By Link News Desk
Daughters always share a special bond with their fathers. This relationship was filmed beautifully in a music video called ‘Meet you at the light’. Equally heart touching are the lyrics of this music video sung by famous BC singer and song writer Desirée Dawson. The video has recently won Feature Film Grand Jury Awardsat Texas’s SXSW festival.
The music video Meet You At the Light, directed by Alexander Farah, won the Grand Jury Winner for Best Music Video at @sxsw. This was the only Canadian shortlisted project, said Creative BC.
The emotional video featuring powerful performances that swept SXSW’s jury has deep connection with the Indo-Canadian community since it is shot on a Punjabi family and features heartfelt portrait of a young woman and her diabetic father performed by Ishaval Gill and her (real-life) father, Kamaldevinder Gill. Other artists featured in the video are Harinder Saini, Balinder Johal and Shrey Vyas. The video shows how a family goes through a range of emotions like love, excitement, anxiety, fights during their father’s fight with illness.
The jury wrote on SXSW website that “Without a single detail wasted, we were all moved to tears by this powerful story from a first-time music video director. Featuring equally beautiful performances, editing, and cinematography, we present the Best Music Video award to Desirée Dawson – Meet You At the Light by Alexander Farah.”
Director and screenwriterAlexander Farahwhile describing his journey of shooting this video on Beyond The Short website said that he felt very blessed to have gotten to work with Ishaval Gill and her (real life) non-actor father. “We worked on the on-screen and off-screen material (i.e. their relationship) for over a month leading to production. This process really targeted the filmmaking sweet spot I wish all my projects could align with — those blurred boundaries between non-fiction and fiction, hope and fear, and hurt and healing – therapeutic to all, in many ways.”
He added that something Ishaval said to him towards the end of the production that really landed, was “Not everyone gets a gift like this to give to their dad. I think both me and him waited a long time to have any type of relationship.”
Desiree was born, raised and is currently residing in Vancouver.A CBC radio favorite, Desirée’s music has been featured on numerous CBC programs, has her songs on regular rotation and won the CBC Searchlight contest in 2016. Over the last couple years, Desirée has been chosen for numerous high profile opportunities across the industry.
He producer, Kashif Pasta, is also from BC and is the director behind the South Asian comedy Welcome to Surrey.Farah spent a lot of time working with the actors in pre-production and describes the story being a love letter to the eldest daughter every brown family “I’m so proud of being able to uplift our amazing musician, cast, and crew on this project — to collectively share these wins like a little family feels incredibly special.”
The music video was a co-production between Wallop Film and Dunya Media and was produced by the talented duo Kashif Pasta and Shyam Valera. The producer’s distinct cultural lens was pivotal in lifting this vision from the page to the big screen.
Shyam Valera, said, “This project was a labour of love from every single person on the team. Everyone brought an incredible amount of love, respect and talent to this project from the very beginning. The goal from the start was to make it feel as authentic as possible, from the set dec to our real father and daughter leads, who fully let go and brought so much to this project.”
