Shafeeq Vellani obituary
My friend and former co-worker Shafeeq Vellani, who has died of a heart attack aged 60, was a film-maker for many years, before becoming a lecturer in film studies at what is now the University of South Wales.
Shafeeq was born in London to East African parents, Iqbal, a barrister, and Zarina (nee Rahimtulla), a doctor who later became director of public health in Harrow. He attended King’s College school in Wimbledon and in the mid 1980s studied history and politics at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he started photographing bands and developed an interest in filmmaking. Shortly after graduating he made his first documentary, Walking Away with the Music(1989), a critique of the world music scene, which he accused of cultural appropriation.
Having moved to Bristol in 1988, he formed a not-for-profit film-making company called Picture This, with the artist Lulu Quinn. For eight years he led the organisation, putting on some of the first training workshops in the south-west of England for black and
Asian film-makers and for women and disabled people.
While there he also directed a series of short films that drew partly on his family background, including Loot (1996), a piece about tea that focused on British exploitation of the Indian subcontinent, and Darwish (1997), a meditation on nomadism. He also made the documentaries Circling the City(1997), on Asian-led taxi businesses, and Changing of the Light (1998), following the lighthouse keeper at Portland Bill in Dorset as he faces redundancy with the arrival of automation; I was his producer on these last two films.
Shafeeq went freelance as a writer/director and script editor, working mainly for regional and national screen agencies, including the UK Film Council. He also directed three half-hour fictional shorts, See Red (1997), Escape to Somerset (1998) and Nice Beaches (2008), narrative dramas featuring young Asian (and non-Asian) characters finding their identity and way in the world, often in rural or seaside settings outside their usual experience.
In 2002, Shafeeq settled into a new career as a lecturer after joining the Newport Film School in south Wales (which later became part of the University of South Wales), where he was able to share his passion and knowledge of film as BA and MA film course leader; at the time of his death he was senior lecturer on the MA course.
He married Nina Ali in 2015 and together they settled in Cardiff, where they shared their interests in gardening and travel.
He is survived by Nina and by Nina’s children from a previous relationship, Umarah Musa, Haroon and Yousha.