Jeffrey Ameen Qaiyum (JAQ) and Gregory Javid Qaiyum (GQ) are Pakistani-American actors, writers and rappers raised in Chicago. They created the Off-Broadway hit The Bomb-itty of Errors (an "Add-Rap-Tation" of Shakespeare's Comedy Of Errors) which ran in the West End and won the jury prize for Best Show at the 2001 Aspen Comedy Festival. They have 20 years of experience adapting ancient texts for modern audiences, including Othello: The Remix (produced by Jon Leguizamo Off-Broadway... (more)
In 2015 I was working alongside the Coen Brothers. Watching and collaborating with Joel and Ethan set me on my path to direct this amazing script, Madness of Love...
“Mesha was invaluable . . . I’ll be very interested in what she creates as she transfers her talents to her own film projects” - Robert Graf, producer (Coen Bros)
Musicals have always been in my DNA. I went to NYU for theater and I began my career in NYC starring in and directing avant-garde performance art and "dance-theater”. When I moved to L.A. in 2003 I began using those skills in a more commercial context working with choreographers to build spectacles for live television from Dancing With the Stars to The Grammys. In 2008 I founded my own dance company, Aqualillies which has become the leading water ballet in the world hired by Justin Bieber, Missy Elliott, Katy Perry, as well as appearing on Glee, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and more. But when I choreographed Scarlett Johansson and 32 dancers for the Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar! I finally caught the bug - I needed to direct my own feature. I began preparing by creating short films.
“An unlikely Busby Berkeley. Poetry in Motion!” - The New York Times (about Mesha’s work)
INSPIRED by Plato's Phaedrus, Madness Of Love debates life's big questions delivered over BIG beats, in the form of a hip-hop mixtape. We meet two brothers who access the world and their place in it with seemingly opposite approaches: heart vs. logic. Their struggle to bridge musical styles and see eye-to-eye becomes an allegory for finding unity in a climate obsessed with picking sides.
THE STYLE of our film sets a single conversation (My Dinner With Andre) to a stream-of-consciousness visual narrative. We bounce wildly back and forth across the span of the brothers’ lives like a dream (Amelie). Madness of Love is a playful jaunt through flashback, fantasy and reality, laced with edgy music video sequences and grand dance numbers (LaLa Land) that celebrate Chicago and hip hop culture.
OUR STORY travels back in time as we relive both G’s wild love life and J’s stable existence. We watch J tuck his kids in at night while G pursues romantic adventures. We hang with them in the recording studio, onstage at Lincoln Hall, on the basketball court, and at home with the family… Stylistically these best friends and brothers have one continuous conversation throughout the film, as they both try to understand the power of love.
THE MESSAGE of the film goes back to the ancient wisdom of Plato: In a divided world where everyone wants to be right, Plato would say “no one but the gods can be right”. We all have someone, a brother, a sister, a friend, a lover who we’re in dialogue with most of our lives. Our divine purpose as mortals is simply to question, and stay in dialogue, searching to understand that which connects us all, “the madness of love.”
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