Celebrating Green Crew Heroes! Shady Amir El Khorazati, MD/EP of Cairo-Based Production Company The Talkies
Green The Bid Crew Heroes is a series that highlights individuals who bring sustainable practices to any area of the production process, and seek to inspire others to do the same. Production can’t happen without all crew-members (both on set and off), and the same is true of their support of Green The Bid.
This week Green The Bid’s Jessie Nagel spoke with Shady Amir El Khorazati, MD/EP of Cairo-based production company The Talkies about discovering his love of nature in Sinai and his enduring belief that we can influence others through our own sustainable actions.
J.N. Tell us a little about your background, your role at The Talkies and its sustainability practices?
S.A.E.K. I started my career at an early age, and I attended my first shoot at the age of 14. I was always fascinated with working behind the camera. I worked in almost every department, then moved to the agency side for a couple of years, and then decided that my passion is production, being on the ground making things happen, so I moved to the production side and started all over again as an assistant producer. 12 yrs later I am now the managing director/EP of The Talkies, Cairo.
We are very keen to have the best practices when it comes to sustainability – 5 years ago we stopped printing ppm documents, we have a zero-plastic policy in our office, and when it comes to the shoot, we always make sure that most of what we use is recycled. For example, any set construction material is always properly dismantled, and the material is either sold to the art director to be reused in other projects or sold to local wood dealers that specialize in the recycling of used wood.
When it comes to wardrobe, we always have clear deals with our stylist that we only buy from stores that will allow the return of the items to be resold again, and if the items are over used and won’t be returned we have two options: either the items are sold to the stylist to be part of her warehouse, or the items are added to our small wardrobe storage to be used in other productions.
In general, we try our best to recycle as many elements as possible, and the good thing about Egypt is the recycling industry here is very big and the culture of single use is not big. Nothing is used for one time – everything gets used over and over again
J.N. Where are you based, and how has that influenced your perspective on environmentalism?
S.A.E.K. I am based in Cairo, Egypt. Living in a city like Cairo, which is not the cleanest city, pushed me to think about how we can live in a cleaner, much healthier world, and how the small things done by individuals can actually have a major effect. Everything starts with one person taking action, and what I realized is that, with time, when people see you, they start copying your actions. For example, four years ago I started taking glass boxes to the supermarket when I bought cheese and cold cuts, and I asked the seller to use it instead of the single use foam/plastic plate. They were a bit confused at the beginning but with time they ended up having a system for people who do the same. People asked me, “why are you doing this?" and some of them actually decided to do the same…and that’s how change happens, which is exactly how it started with me after seeing a friend doing it.
J.N. Tell us about your love of nature and animals.
S.A.E.K. Well, my love for nature and animals could take hours and hours to talk about, but it all started with a visit to Sinai Egypt when I was 20 yrs old. Sinai is a magical place in Egypt where everything is raw and native, it’s a spiritual place, as we call it in Egypt it’s the “land of the prophets.” Back then, electricity was only available for four hrs a day, we stayed in huts on the beach – the eco-friendly living is a lifestyle: You cook your own food, you enjoy nature without the influence of technology or the busy life of the city, going on desert trips, and staying in the desert for days.
Seeing the raw beauty of nature changes your life, nature is where I go to find myself, reconnect with life, and find my peace. And to make that happen I learned that you have to respect nature and preserve it. I met a person on my first trip to Sinai and he told me, “our rule is always to leave the place cleaner than when we came.’’ And since that day whenever I am on the beach or in the desert I always clean before I leave and when people see you do that, they do the same.
As for the animals, well that started at a young age. We were always an animal-loving family, and I grew up always having an animal in the house – cats, dogs, pigeons, and even a falcon at a certain point. I was raised to love animals and rescuing animals was a big part of our life. At a certain point I had seven dogs and a cat! My dad once rescued an injured pigeon, and we kept her till she learned to fly again. My parents have two blind cats that live in their house, our dog is considered a son not a dog, and my parents always say, “we can’t wait to see our grandchildren (speaking about the dog).” My ex-wife was a huge animal activist and rescuing animals was a daily thing for us. So, animals were always a part of life and my love for them can’t be explained with words, they are always considered as my kids not animals we raise.
J.N. What are some key environmental considerations you wish all production service companies would put into practice?
S.A.E.K. Well, there are a lot of things that we can do for the environment: Stop using plastic, be more aware of our carbon footprint, and apply more remote attendance practices. But what I really want to do, and I hope others do is be more efficient in calculating our carbon footprint and start planting trees to compensate for our carbon footprint because we will have a footprint one way or another, so the only way is to compensate for it with trees and plants.
J.N. If you didn’t do what you do now, is there another job in the industry or otherwise that you’d do? Why?
S.A.E.K. Well to be honest if I wasn’t doing what I am doing now I wouldn’t be interested in any other job in the industry. What I actually wanted to do since I was a kid was do humanitarian work in Africa and only Africa. African countries have been ripped apart by wars and greed, what the West has done to Africa for its resources, and the colonization of the African countries that happened for the past 100 years, has left Africa very far behind from the world. Working on the ground was always something I wanted to do, and I actually tried to join the UN volunteering program when I was young, but they make it so difficult to join, so I gave up and satisfied this part inside of me by volunteering in Egypt whenever I can.
J.N. Who is a hero to you?
S.A.E.K. Well, my hero is my mom, she is the strongest person I have ever met, and everything I learned in life came from her.
J.N. Why did you decide to join Green The Bid?
S.A.E.K. To learn more about what I can do more for our planet, how to improve my work practices so it can be more environmentally friendly and learn from other experiences on how to keep our planet clean, because if we don’t take quick action this planet won’t let us live on it. The only thing history has taught us is that mother nature always wins, nature always finds a way to recover and if we don’t take a step nature will recover by removing us from the equation.
----- Are you a crew hero or do you know one? We want to hear from you!
