"Ravens, Huginn and Muninn, of Thought and Memory
wing the wide world each day:
I tremble for Thought, lest he come not again.
Yet for Memory, I fear more."
Sæmundar Edda
"The Sayings Of Grimnir."
Ali created Hermit Pictures for two reasons: to bridle his pangs of ennui and to make compelling cinema. Even as a child, whenever the squeams of listlessness raised its Medusa head, he'd retreat into the sanctuary of his mind which was, and still is (thankfully), immune from listlessness. The Muses would visit him circumstantially, bathed in a Nirvana light. He'd conjure stories whispered from the ether. He'd be galvanized by Thought and Memory. He'd be inspired by sequential dramas played out spontaneously as he went about his business. These emprises precipitated his creative and critical faculties. These miscellaneous reveries have intensified with age and experience, hence the formation of Hermit Pictures to transport these abstractions and ephiphanies into celluloid.
"Great cinematic spectacles have ignited awe and wonder
from the moment I started encoding the world around me.
There's nothing more fulfilling and self-satisfying than replicating
that feeling of awe and wonder from my interior world unto others."
Ali Kinteh.
Think of The Ten Commandments scene when Charlton Heston's Moses parted the Red Sea before the Children of Israel. Or those American helicopter gunships sailing over the Vietnamese paddy fields into combat to the tune of Ride Of The Valkyries in Apocalypse Now. What of the epic alien abduction of the young boy in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind? And, from the same film, three alien aircraft of varying sizes being pursued by a police car with its sirens blazing!
Cast your mind to the first appearance of Harry Lime in the last third of the film The Third Man to the arresting zither strings of Anton Karas; Or the camera's slow panning of the desert ocean in Lawrence of Arabia to Maurice Jarre's unmistakable soundtrack. Or Nigel Terry's King Arthur riding into battle against Modred's army to the stirring angelic chorus of O Fortuna in Excalibur? Deliberate the moment when Triton rose from the sea between the Symplegades in Jason And The Argonauts to guide the Argo through the Clashing Rocks. What of Steve McQueen riding a motorcycle across a country field with the Nazis in pursuit in The Great Escape?
Recall the first time when you saw E.T and Elliott on a bicycle, propelled before the full moon in E.T? The moment when Clark Kent becomes Superman and rescues Lois Lane falling from a helicopter several meters high. Call to mind Planet Of The Apes when Taylor falls to his knees in despair having discovered the Statue of Liberty buried to its bosom in sand after realizing he'd been on planet Earth all along, and so he screams despairingly: Damn you! Damn you all to hell!
The dominion of storytelling is as vast as the universe itself. The rubric of fiction is as stratified as the seven heavens. Epics and fables are conspicuously threaded with wisdom and adventure, mystery and intrigue. Myths and legends have outlived civilizations and withstood millenia. And after we are long dead, our tombstones rubble and our bodies dust, it is only our stories etched in the Thought and Memory of tellers that survive the ages. Without these tools of our consciousness, it would be as if we never existed!
For years, Ali had tapped on the front door of the film industry. His knockings had gone unanswered. His cries of let me in went unheard. Nobody was keen on utilizing his ideas. No one was interested in funding his projects. Roadblocks were commonplace. Opportunities were scarce. Wardens stonewalled him. Associates doubted him. Funding entities declined him. Decision makers said NO for the hundredth time. As he was chronically accustomed to rejection his entire life anyway, he responded as always whenever faced with a negative imperative. Hermit Pictures came into existence by his own endeavor.
Hermit Pictures' ambition is to produce quality filmmaking that inhibits and exhibits both style and substance in its consciousness. Hermit Pictures is less than a year old and yet they already have a cache of films on their production line. Kevin & Cassandra is in postproduction and will be showcased at major festivals in 2025. Three feature films Itchy Eyeball, Elixir and Aquarius Sims and a television series Brendan Baker are in preproduction. All five projects are optioned. Several more works are being nutured and incubated in development. Hermit Pictures believes that a new golden age of filmmaking is dawning...