Usama Alshaibi

A psychedelic portrait of the founding theorist of Christianity, Paul the Apostle. His life, ideology and influence are reconstructed by piecing together 16mm footage, cassettes, animation, and Catholic liturgical music.

Muhammad Zeromski, raised in Iraq and Poland, returns to the U.S. after being away for almost a year. The climate he enters is ominous and confused. He meets a woman who calls herself Jane Doe. They share a common fear and are drawn to one another through their paranoia.

This film is about my experience as a child who survived war. The original footage is from Super-8mm film my father shot that was then transferred to a variety of video tapes and systems. I was interested in how those moving images mutate and glitch into their own form. This transformation is like the memory, the pain, and the history of trauma manifesting visually.

Baghdad, Iowa is the mask, the shadow and the night stars that sing the sorrow song of death. You might be dreaming, so don't wake up until you arrive.

Baghdad, Iowa is the mask, the shadow and the night stars that sing the sorrow song of death. You might be dreaming, so don't wake up until you arrive.

An adventure in pornographic surrealism.

An adventure in pornographic surrealism.

Formally, an intriguing depiction of video as forward motion, or as technology of road movies and dreams. Alshaibi intercuts footage of a Southeastern Asian trip with a young man’s venereal disease-influenced fantasies of a strange young woman.

Formally, an intriguing depiction of video as forward motion, or as technology of road movies and dreams. Alshaibi intercuts footage of a Southeastern Asian trip with a young man’s venereal disease-influenced fantasies of a strange young woman.

A young Muslim Dominatrix in the midst of a spiritual crisis.

A young Muslim Dominatrix in the midst of a spiritual crisis.

What is preventing these people from completing video penetration?

What is preventing these people from completing video penetration?

A short film by Usama Alshaibi

A woman is chased across a field by an unseen assailant.

Ass is a vivisection that attacks the optic nerves and creates a conflict within the body.

Close-up of a woman crying.

No synopsis available yet.

A woman lying on a hardwood floor covered in plastic wrap.

An eerily stylized deconstruction of exploitation and violence in life and cinema.

Usama Alshaibi-directed short film.

Study of a schizophrenic girl in her own language.

Super 8 video shot by Alshaibi's brother in Samarra.

A bandaged woman writhes naked on a bed.

Rhythm and repetition plays an important role in the animated film Allahu Akbar by Usama Alshaibi. With this film, Alshaibi questions the confrontation between tradition and modernity by drawing inspiration from geometric motives of Islamic art. The artist offers a re-interpretation of these motifs through computer animation. By turning the shapes in different direction, new images are generated, freeing them from their fixed state. Traditional spiritual values feed the present and open up to a modern perspective.

A devotion to beauty, aching and isolation.

In Nice Bombs filmmaker Usama Alshaibi returns to Baghdad to reunite with his family after nearly 24 years. This documentary navigates through his unique relationship to an Iraq that is much different than the country of his childhood.