Lights [Shorts Session 2]
While closing the local mosque for the night, a woman is surprised to discover that there is still someone praying at this late hour – a grown man full of tears. She informs him that he has to leave – unless he wishes to help her lock the doors and turn off all the lights first. The man agrees, striking up a conversation in which the two realize they have much more in common than they expected.
Director
Omar Najam is a Bay Area filmmaker who has worked on short films, commercials, television shows, web content and music videos for companies such as Geek&Sundry, Disney XD, DC Comics, BBC America and Dungeons & Dragons.
Sabir Pirzada hails from both the Bay Area and Ohio. His writing credits include episodes of Person of Interest and The Crossing and most recently he was the story editor of CW’s Roswell, New Mexico.
Director’s Note: Lights was pitched to me through one image: a woman walking in on a man crying and praying in a mosque at 2am. There was something so sad, so intimate about that description, and yet it made me laugh. The idea of someone walking in on someone else at their most vulnerable state, it’s beautiful and uncomfortable and perfect and clumsy. I had to be involved.
We were making a film featuring members of the Muslim community in front of the camera and behind the camera. I think for me that’s the most special element of Lights, that so many Mus-lim perspectives and points of view combined during production. Often times when I see pro-jects about cultural identity, they tend to get stuck in the monolithic tropes, or get stuck oppos-ing the monolithic tropes, described and decided by folks outside the culture. With this pro-duction we got to be free of that, and we got to work together to create a cinematic space that felt familiar and real and tangible but also, because it was coming from so many perspectives, dreamlike.
Speaking as a director, this project wasn’t just dreamlike, it was a dream. I got to just sit back and let all of our amazing creative forces play with each other. Personally, I think that attitude on set translates to the sound and look of the film. We sit in moments, watching from afar, only stepping in to read a facial expression or two before hopping back to give our characters some space. Our award winning editor Salman Syed’s editing isn’t just invisible, it makes us invisible. We feel like we’re there, drifting from room to room, seeing just enough.
Kausar and Maaz brought so much of their own experiences into these rich performances. My assignment to them was for them to play with the concept of uncertainty. Growing up, I didn’t visit mosques unless there was a wedding or a funeral. My father is Muslim but non practicing and my mother is Hindu but speaks better Urdu than my dad so stories about Muslim identity and religious practice are interesting and complicated for me. I wanted Kausar and Maaz to bring in their own complications, their own self-conflict into moments about accidentally curs-ing in the masjid or stepping into the wrong hall or confronting emotional strangers, all to tease that “getting to know you” push and pull. Both of these actors embraced their roles and all of these questions, all of this uncertainty, and flew.
I am so proud of Lights. It was an absolute labor of love, both a sprint and a marathon. It’s a personal film with personal influences from everyone involved. And while it is very exciting to have Muslim characters onscreen in a way that we do not see enough, what’s most inspiring to me is that we were able to capture a moment that I have never seen in a film before.