​Mainly Mozart

ALI HABASHI, filmmaker

 

Ali Habashi is an award winning documentary filmmaker who has covered stories in more than 30 countries. His work has been featured in CBS4, NBC6, Miami Herald and USA Today and aired on international Cable and Public TV channels such as Discovery (US and India), Canal+(France), CZTV (Czech Republic), LAPTV (Latin America) and CNN Türk.  With an interest to better understand pressing global challenges, his work in recent years has focused on communicating science on a range of topics such as ethnic disparities in health care, access to clean drinking water and sanitation, ocean health index, aging populations and potential implications of increasing the human health-span on economies, resources and generational succession.

In October 2013, he premiered his latest global documentary film titled The Silver Mirror at the headquarters of the World Health Organization in Geneva, and subsequently in Miami and New York. Narrated and hosted by two-time Emmy Award®-winning and Golden Globe®-nominated actress Blythe Danner, with an original film score performed by the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra, this feature-length global documentary film investigates the topic of aging in the 21st century.  Shot over three years in 12 countries, The Silver Mirror is a search for a universal voice that fearlessly and intimately conveys humanity's ancient, collective and fundamental struggle with the fragility of the human condition imposed by the inevitability of aging - while also pondering that for the first time in history, impending scientific surges in our health-span will drastically change how we live our lives.

His work as the Co-Director and Editor of One Water, a global documentary film about our changing relationship to potable water was premiered at the Miami International Film Festival to critical acclaim in 2008 and won numerous international awards including Best Environmental Feature Award at the Artivist Film Festival in Los Angeles and the Golder Associates Award for Best Film on Sustainable Development at Cineambiente in Turin, Italy as well as Best Documentary at the Foyle International Film Festival in Derry, Ireland. A TV version of this film, narrated by Martin Sheen had its TV premiere on the Discovery Network’s Planet Green in 2010 and found its way to international Cable and Public TV channels in France, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Poland and Turkey.

Ali is currently teaching courses in digital production at the Department of Cinema and Interactive Media as well as courses in science documentary film production for graduate students majoring in Public Health, Molecular Biology and Environmental Sciences. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, from 1998 to 2014, he served as the Director of the Edward H. Arnold Center for Confluent Media Studies at the University of Miami where he initiated and produced several international collaborative media initiatives.

Mr. Habashi has been invited as the guest presenter/speaker in several conferences and international events including International Day of Older Persons at the headquarters of World Health Organization (Geneva, 2013), United States of Aging Town Hall Meeting, streamed live by USAToday (Miami, 2012), Patagonia Agua (Viedma, 2011), Global Business Forum, “The Business of Health Care” (Miami, 2011), UNESCO Headquarters (Paris, 2009), World Bank Headquarters (Washington D.C., 2009), 5th World Water Forum (Istanbul, 2009), Baka Forum (Basel, 2009), Sea Secrets Lecture Series (Florida, 2008), TECDO (Santo Domingo, 2008), INFOBAE (Buenos Aires, 2008).