Daoud Abeid

Daoud Abeid's life mantras are the “Chosen Choose Themselves” and “Live to change Something”. As a man, he seeks to represent freedom, justice, equality, truth, love and righteousness through his actions and works. Daoud is an award winning filmmaker, graphic designer and educator. He one of the founders of Coup D’etat Brooklyn & SUNSHOWAH films, two great artistic enterprises built with the mission of counteracting negative and destructive one dimensional images of urban life in both fashion and film. Since 2002, Daoud has received recognition for his artistic efforts. Beginning with his first film, called Rev’o.lu,shun he co-wrote and directed with Sunshowah Films’ co-founder Dahkil Hausif. In 2002, the film received the first place award for Best Short Film in the Philadelphia International Film Festival. In 2003, he produced a "Rock the Vote" campaign video featuring HBO’s Def Jam poets. In collaboration with the Source Magazine, Abeid produced a documentary film called Joe Gotta Go, which premiered at the 2003 Urban World Film Festival. In 2006, his film project Eye Jammy premiered at the Urban World film festival, and received awards for best short at the Hip Hop Odyssey Festival, Spaghetti Junction Festival, and On Fumes Film Festival. The film was also an honorable mention finalist in the BETJ best shorts competition in 2007. His most recent project Shades of Brooklyn Vol. 1, was one of five international finalist in the 2008 American Black Film Festival's HBO best shorts competition and can now be seen as a featured presentation on HBO. In all that he does, Daoud chooses to live a life that reflects his understanding of self and is inspired by youth because he believes that “children live truth” and they remind him that “many of us let our life experiences lead us astray from our true selves”. On the flip side, Daoud recognizes that he is an elder in his community and sees it as his responsibility to do what he can to TEACH THE BABIES and prepare them to face the challenges of this world. Since 1998 he has worked with youth in the New York City Area, sharing his visions and experiences as a teaching artist, mentor and youth advocate. Currently he teaches film production at NYC high schools and after school programs, he speaks on panels organized for college and high school students, he is one of the founding members of the Brooklyn Artist Collective- developing pathways for other local artist to mentor and interact with the youth of Brooklyn, and he is working on executing a rights of passage leadership program for young urban men.