Saira Shah
Encyclopedia
Saira Shah is an author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

, reporter and documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 filmmaker. She produces
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...

, writes and narrates
Narrator
A narrator is, within any story , the fictional or non-fictional, personal or impersonal entity who tells the story to the audience. When the narrator is also a character within the story, he or she is sometimes known as the viewpoint character. The narrator is one of three entities responsible for...

 current affairs
Current affairs (news format)
Current Affairs is a genre of broadcast journalism where the emphasis is on detailed analysis and discussion of news stories that have recently occurred or are ongoing at the time of broadcast....

 films.

Life and work

Shah was born in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 and raised in Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. She was educated at Bryanston School
Bryanston School
Bryanston School is a co-educational independent school for both day and boarding pupils in Blandford, north Dorset, England, near the village of Bryanston. It was founded in 1928...

 and read Arabic and Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

 at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
School of Oriental and African Studies
The School of Oriental and African Studies is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the University of London...

, graduating in 1986. Her father was the late Idries Shah
Idries Shah
Idries Shah , also known as Idris Shah, né Sayed Idries el-Hashimi , was an author and teacher in the Sufi tradition who wrote over three dozen critically acclaimed books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to travelogues and culture studies.Born in India, the descendant of a...

, an Afghan writer of books on Sufism
Sufism
Sufism or ' is defined by its adherents as the inner, mystical dimension of Islam. A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a '...

. Part of his family was originally from Paghman
Paghman
Paghman is a town in the hills near Kabul, Afghanistan. See also Paghman Gardens. It is center of the Paghman District which has a total population of 120,000 people, and another 20,000 returnees are expected , of which 70% are Pashtuns and 30% Tajiks.. Paghman District is situated in the western...

, Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

. Her mother is half-Parsee
Parsi
Parsi or Parsee refers to a member of the larger of the two Zoroastrian communities in South Asia, the other being the Irani community....

 and half-English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

. The author Tahir Shah
Tahir Shah
Tahir Shah , né Sayyid Tahir al-Hashimi is an Anglo-Afghan Indian author, journalist and documentary maker. He lives in Casablanca, Morocco.-Family origins and life:...

 is her brother. and she also has a sister, Tahir's twin, Safia Shah
Safia Shah
Safia Shah , now Safia Thomas is a British writer, editor and television news producer, following in the footsteps of her distinguished Anglo-Afghan Indian family....

.

Her first trip to Afghanistan was when she was 21 years old. She worked for 3 years in Peshawar
Peshawar
Peshawar is the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and the administrative center and central economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan....

 as a reporter covering the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. She has also worked as a journalist for Channel 4 News
Channel 4 News
Channel 4 News is the news division of British television broadcaster Channel 4. It is produced by ITN, and has been in operation since the broadcaster's launch in 1982.-Channel 4 News:...

, which she left in 2001.

She married and divorced (after 5 years) a Swiss
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 reporter, whom she met in Peshawar
Peshawar
Peshawar is the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and the administrative center and central economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan....

.

Shah worked with James Miller
James Miller (filmmaker)
James Henry Dominic Miller was a Welsh cameraman, producer, and director, and recipient of numerous awards, including five Emmy Awards. He often worked with Saira Shah with whom he founded and operated an independent production company called Frostbite Productions in 2001...

 on several projects including the films Beneath the Veil (2001), Unholy War (2001), both Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

 Dispatches
Dispatches (TV series)
Dispatches is the British television current affairs documentary series on Channel 4, first transmitted in 1987. The programme covers issues about British society, politics, health, religion, international current affairs and the environment, usually featuring a mole in an organisation.-Awards:*...

 films for the UK documentary company Hardcash Productions
Hardcash productions
Hardcash Productions is an independent television production company set up by David Henshaw in 1992.Hardcash specialises in current affair programmes and has won three Emmys, three RTS Journalism Awards and a BAFTA for Channel 4's Dispatches....

, and Death in Gaza
Death In Gaza
Death In Gaza is an Emmy-award winning 2004 documentary film about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, opening in the West Bank but then moving to Gaza and eventually settling in Rafah where the film spends most of its time...

(2004), for their own TV company Frostbite Films. She won a Current Affairs BAFTA for Death in Gaza. She also appeared on the television programme Breakfast with Frost
Breakfast with Frost
Breakfast with Frost was a talk show hosted by Sir David Frost on the BBC on Sunday mornings. The news presenter was Moira Stuart. The show ran for more than 12 years and exactly 500 editions between 3 January 1993 and 29 May 2005...

on 10 August 2003.

She currently lives between London and France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

.

External links


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