Artist Biographies
Andrew Dosunmu
Director of RESTLESS CITY
Andrew Dosunmu is currently based between New York City and Nigeria. Raised and educated in Nigeria, Dosunmu began his career as a design assistant at the fashion house of Yves Saint Laurent. He has subsequently worked as a Creative Director and fashion photographer, whose images have appeared in a variety of international magazines. Besides a flourishing career in photography, Dosunmu is also active in film and television. His award-winning documentary Hot Irons (1999) won best documentary at FESPACO and Reel Award at Toronto. In South Africa, Dosunmu has directed episodes of the widely acclaimed television series “Yizo, Yizo” which dramatizes the policy debates around ducationinpost apartheid South Africa through a frank presentation of the social crises and conflicts at a Johannesburg high school. Dosunmu has also served as creative director for album covers (for such artists as Erykah Badu and Public Enemy), and directed music videos, including his first for Isaac Hayes, Angie Stone, Common, Wyclef Jean, Kelis, Aaron Neville, Maxwell, Tracy Chapman and Talib Kweli. Dosunmu was selected to participate in the photography exhibition “Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary Photography” at the International Center of Photography. In 2007, Dosunmu was honored with the request to speak at the TED Global conference. Dosunmu is currently in production on his documentary “The African Game” which documents the fans and spirit of football in Africa. Photographs from this documentary have already been published in a coffee table book by Powerhouse Publishing. RESTLESS CITY is Dosunmu’s first feature film endeavor; intended for theatrical release, it premiered at Sundance in 2011.
Fathia Absie
Director of BROKEN DREAMS
Fathia M. Absie is a Somali American freelance writer, journalist, and former VOA Broadcaster/Reporter. After many years of working as a social worker with an immensely diverse population and different communities, Ms. Absie decided that it was time to pursue a life long dream of storytelling. Hearing each other’s stories can help us realize that we are more alike than we are unlike.
As a native Somali and a concerned citizen of the world, Ms. Absie felt the desperate urgency to tell and document the stories of Somali women and children, whose plight is seldom reported in-depth. She sees them as the innocent victims of a cruel civil and extremist war in Somalia. Even those who were fortunate enough to escape the death and destruction in their native country and made it to the safety of the U.S. and other Western countries have to once more face the insanity of war in their new and adapted countries. She says, “I feel a sense of urgency to tell the silent sufferings of the Somali people and share it with the world. My hope is to inspire change trough the lenses and the power of social media.” Broken Dreams is her first documentary.
