The TAQWACORES

This poster is for a show in Park City, Utah that is the party for the premiere of
The Taqwacores at Sundance Film Festival. The bands are The Kominas, Al Thawra, and Filmstrip. They're all going on a mini-tour to Sunance, check that out here: TAQWACORES MINI-TOUR.

\I'm so pumped I got to do this. The Taqwacores is a film based on a book by Michael Muhammad Knight about a Muslim Punk movement that was filmed at a DIY punk show space called The Tower 2012 in Cleveland last year. I haven't read the book yet, but the story of the author and his moves is pretty awesome. He started by printing up zine style editions of The Taqwacores and pushing them at shows. There's a documentary about it called Taqwacores: The Birth of Punk Islam.



This is a pretty straight forward poster. I didn't want to represent anything too specific from the film, because I haven't seen it yet. I also didn't want to do anything completely unrelated. I'm pretty familiar with Filmstrip and got familiar with these other bands, but nothing really jumped out at me as far as visualizing what they're all about. So, I opted for an old friend: single figure in front of a crusty urban background.



The Taqwacores is set in Buffalo, NY... but they filmed it in Cleveland because the difference in landscape is probably non-existent. Also, the director Eyad Zahra is a local dude. As far as the background goes, I felt pretty comfortable in making it a bleak gray sky, bringing a post-industrial grime vibe, with railroad tracks.

Big thanks to Big Granny for translating this to Arabic! I actually loved drawing the Arabic writing for this. I hope it's all correct! I have no idea. I like it though. I hope that's next level, doing posters in foreign tongues.