Zeeshan M. Khan | Producer of the flickering gaussian
The Gaussian and the Weyl Film Productions are dedicated to my late father Gul Hameed Khan. The Zonal Chief and Vice President of Habib Bank Limited. A man of greater wisdom and spirtuality. My dad had a Yashica roll film camera for the decades he lived in Colombo, Sri Lanka. I saw his photos on the Maldives green water beaches with a thick pet snake around his neck and wonder who took this photo?
Then i’d see Albums of my mother picking up tea leafs in the lush tea gardens of Kandy, Sri Lanka. She looked gorgeous as fair as an American and hair flowing till her feet. She fit into the natural landscape of those tea gardens with a basket to collect the tea leafs and a hat to combat Kandy’s sun. She loved the lush greens in Kandy, the home of the Temple of the Tooth Relic (Sri Dalada Maligawa), one of the most sacred places of worship in the Buddhist world.
The most kind, the most respected, the most wisdomful: My mother Nisar Jalwana is a royal. She’s the grand-daughter of Sardar Amir Mehmood Khan Jalwana. The hand of the King of Bahawalpur and royal council’s head. She lived in a castle and so her entire life is filled with photographs. And so was mine visiting her family home. She’d be photographed in queen’s crown, or sometimes playing with the pet deers at home. The royal traditions later continued by my Parsons Alumni cousin Rehan Bashir Jalwana, and the beloved Mohammad Ali who decorated the castle with paintings he learnt to draw at the NCA. And in the impulsive glints of the light striking the primes on my 6D Mark II these days mounted on the Weebill.
My father’s father was an Artist. He drew hand drawn portraits his entire life and this inspired me to study portraits from an early age. He drew the famous portrait of Seth Ubaid ur Rehman. Eventually, years later i started living in Dubai. I purchased my first Nikon D90 camera from the Naif Souk in Dubai. I saw my visions come to life on a digital sensor capturing light on the balcony of the Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, a family favorite.
It was raining hard in Massachusetts, USA that day. On the MIT Sailing Club’s pavilion deck, I was lying on the ground, tummy on earth, my eyes capturing the beauty of the rain drop on the beautifully engineered flower. I was walking to my lab, the center for cognitive intelligence, when the deep rain had started. The lab lead, Laur Hesse Fisher, a wonderful woman with golden hair, stopped by to see what i was doing. She asked, where’s your umbrella, why are you on the floor, are you taking a photograph Zeeshan?
In my Audi A6 3.2 FSI quattro, i drove on the Dubai Sheikh Zayed road. Rising imperiously skywards at the southern end of Sheikh Zayed Road, the needle-thin Burj Khalifa pierced through the sun. The world’s tallest building was a joy to capture while driving. I’d make it a challenge to capture it everyday while crossing it and then apply the Turbo gear on the Audi. That completed my day, the sunset separated in two by the glistening metal of the Burj.
In Munich, Pavan Prasad was preparing the welcome of Rhitik Kraushan’s arrival from India to Munich. Being a friend, i offered to take a shot of the dance of their team. As a photographer i suggested the venue to be the Umschreibung – Munich’s endless staircase, a Sculpture by Olafur Eliasson. I saw the pristine dedication of Kiran Kishore and Pascale Chiara’s jet speed dance. During the song there was moment of pure energy where the young women lifted one another on the shoulders forming an elaborate human structure i had never witnessed before. The moment of pure bliss captured the expressions of a dozen young women all glowing in the exuberance of the energy of the artform they were creating in that whirlwind moment of magic. I was happy, i had captured symmetrical movement in light again.
The idea of film making came to me one day when my silver haired father was calmly reading the National Geographic magazine on our hundred kilo thick wooden dining table. His delicate hands as pretty as anything i had ever seen. His hair shining white. His eyes focused. He was reading from his thick golden glasses, the article, Behind the Curtain: Secrets of the Whales with Brian Skerry in the May issue of National Geographic magazine, The Ocean Issue. I sat besides him and grabbed a copy of the 1998 National Geographic magazine which has some 3D images in it. From Mars and from The Titanic. It also contains two carbon 3D glasses. I put on the glasses and suddenly the world changed to an underwater tour of the Tiatanic in 3D. Bill Allen sold 9.5 million copies of that August ’98 Nat Geo magazine, but it struck one heart, mine. I was changed forever. By changing the filters of light we could see another world. Maybe that’s what Rania Qaiser meant by capturing light in a prism?
I got inspired to make music from my childhood best friend, Syed Raza, who played drums in the air, often transcending, all while backbenchers of our class at The City School fed him pizzas so he’d help coach them to pass the exams, as he read the Harry Potter on his way to the Cambridge exam hall. A love for reading he had inherited from his wisdomful father Humayun Bashir. This today. The rays of light i present, are dedicated to the milk in the omletes we cooked for experiment, in the green trees of the railway station house.
To the waving green corn fields of my mother’s farm lands. To the light in the hand of my father. The sparrow and the butterfly. To the moon which obeyed my mother.
To Kainat, the blessed, and Saira, the rebirth of love..
producer.
Light has seven colors inside it, yet flows so unnoticed, into our eyes, processed by the brain, and we can feel what a creator feels.
writer.
How do the witches do magic? They say the words. Put them on paper and they become a Script. Expose that to a sensor and it becomes a film. Show it to a child and it might change his life forever.
photographer.
Give me a twenty dollar camera and let me show you what we can do with it.
write to me.
interview | Mohammad Zeeshan.
What made you pursue a career in the film industry?
I enjoy a unique connection with light. My experience connects me with the need to capture light on film.
What qualities do you look for in your film crew?
Creativity. A creative person can use mud to create gold. That’s alchemy. That’s one of God’s attributes.
What is your most memorable experience?
It was when i met Fawad Khan, a FAST NU Alumni and he offered to sign my diary as a memory for me to remember when i won the Intel IT Whizkid competition. And later i worked at Intel.
What are the challenges for the industry during the Covid-19?
I believe film makers need to be more creative since the audience are consuming alot more content than before.
What is your favorite quote?
What is Music? Movement. And Movement through time is life. ~Zee
