Information

Ahmed Adam is an independent filmmaker and photographer living and working in Central Australia. Born in Sudan and trained at Asian Academy of Film and Television in Delhi, he has worked across editing, lighting and directing on film and television projects for the ABC and Aboriginal media organisations in the APY Lands and Pilbara as well as projects in Sudan, India and the United Arab Emirates.

Focused on documentary and short fiction films, he has won Northern Territory Disability Services Awards, Excellence in Promoting Community Awareness Award: Lisa’s story (Short Documentary), 2014. The film is used by Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney and Charles Darwin University as part of their curriculum. He also won the Alice Springs Lens Flair Film Festival Award for Experimental Film: Static (2012). He was the main actor, and co-director on a series of short films supervised by the great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami: Studio, Waiting (2011). These short films screened at the Gulf Film Festival 2012 as part of a program titled ‘Cherries of Kiarostami’.

He was a participant in a 2016 Screen Territory and Screen Australia REALISTOR intensive development program. He was also a participant in a 2017 AFTRS/Screen Australia Talent Camp. His latest film Mark & Memory was screened at JamFactory Adelaide from 23 July – 19 September 2021, as part of JAMFACTORY ICON 2021 KUNMANARA CARROLL: NGAYLU NYANGANYI NGURA WINKI (I CAN SEE ALL THOSE PLACES). It will tour, alongside the exhibition, to eight venues nationally over the next two years.

Both Lisa’s Story and Mark & Memory were the product of long term relationships built with Aboriginal people from remote communities, to explore their lived experiences. For Mark & Memory, he accompanied Kunmanara Carroll on a return visit to his father’s Country; custodial Country Carroll had lived at a distance from for some forty years. The trip inspired a major shift in Carroll’s art making practice, the result being a series of substantial new bodies of work, including those exhibited as part of the touring show.

He is the co-founding editor of the territory in between, an online journal for writing and art about Central Australia; http://www.theterritoryinbetween.com.au/

Engaged in the local Mparntwe (Alice Springs) arts community, he was a member of the Curatorial Committee of Watch This Space (local ARI) from 2020 – August 2022.