STORY

Almass is a Director. She began as a producer, facilitating crews and sets with House of Alt, the London-born collective founded by Donnie Sunshine & Ricky Rxse. Almass now directs colourful film, specialising in documentary format as well as surrealist and futurist cinematography.

After winning the One World Media production fund in 2015 she travelled to Bangalore to film Hijra’s Hustle, the 16-min short documentary exploring the economic environment of the Hijra community, shot by Ricky Rxse and edited by Sannchia Gaston.

Since completing Hijra’s Hustle, Almass has screened the documentary and hosted talks in Mumbai with the Indian transgender community in collaboration with member’s club Soho House & charity + arts org ANAT. She hopes to return to India to co-create with LGBT+ people on more projects that create visibility and campaign for the safety, education and healthcare of LGBT+ people, specifically the transgender community.

Almass then created Folasade for President, starring Khloe Bailey as Folasade and Nabhaan Rizwan as Ray.

The film, in mockumentary format, comments on the power of online political discourse through Black Twitter - at the time, an emergent forum. The subtext explores the blurred nature of political blackness and how we wield identities as tools.

The script was written by Jerome B Nelson and the film was edited by Sannchia Gaston for The Roundhouse Online Film Fund 2016.

The story was developed by Almass, Khloe, Sannchia, Jerome, Donnie Sunshine & Seye Isikalu.

Soon after, Almass leant into her curiosity for people’s stories and storytelling by creating MXN (pronounced man) to, like Hijra’s Hustle, continue exploring gender - this time through the lens of Black masculinity. Inspiration came from conversations with her close friends who are Black and identify as men.

Here, Almass began self-shooting and alongside Sannchia Gaston, captured Frisco, Kojey Radical, Donnie Sunshine, Spree Wilson, Shakka & Mr. Reed in London and NYC in late 2016. The MXN taster tapes sit as a micro-doc series and are ready for deeper development into a feature length film. Kojey Radical’s episode, although officially unreleased, was featured on DAZED as a film to satisfy your Moonlight obsession (referring to the Oscar-winning feature film), and is currently the only episode open to public viewing.

The series was directed by Almass Badat, with both Almass & Sannchia Gaston shooting & Sannchia Gaston leading post-production. MXN was premiered at the V&A by gal-dem in 2017.

By 2017 Almass became frustrated with the static feel of still images combined with the lack of cinematic beauty and absence of kindness extended to topics & people in mainstream documentaries. Almass believes that documentary & storytelling can be informative, compassionate and poetic in both audio and visual, so she began experimenting with moving image using her 5D Mark iii + 50mm lens.

Motion Portraiture: Frisco, featuring Frisco (BBK) and shot, edited and directed by Almass, was her first exploration of turning a still image into film.

To this day, if Almass is self-shooting or even secondary shooting while directing, she chooses her 5D Mark iii + 50mm lens combination: up-close, hand-held, focusing on the details with the audio painting the bigger picture. Check out her day with BORN N BREAD to see how.

Motion Portraiture: Frisco was the foundation and inspiration of Frisco’s video for It’s Changed, featuring Skepta on musical production:

As Almass delved into music videos, she transitioned into directing alongside a camera operator and her creative direction expanded. She began employing the use of props, colour, storytelling and composition. Almass thoroughly enjoys collaborating with a DoP, as both Director & DoP can hone in on their respective skills and when combination is balanced, the results are twice as better.

As well as working with Frisco in 2017, Almass directed musician Elle in the same year, initially for Dancing in Fire, and then again for 2Love in 2018, which was premiered on DAZED.

Both songs are produced by cktrl, Dancing in Fire was filmed by Sannchia Gaston and 2Love by O’shaya Dawkins.

In 2019, Almass directed two projects that substantially magnified her vision. The first, an insightful, honest & commercial documentary film campaign for Clinique USA, and second, Talking Drum, the debut music video for musician Alxndr London.

The Even Better campaign, designed to communicate Clinique’s new foundation shade extension, documented 40 Women of Colour across Houston, Oakland, Atlanta & New York as they shared their beauty concerns, tested out the Even Better range and found their shade match.

The crew, bar the gaffer, were all people of colour and where possible PoC-owned caterers and locations were used. The final delivery was 1x 1minute film + 4x 15 second films for social media (USA market).

The campaign was hugely successful with Clinique further exploring the WoC market, thus securing B+A’s (the research & insights agency commissioned by Clinique) next round of research with the global beauty brand. Clinique’s 2019 Even Better campaign was directed & edited by Almass Badat, shot by Nathan Shadrach, sound by the esteemed Abhita Austin and produced by Tamika Abaka-Wood and Adesuwa Osewa. During her time at B+A, Almass directed and edited all visual (still & moving image) comms for the agency.

Meanwhile in the art & music world, Almass directed Talking Drum, the other-worldly visualisation of Alxndr London’s audio offering. The film ebbs and flows through ancestral Nigerian history while leaning into afro-futurism and drawing from Japanese anime. Almass worked closely with Alxndr who remains as open as he is elusive. The music video, which you can watch below, was shot by Toby Lloyd, premiered on 4:3, and amongst the video’s numerous accolades is listed as a 2019 best video on Boiler Room.

The celebrated video is as close as Almass has come to pushing her visual exploration. She hopes to further develop her curiosity for other worlds, ancestry, fantasy and the imagination through film, as well as continue to work with Alxndr London.

by Toby Lloyd