Yousuf Saeed

Yousuf Saeed is an independent filmmaker and researcher based in New Delhi, India. Yousuf Saeed finished his Masters in Mass Communication at the AJK, Mass Communication Research Centre, in 1990, and began his career by producing the well-known science series Turning Point on Doordarshan, with Times TV (the Times of India). He co-produced and edited AbOUT 45 episodes of this series that was hosted by actors Naseeruddin Shah and Girish Karnad. In 1993, he left Times to start on his own and directed many documentary films for Doordarshan and other agencies. Some of his important films include a 5-part documentary series on Ladakh, a 4-part series on the Sufi poet Amir Khusrau, and a short film called Basant. Many of these films were screened at national and international film festivals such as the Mumbai International Film Festival (1998 and 2000) and other fora. Through Amir Khusrau, he developed a special interest in south Asia’s multi-cultural traditions, music and literature, and their role in maintaining communal harmony. In 1998, he started an Internet platform called the Amir Khusrau website to promote these values of pluralism (http://www.alif-india.com/). This website is visited by a large number of people everyday.

In 1999, Yousuf joined Encyclopaedia Britannica (India) to work on their website and other design/photo related products. He was the photo editor for the 7-volume “Students’ Britannica on India”, the 2-volume “Britannica on Indian History”, and the recently released “Encyclopaedia of Hindi Cinema”. He also collaborated with noted vocalist Shubha Mudgal to produce Internet features on Indian music for the Britannica website. Currently, Yousuf is on his own, producing more documentary films and other multimedia products. His most recent work is Khayal Darpan (A Mirror of Imagination, http://www.khayaldarpan.info), a feature-length documentary film exploring the development of classical music in Pakistan post-1947, featuring many famous Khayal singers of Pakistan.

With his interests at resolving communal issues in India, Yousuf wrote and published a trilingual book called “What kind of India shall we give to our children?” enlisting some practical suggestions on how to reduce communal prejudice in the society. This book, published during the Gujarat Riots 2002, was widely distributed especially in the educational sector, and well received. Yousuf is now working on the second, more expanded, edition of the book. He has also been visiting many schools in Delhi to show films and talk about plural cultural identity. His film Basant has been screened at Springdales, Blue Bells, Vasant Valley, and St.Mary’s schools in Delhi, besides at various symposia at the universities of Berkeley and Harvard in the US, at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, and at the Wolfson College, Oxford, UK. For last two years, he, along with many friends, has been holding a festival of Sufi Basant in and around the dargah Nizamuddin area of Delhi, in the month of February, incorporating Qawwalis, film shows, heritage walks, and general celebration of spring.

Yousuf is currently the project director of Tasveer ghar, a virtual archive of South Asia's popular visual culture. For more details, see http://www.alif-india.com