solaranus

I started taking still pictures of women through my work in film and video. I am mainly a filmmaker but my films also corresponds to the photographs I take. I'd like to work with models that are interested in expanding their portfolios for trade.

If you are interested in video or film work please contact me as well.

Thank you.

"Chicago-based Iraqi director Usama Alshaibi seems to be one of the most prolific Arab filmmakers in the American independent film scene—and he’s almost certainly the most experimental. Working often in close collaboration with his wife Kristie, Alshaibi has jump-started the canon of what we might term transgressive Arab-American film."-Dangerous Minds.

"…his films frequently examine themes of sexuality, desire, ‘perversion’, race, and gender. His work is characterized by a combination of dark humour and a gleeful celebration of what is deemed by mainstream culture to be deviant behavior…" -Jack Sargeant (from Deathtripping the Extreme Underground)

"Usama Alshaibi… demon engineer, who like an alchemist transmuted my slovenly, drossy tapes into gold." -Studs Terkel

EXHIBITIONS / PRINT/ WEB

-"Smut Vol.2" paperback book published by Nerve.com, cover photograph, 2009
-Nerve.com, "Red Hot" Gallery for Nerve, 2007
-Nerve.com, "Dressed To Kill" Homage to De Palma for Halloween, 2006
-Nerve.com, "The Line of Beauty" Featured Photographer , October, 2006
-Fleshbot, Photographer Profile, June 14, 2006
-Japanese Form, Photographer review, June 9, 2006
-"USA is boring",model: Naomi Z, page 4: hello, Lumpen Magazine 99, March 2006
-"Noisy Daughters" models Adele Phi & Katinka for noisydaughter.com
-"Furniture and Naked People #3", model Adele Phi for The Modernist
-"One Wound?" model Katinka , No Name Magazine (NNM#5 .LimiT.)
-"It's Not The Bullet That Thrills, It's The Hole", new work on sex & violence;
F.I.N Arts;New York City, NY; June-July 2003 (photography, video)

biography:

Usama Alshaibi was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1969 and spent his formative years living between the United States and the Middle East. His work in film and video has been screened at numerous film festivals and venues across the globe. In early 2004 Usama and his wife returned to his birthplace in Iraq to shoot his first feature documentary titled Nice Bombs. The documentary had a theatrical release in 2007 and a broadcast premiere on the Sundance Channel in March 2008.

Usama has completed more than forty short films that are on various international DVD compilations. His films have screened at such places as Anthology Film Center in New York and The Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago. He has also produced and directed music videos for a variety of musicians and record labels.

In addition to reaching an eclectic audience with his film work, Alshaibi’s photography and art have been included in various gallery exhibitions and web publications. An interview with Usama appears in Studs Terkel’s book Hope Dies Last and his films have been included in Jack Sargeant’s book Deathtripping: The Extreme Underground. Feature articles have been written about his work in such places as the Chicago Tribune, Time Out, and Variety.

Alshaibi is the recipient of several film grants, including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation award, an award from the Creative Capital Foundation for the Arts and a Playboy Foundation award. He is also the winner of the Creative Promise award at Tribeca All Access in New York City.

Currently Alshaibi is completing his latest narrative feature titled Profane and working on a documentary on Arab-Americans under a diversity fellowship at Kartemquin Films. The fellowship was enacted with support from the MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation.