Ian Iqbal Rashid (born in

Dar es Salaam Dar es Salaam (, ; from ) is the largest city and financial hub of Tanzania. It is also the capital of the Dar es Salaam Region. With a population of over 7 million people, Dar es Salaam is the largest city in East Africa by population and the ...

Tanzania Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Uganda to the northwest; Kenya to the northeast; the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to t ...

) is a filmmaker, screenwriter, and poet, known for his volumes of poetry, for his work on the

Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Foster Peabody, George Peabody, honor what are described as the most powerful, enlightening, and in ...

-winning and

Canadian Screen Award The Canadian Screen Awards () are awards given for artistic and technical merit in the film industry recognizing excellence in Canadian film, English-language television, and digital media ( web series) productions. Given annually by the Academy ...

-winning HBO Max/ CBC TV series '' Sort Of'' (2021–2023), for writing on the cult British TV series '' This Life'' (1996), and for directing the feature films '' Touch of Pink'' (2004) and '' How She Move'' (2007), both of which premiered at the

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with 423,234 combined in-person and online viewership in 2023. The festival has acted ...

to critical acclaim.

Early life

Of Indian ancestry and raised in the Ismaili Muslim faith, Rashid's family lived in colonial East Africa for generations. Rashid's family was forced to leave Tanzania when he was a small child. After failing to secure asylum in the UK and US, they settled in

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

. Rashid began his career as an arts journalist, critic, curator, and events programmer, particularly focussed on South Asian diasporic,

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

and LGBTQ+ cultural work.Alberto Fernández Carbajal, ''Queer Muslim diasporas in contemporary literature and film'' (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), pp. 62-64. .

Works

Television and radio

Rashid began working as a writer in UK television in the late 1990s, trained on the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

's Black Screen internship. His early credits include '' Dilly Downtown'', and the soap '' London Bridge'' (Carlton Television for ITV). For

's ''Woman's Hour Programme'', Rashid wrote and directed ''Leaving Normal'', a comedy serial about same-sex adoption starring Imelda Staunton and Meera Syal. Rashid first attracted notice for the cult,

BAFTA The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA, ) is an independent trade association and charity that supports, develops, and promotes the arts of film, television and video games in the United Kingdom. In addition to its annual awa ...

-winning

TV series, '' This Life'', for which he won a Writer's Guild of Great Britain award. Since then, Rashid has written for broadcasters and companies such as Showtime, Lionsgate,

Amazon Prime Video Amazon Prime Video, known simply as Prime Video, is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming television service owned by Amazon. The service primarily distributes films and television series produced or co-produced by ...

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and Sphere Media. Between 2021 and 2023, he wrote and co-executive produced across three seasons of the critically acclaimed and

-winning TV series '' Sort Of'', which has appeared on many end-of-year best lists. For ''Sort Of'', he has been nominated for Best Writing in a Comedy Series at the 10th Canadian Screen Awards and at the 2022 Writers Guild of Canada Awards for his work on the episode titled "Sort Of Mary Poppins". Rashid is currently developing

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...

laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah's novel '' Afterlives'' into a series for Razor Film and Warp Films. He also has projects in development with Crave and the

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (), branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is the Canadian Public broadcasting, public broadcaster for both radio and television. It is a Crown corporation that serves as the national public broadcaster, with its E ...

Film

Self-taught as a filmmaker, in 1991, Rashid made the short film ''Bolo Bolo!'' with Kaspar Saxena. The film, part of an

HIV/AIDS The HIV, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. Without treatment, it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). It is a Preventive healthcare, pr ...

cable access series called ''Toronto Living With AIDS'', resulted in the series being pulled from Rogers Television after complaints about sexually suggestive content, though it later screened at film festivals internationally. Rashid went on to write two award-winning short films, ''Surviving Sabu'' (1999, Arts Council of England) and ''Stag'' (2001,

BBC Films BBC Film (formerly BBC Films) is the feature film-making arm of the BBC. It was founded on 18 June 1990, and has produced or co-produced some of the most successful British films of recent years, including ''Truly, Madly, Deeply (film), Truly, ...

). '' Touch of Pink'', Rashid's first feature film, spent 12 years in development. In 2003, he finally had the chance to direct the project as a Canada-UK co-production. It premiered at the 2004

to great acclaim, a bidding war, and eventually, a sale to Sony Picture Classics.Honeycutt, Kir
Touch of Pink
''The Hollywood Reporter'', 21 January 2004. The film has attracted extensive scholarly commentary. In 2024, the Sanghum Film Collective hosted a 20th-anniversary screening and celebration of the film at the legendary Paradise Theatre in Toronto. His second feature film as a director, '' How She Move'', received a similarly positive reception at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007, where it was nominated for a Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury Prize and subsequently purchased by Paramount Vantage. The film opened to positive reviews and strong box office.

