Writer Tanzila Ahmed is at Sundance, America’s premiere festival of indie flicks, held yearly on the snowbound streets of Park City, Utah. From her home base at the Taqwacore house (peopled with those who produced the film of the novel being shown there and the bands that soundtrack it), Ahmed will bring us a daily dose of indie celeb news. Learn more about her and her work here. And read her past blogs here.

A lot of cool stuff went down at Sundance kind of unrelated to Taqwacore, but I couldn’t help myself.  Here it goes:

BANKSY WAS IN TOWN

Graffiti by Banksy

“Did you hear? The locals are all upset that a graffitti artist is in town,” the woman behind the register said.

“Rumor was being spread that it was because of The Taqwacores. That it was some of their people graffing,” someone else in the store said.

“But it wasn’t them. It’s Banksy! He’s the best, we should be so lucky to have his artwork here,” the first woman responded.

I kinda laughed to myself. It would be an honor to get mistaken for Banksy, but I just can’t see anyone in our crew tagging at Banksy level.

As we walked back to the condo, we found a Banksy. It just had to be. How could it not be?

KATIE HOLMES SPOTTING

I trolled Main St. looking for the cast of The Taqwacores. They were spending the day getting their photo taken and I wanted to meet up with them. As I was walking up Main St. I was stopped in my tracks by a mob of people on the sidewalk. I looked in to see a pretty brunette with big sunglasses get out of a large SUV to navigate the mob to go inside a store.

“Taz! Who is that?” I heard being yelled from across the street. It was Imran of The Kominas walking on the other sidewalk down the street with the rest of the cast.

“Katie Holmes!” I yelled back across the street.

“Oh! Uh…” he responded. “Come on this side!” I crossed the street and met up with the rest of The Taqwacores entourage.

CAST MUG SHOTS

The portraits taken of the cast were pretty fantastic. Check out the end result in the linked AP gallery.

TAQWACORE IN A GALLERY SHOW

I gushed all about Kim Badawi’s great photographs in a previous post, but check it out here below — Imran Malik gives me a tour.