Jamil Dehlavi (Urdu: جمیل دہلوی) (born 1944) is a London-based independent film director and producer of Pakistani-French origin.[1][2][3] Since he became a filmmaker in the 1970s, his work has been widely screened internationally, notable films including Jinnah (1998), about the partition of India and the birth of Pakistan, which won the Grand Prize at the Festival of the Dhow Countries, Best International Film at the World Film Awards in Indonesia, the Gold Award at Worldfest Flagstaff, Best Foreign Film at Worldfest Houston, and was nominated for a Golden Pyramid at the Cairo International Film Festival.[4]
Early life and education
Born in Calcutta, West Bengal, to a French mother and an Pathan-Indian father who was a diplomat and subsequently travelled extensively between Asia and Europe, Dehlavi is fluent in five languages (English, French, Italian, Spanish and Urdu).[5][2] He studied at Karachi Grammar School, then at international schools in Paris and Rome, before going to Rugby School and Oxford University.[2] He graduated with a BA degree in Politics and French Literature and an MA (Hons) in Jurisprudence. He was subsequently called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn but never practised, preferring instead to go into the world of cinema.[1] Dehlavi studied film directing at Columbia University in New York, where he was awarded an MFA degree.[3]
Career
While studying in New York, Dehlavi trained as an actor with Stella Adler and made his first feature film, Towers of Silence, which he wrote, produced and directed. It won the Grand Prize at the Festival of the Americas. His next film, The Blood of Hussain (1980), was selected by the Director's Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Grand Prize at the Taormina Film Festival. All of his subsequent films have also won major awards at film festivals all over the world.
Dehlavi has worked on various projects for the BBC, Channel Four, and French television, including Qâf – The Sacred Mountain, which won awards at five environmental film festivals. He worked on Passover, a passion play shot in Córdoba and made in collaboration with the celebrated flamenco guitarist Paco Peña. Dehlavi has also worked in the Radio & Visual Services Division at the United Nations and as an associate professor in the School of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences at Habib University in Karachi.[3]
In August 2018, the BFI Southbank presented a retrospective of his work entitled Between the Sacred and the Profane: The Cinema of Jamil Dehlavi, which was described as "a rare opportunity to examine the contribution of one of the most intriguing and least understood figures of cinema."[2] With screenings of several films held over the weekend of 10–12 August, the event also featured a conversation with Dehlavi.[6][7]
