Ajami, Jocelyn

Ajami, an ethnically Lebanese woman, was born and was originally raised in Caracas , Venezuela . She emigrated to the United States as a child in 1961. She graduated from the College of Manhattanville with a bachelor of fine arts, and then received master's degrees in painting and art history at Rosary College, located in the Villa Schifanoia in Italy, near Florence.

Ajami began her career as an artist. Her abstract geometric paintings and drawings were exhibited at Studio 36 (the studio gallery in Boston that she founded), at the Chapel Gallery, Clark Gallery, Mercury Gallery, Brockton and Fitchburg Art Museums, and at solo exhibitions in Boston, New York and Florence, Italy.

In 1991, Ajami turned to the production and writing of documentaries and experimental videos. Her first experimental film, The Tiger and the Cube, was screened at the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art . After the Gulf War, Ajami filmed Jihad, a short video about the meaning of the term jihad, which, according to Ajami, refers to the internal struggle to become a good person, and not a war against other people. This film received an honorable mention at the American Film Festival in 1992. Her documentary film “An Oasis of Peace”, about an Israeli village where Jews and Palestinians live together in harmony, premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1995 and was awarded the International Film Festival in Houston.

In 1996, Ajami was awarded the 12-month Leadership Fund Scholarship at the International Women's Forum in conjunction with the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Her 1998 documentary, “Gypsy Heart,” examined flamenco dance and culture, and premiered at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. This was followed by the film “The Queen of the Gypsies” in 2002, a documentary biography of the dancer Flamenco Carmen Amaya. This film has received several awards. In 2008, Ajami directed The Postcard from Lebanon, a film about the aftermath of the 2006 Lebanon War. She won a grant from the Richard Dryhouse Foundation to show the film at the Dublin Cluster Munitions Diplomatic Conference, where she also campaigned against cluster bombs. ^[1]

Filmography

• "The Tiger and the Cube" (1991)
• "Jihad", (1992)
• "Oasis of Peace" (1995)
• "Gypsy Heart" (1998)
• "Queen of the Gypsies" (2002)
• "Postcard from Lebanon" (2008)
• "Human Heart Explodes" (2009)

Artwork

• Eros-Thantos (1987)
• "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil" (2013)

Publications

• Ajami, Jocelyn M. A Hidden Treasure (Eng.) // Saudi Aramco World: magazine. - Aramco, 1993 .-- November ( vol. 44 , no. 6 ). - P. 2-9 .
• Ajami, Jocelyn M. Jordan's House of the Arts (English) // Saudi Aramco World: magazine. - Aramco, 1996 .-- July ( vol. 47 , no. 4 ). - P. 2-7 .