Pan-African Studies | Aminah Bakeer Abdul-Jabbaar

Aminah is a writer, producer, director, and professor in the Pan African Studies Department at California State University, Los Angeles. She was born and raised in South Central LA and her father is activist and author Donald Bakeer, who wrote the novel that the film SOUTH CENTRAL is based on. She holds a B.A. from U.S.C. in Cinema T.V. and an M.F.A. in Directing from UCLA’s Film & T.V. Department. Aminah has participated in Film Independent’s Project Involve and Screenwriter’s Lab. Her short film, PERSONAL TOUCH, which deals with her mother’s death from breast cancer, won the Liddel Art Award from the Ann Arbor Film Festival and screened on KCET. After, Aminah wrote and directed DORSEY, a Multi-Camera TV Pilot about colorism in the Black Community (starring: Christy Knowings, Wesley Jonathan, and Wesley Jonathan). This landed her a coveted Directing Internship from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and she shadowed on THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS and was featured on ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT. Next, Aminah won the Visionary Award at the Pan African Film Festival for BILALIAN, a feature-length documentary about African-American Muslims in America and Africa, and received glowing reviews in several publications including “Variety” and broadcasted on the B.E.T. network. After, Aminah co-wrote, produced, and directed the web series BedRest (starring: Pratima Anáe and Tiffany Haddish), a comedy about a woman trapped on Bed Rest, which played on Blip.TV. Recently, Aminah’s narrative feature film, MUSLIMAH’S GUIDE TO MARRIAGE (starring: Ebony Perry, Glenn Plummer, Kareem Grimes, and BT Kingsley), which is about a twenty-something African-American orthodox Muslim Woman who has seven days and fourteen hours to save her marriage, won the Audience Award at the Pan African Film Festival and will be released soon. Currently, Aminah is in development on a T.V. series at HartBeat Productions.  She is represented by 3 Arts Entertainment and UTA.