A Break

Some break before continuing in the upcoming projects and after a very hard and busy two weeks, hopefully soon i will be working on funding for the feature film idea, at the same time i will be working with my group on a short film, the closest idea to be adopted is "Another Day", more details will follow soon..

End of Workshop

Sadly, the ten beautiful days in the documentary filmmaking workshop with the royal film commission and university of southern california was over last night, with a nice dinner party and closed film screening for filmmakers and invited guests, waiting for public screening, my film "An Ammani Spirit" was screened and gladly got good echos among the instructor, supervisors and guests, good friends we made and a very fruitful though under pressure nice experience, hopefully to meet again with every single one of them soon.

Photos will follow soon..

Idea for a feature film

Started in the last two days and despite of the pressure of the workshop working on the idea of my first feature film, the idea is strange (as usual) :) and hopefully new, i finished the first full treatment and presentation of the idea, and am going to start writing the first draft soon, all that was motivated by the visit of Mr. Vincenzo Bugno the representitive of two europian film funding institutions to Amman, we had a public meeting with him and i personaly had a private meeting with him telling him about my project, the meetings were very fruitful, the funding is not what am concerned about in this stage, but getting knowledge of funding requirements and to develope the idea well till it become a full final draft, as soon as the workshop ends i will be working on it, updates will follow inshalla.

Interview with Jordan news agency (petra) in a coverage of the workshop

Here is the link from Alghad Daily Newspaper

http://www.alghad.jo/?news=160867

Really Tired..

With the end of the third day of the documentary filmmaking workshop am having with the Royal Film Commission and University of South California am getting really tired, we r divided into teams of two to cooperate in our projects, tomorrow is the first day of shooting for my team partner Bashar Atiyat, Jordanian Hollywood Actor, he acted in syriana, he is a nice tender guy, we got along easily, am sure we r gona get really more tired tomorrow, and the shooting of my project will be on Saturday, then a hard week editing, hope that we can produce 2 good films in such a short under pressure time..

Alot Like Films, alot like life

I have always believed that we shouldn't come to this life and leave without doing something, and so i always wanted to be as much creative as i can, i have a physical problem since i was born, i always wanted to challenge this problem and be the man i wana be, being so short as a result of that problem i suffered alot in my early teenage years, i started to write, and express my feelings, my late dad's love for cinema always fascinated me, he got us a video recorder at a very early age in my life, and i can still remember how many many many movies he used to watch weekly, he used to tell me stories about his visits to the movie theaters at Palestine when he was so young, and then in Amman later, i loved that magical world of films because of him, and that started my passion.

Years later i failed the secondary certificate (Tawjihi) Twice, Those two years were so hard to me, but the dream grew up, my dad got me a video camera though he wasn't happy about my failure, and at the age of 17 i started to make my home films, finally my family got to realise that i have to convert to literary stream which my mom was against to pass, and i did, and the dream came back to life.

I wanted to study filmmaking, everyone said i shouldent, except him, he encouraged me, stood by my side, and did his best to put me on the filmmaking track, couldnt enter Yarmouk University, and we started considering other options, Egypt was one of the closest, and Yarmouk itself was the other, and he died, yes.. he died, leaving me alone, at one night of 1998 he went to sleep with some little pain in his shoulder, and he didnt wake up, he was only 49..

I put my dream aside, choosing to stay with my family as the elder brother, my sisters were 11 and 9 and my brother was only 3 and a half years old, i was 20, i decided to study anything, leaving my dream for destiny, i went to Applied Science Uneversity (Al3oloom Altatbeeqeyyeh) to study English Translation, i kept writing poetry in a four good years, and the dream of cinema vanished.

Graduated in 2003, starting to discover Internet publishing features earlier, i started publishing my poems in different websites, got good feedbacks so i started sending web magazines and they published, made lot of friends, and met the lady who helped me out the most, i also started sending Alrai daily newspaper cultural section and published there many times, meanwhile i used to work with my uncle in photography, finding the second branch of Jubeiha studio together with Baker Dahamsheh the owner of the main Branch.

and one day.. the dream came true, it was something alot like films, my friend "Salah" read somthing about Amman Filmmakers Cooperative and its founder Hazim Bitar, The cooperative helps young dreamers to achieve their first short film, through filmmaking workshops, took me some time to find Hazim, i attended some workshops, made my first short "The Last Patch" while working in a famous advertising agency "Team Young & Rubicam" in order to make living, then made another two shorts "Amman in Red" and "Thursday", left my job in late 2006, and here i am: a Filmmaker..

Dedicated to my Late beloved father "Adnan Assaf"

It Is all about filmmaking

Hello

My name is Rifqi Assaf, i am a jordanian poet and filmmaker, and this is my English blog, You can find my Arabic Blog Here, hope u all enjoy reading about me and what i do..

Thank You Welcome