanks to the generous support of two anonymous donors.

August 2, 2016by admin
culture, diversity, writing

My Racist Neighbour and the Barbarian Invasion
This was a note I wrote on Facebook before the Canadian national election in 2015. I am personally relieved that I was wrong about how the anti-muslim rhetoric would give the Conservative Party of Canada an edge, but the subject is as important as ever. Here is the link to the original posting: https://www.facebook.com/notes/faisal-lutchmedial/my-racist-neighbour-and-the-barbarian-invasion/10153674299869108
And below is a copy of the note.
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My neighbour went to the police to inform on the Muslim woman who lives in our building, accusing her of hating Canadians, and that a relative of hers who worked in construction was potentially building a bomb. I am unsure about what he thinks about the headscarf she wears.
Yes, she is a hijab wearing Muslim student, and lives with her sister. My neighbour told me that she said something to the effect that she sometimes thought Canadians were stupid, which, let’s be honest, is a thought that goes through most Canadian’s heads from time to time. But my neighbour became deeply suspicious of these sisters, and the man who “they say” was a family member. Why did they come to this country if they thought Canadians were stupid? Who was this man? Why were they so secretive? Were they here to do no good? “Those Islamics”, he said, were invading his precious country and trying to change it into something unrecognizable.
All this would have been easier for him, and people like him, with the new handy “tip line” Conservative government is setting up. Now anyone can hate monger from the privacy of their own home.
I should say that my neighbour is an old bigot who is losing his grip on reality, which is why, after calming down, I concluded nothing would come of this. In all probability the police officer he talked to either ignored him or dropped it quickly after. But I must confess when he first told me what he had done, I lost it. He shuffled away on his walker as I yelled, in no uncertain terms, that people only come here to look for a better life, just like my family. I knew that it was very unlikely that the police would listen to this crazy old man, but it’s exactly this kind of thing that can get on somebody’s record and make life difficult for them. It can affect citizenship, it can affect job opportunities, and it can affect travel / visa approvals. With our country becoming more and more a police state with laws like C-51, a small blemish on your file can destroy your future.
I write fiction, and work in the film and television industry, so this is a subject I think about a lot. I often find myself internet searching things that could raise red flags if anyone was monitoring me. And since Edward Snowden tells us that “they” are monitoring everyone all of the time, I assume a lot of red flags have been raised next to my Muslim name over the years. Imagine trying to write an action script and every time you wanted to know more about guns, or explosives, you hesitated typing in the search because it might make someone think you are a terrorist. It sounds ridiculous but this is a worry I have every single time. I’ve actually taken pretty elaborate steps to keep myself as anonymous as possible on the net because of this. Though, even the fact that I’ve done things like use a VPN or insist on using DuckDuckGo instead of Google probably raised some of those red flags somewhere – if he doesn’t have anything to hide, why is he hiding?
A lot has already been written about how redundant the “tip line” is considering people have so many avenues to report crime. Targeting Muslims as potential “barbarians”, and then saying that it is their best interests you have at heart, is disingenuous to say the least. It’s obviously racist, and incites racism and racist violence.
The idea that this election is making an already bad situation worse makes me sick to the stomach. Like anyone of colour, I’ve felt racism in my life, but what I am seeing here in my own country is truly making me scared. It’s not that the police are going to round us all up and throw us in a camp – but that more and more incidents of violence will occur against the group the Prime Minister and my racist neighbour believe to be “barbarians”. The kids in Quebec that tried to pull of a hijab off a pregnant woman and knocked her down probably got their heads full of hate through these kind of politics, and then took it out on this poor person.
As a young man I was once cornered in a phone booth and two men kicked the hell out of me, yelling that I should “get the hell out of their country, you stupid fucking Paki.” I was sent to the hospital with many scrapes and bruises but it was more my psyche that was damaged that night. My parents raised me, like all immigrant families, to love the country that had adopted them. I do. But I realized then that despite being born in Canada, I would never be seen as Canadian to some. This is a horrible thing for a person to feel, especially when their sense of home and citizenship was already complicated by being a child of immigrants.
I wish I could tell that Quebec woman that the assault against her was an isolated incident. That there are lots and lots of wonderful people in Canada who don’t hate her for the clothes that she chooses to wear. But she’s apparently too afraid to leave her home now. This is exactly what happens when the self-righteous try to “save” people from themselves. And besides, I don’t believe this was an isolated incident. It’s a thing that is going to happen more and more if we don’t put a stop to it.
I feel like someone has invaded my country and is making it unrecognizable, and that person is the Prime Minister. He famously said that “You won’t recognize Canada when I get through with it” and I think he’s delivering on the promise. We’ve all seen the memes of black and white babies holding hands that declare racism is learned – well, the Conservatives are serving up a masterclass right now. It’s a disgusting display of pandering to the lowest common denominator to win an election, and it looks like it is working.
November 15, 2015by admin
culture, diversity, documentary, film, film festival

Insights and Inclusion

I was recently asked to speak on a panel about Asian representation in film and television during the Asian Heritage Month Film Festival, in Toronto. I was joined by fellow filmmakers Amanda Joy, Jag Parmar, and Kieth Lock, and the panel was moderated by Bobby Del Rio.

It was a lively conversation, and it was great to hear how fellow diverse / asian filmmakers had moved forward in their careers – and what kind of barriers they faced along the way.

Apparently there is a video they are going to post, so I’ll link that here when I get it.

From left to right: Bobby Del Rio, Keith Lock, Jag Parmar, Amanda Joy, Faisal Lutchmedial

From left to right: Bobby Del Rio, Keith Lock, Jag Parmar, Amanda Joy, Faisal Lutchmedial

 

June 1, 2015by admin

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