Poetry and short stories

Rashid published his first poetry collection, ''Black Markets, White Boyfriends and Other Acts of Elision'', in 1991. He later followed this with the chapbook ''Song of Sabu'' in 1993, and ''The Heat Yesterday'' in 1995. In 2018, Rashid began publishing poetry again. His poems including "Another Country", "Could Have Danced All Night", "Hot Property", and "Early Dinner, Weekend Away" have appeared in journals and been anthologized in John Barton and Billeh Nickerson's 2007 anthology ''Seminal: The Anthology of Canada's Gay Male Poets''. John Barton and Billeh Nickerson, eds. ''Seminal: The Anthology of Canada's Gay Male Poets''. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2007. . More of his poems are included in the 2009 anthology ''Forbidden Sex, Forbidden Texts: New India's Gay Poets''. He is referenced in the ''Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature'' and ''Making a Difference: Canadian Multicultural Literature.'' He wrote and read his short story, "Muscular Bridges", for

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

's 50th HMT Windrush Anniversary, which later evolved into the feature film ''Touch of Pink.''

Journalism

In the late 1980s, Rashid was a regular contributor to the Canadian LGBT magazine '' Rites'', and the cultural journals '' Fuse'' and ''

TSAR Publications TSAR Publications is a Toronto-based nonprofit book publisher focusing on multicultural literature, particularly Canadian authors and subject matter. TSAR Publications began as the literary journal ''The Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abro ...

''. In 1995, he was the Guest Editor for ''Rungh'' magazine's Queer Special Issue. His curatorial catalogue essay for "Beyond Destinations", a show he curated for Ikon Gallery in 1993, was reprinted in ''Rungh'' in December 2019. He was also assistant editor of '' Bazaar Magazine'', a quarterly journal covering the South Asian arts scene in the UK in the early 1990s. Ian's personal essays have also been published in '' Wasafiri'', '' Third Text'' and ''

The Globe and Mail ''The Globe and Mail'' is a Newspapers in Canada, Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in Western Canada, western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of more than 6 million in 2024, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on week ...

''.

Curating and festivals

Rashid has also curated film programmes and exhibitions for venues such as the National Film Theatre, the

Institute of Contemporary Arts The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an modernism, artistic and cultural centre on The Mall (London), The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps a ...

and Experimenta. He was the founder and first director of Desh Pardesh, Canada's first arts festival focusing on diasporic South Asian arts and culture.

Personal life

Rashid is openly gay. In the early 1990s, Rashid moved to London, where he met his partner, the writer, curator, and academic Peter Ride.

Awards

Rashid won the Writer's Guild of Great Britain Award for Television Series Writing (for ''This Life'') and the Aga Khan Award for Excellence in the Arts. He was selected as one of 2010's Breakthrough Brits on the prestigious UK Film Council ( BFI) programme alongside Riz Ahmed, Yann Demange, Daniel Kaluuya and others. In 2022, Ian was awarded a fellowship on the CBC-BIPOC TV & Film Showrunner Catalyst in partnership with the Canadian Film Centre as an emerging television/streaming showrunner. His work as a writer and executive producer on the show ''Sort Of'' earned him a Peabody Award in 2021 and another nomination in 2022. For ''Sort Of'', he has also been nominated for Best Writing in a Comedy Series at the 10th Canadian Screen Awards and at the 2022 Writers Guild of Canada Awards for his work on the episode titled "Sort Of Mary Poppins". His poetry has been nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rashid, Ian Iqbal 1971 births 20th-century Canadian male writers 20th-century Canadian poets 21st-century Canadian screenwriters British film directors British male screenwriters British male television writers British male writers British poets Canadian male poets Canadian male screenwriters Canadian writers of Asian descent Canadian gay writers Canadian LGBTQ film directors Canadian LGBTQ poets Tanzanian LGBTQ writers British LGBTQ writers Living people People from Dar es Salaam Film directors from Toronto Tanzanian emigrants to Canada Canadian emigrants to the United Kingdom Tanzanian people of Indian descent Tanzanian Ismailis British people of Indo-Tanzanian descent British people of Indian descent British writers of Indian descent British people of Gujarati descent British Ismailis Canadian people of Indian descent Canadian Ismailis Indian Ismailis Khoja Ismailis Gay poets Gay screenwriters 21st-century Canadian LGBTQ people 20th-century Canadian LGBTQ people