Jawal Nga is a Libyan

Libyan

A Libyan is a person or thing of, from, or related to Libya in North Africa.The term Libyan may also refer to:* A person from Libya, or of Libyan descent. For information about the Libyan people, see Demographics of Libya and Culture of Libya. For specific persons, see List of Libyans.* Libyan...

-American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 film producer

Film producer

A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...

 and founder of Tiny Dancer Films. He was raised in Tripoli, Libya and London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. He graduated from New York University

New York University

New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

's Tisch School of the Arts

Tisch School of the Arts

Tisch School of the Arts is one of the 15 schools that make up New York University ....

 in 1996 and currently resides in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

.

Professional career

Jawal Nga founded Tiny Dancer Films in 2003, a New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

-based production company

Production company

A production company provides the physical basis for works in the realms of the performing arts, new media art, film, television, radio, and video.- Tasks and functions :...

.

In 2004, Nga produced director Ira Sachs

Ira Sachs

Ira Sachs is an American filmmaker. His first film was the acclaimed short Lady .He directed Sundance Film Festival selection The Delta and directed Sundance Film Festival Grand Prize winning Forty Shades of Blue...

' "Forty Shades of Blue," starring Rip Torn

Rip Torn

Elmore Rual "Rip" Torn, Jr. , is an American actor of stage, screen and television.Torn received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his role in the 1983 film Cross Creek. His work includes the role of Artie, the producer, on The Larry Sanders Show, for which he was nominated...

. An official entry in six international film festivals, Forty Shades of Blue won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival

Sundance Film Festival

The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...

. The film was also nominated for a special prize at the Deauville Film Festival, and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for actress Dina Korzun

Dina Korzun

-Life and career:Korzun was born in Smolensk. She graduated from secondary school and Art school, studied ballet and modern dancing. After graduation from the prestigious Moscow Art Theatre School, she was asked to join the Chekhov Moscow Arts Theater Troupe, where she was a stage actress...

. In 2006 Nga and Sachs again worked together on the period drama, "Married Life", which starred Pierce Brosnan

Pierce Brosnan

Pierce Brendan Brosnan, OBE is an Irish actor, film producer and environmentalist. After leaving school at 16, Brosnan began training in commercial illustration, but trained at the Drama Centre in London for three years...

, Rachel McAdams

Rachel McAdams

Rachel Anne McAdams is a Canadian actress. After graduating from a theatre program at York University, Toronto in 2001, she worked steadily as an actress until finding fame in 2004 with starring roles in teen comedy Mean Girls and romantic drama The Notebook...

, Patricia Clarkson

Patricia Clarkson

Patricia Davies Clarkson is an American actress. After studying drama on the East Coast, Clarkson launched her acting career in 1985, and has worked steadily in both film and television. She twice won the Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in Six Feet Under...

 and Chris Cooper

Chris Cooper (actor)

Christopher W. "Chris" Cooper is an American film actor. He became well known in the late 1990s. He has appeared in supporting performances in several major Hollywood films, including The Bourne Identity, American Beauty, Capote, The Town, The Kingdom, Syriana, October Sky, Seabiscuit, and...

. It was released in September 2007. Nga produced the film along with Sidney Kimmel

Sidney Kimmel

Sidney Kimmel is a film producer also working as such under the names Caesar Kimmel and Sydney Kimmel. Some of his many films include Death at a Funeral and The Kite Runner...

, Steven Golin and Ira Sachs who also directed the film for Sidney Kimmel Entertainment.

He is the executive producer

Executive producer

An executive producer is a producer who is not involved in any technical aspects of the film making or music process, but who is still responsible for the overall production...

 of the Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...

 documentary "HOWL," for directors Rob Epstein

Rob Epstein

Rob Epstein, also credited as Robert P. Epstein, is a director, producer, writer and editor. Epstein has won two Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature for the films The Times of Harvey Milk and Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt....

 and Jeffrey Friedman

Jeffrey Friedman (filmmaker)

Jeffrey Friedman is a non-fiction filmmaker, director, producer, writer and editor. Friedman has won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for the film Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt....

 through his production company, Tiny Dancer Films. Nga is developing adaptations of Sigrid Nunez

Sigrid Nunez

-Biography:Sigrid Nunez is the daughter of a Chinese-Panamanian father and a German mother. She was born and raised in New York City. She received her BA from Barnard College and her MFA from Columbia University. After finishing school she worked for a time as an editorial assistant at The New York...

's "The Last of Her Kind," Matthew Galkin

Matthew Galkin

Matthew Galkin is an American film director and producer, best known for his work in documentaries.Galkin directed the 2010 HBO documentary Kevorkian, about the controversial right-to-die advocate Jack Kevorkian and his ill-fated 2008 run for Congress...

's adaptation of Kevin Canty

Kevin Canty

Kevin Canty is an American author of novels and short stories. He is a faculty member in the English department at the University of Montana at Missoula, where he currently resides. Canty received his Masters degree in English from the University of Florida in 1990. He received his M.F.A. in...

's "Into The Great Wide Open" and Justin Haythe

Justin Haythe

Justin Haythe is an American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter.Born in London, Haythe is a graduate of The American School in London and Middlebury College. He earned his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. His debut novel, The Honeymoon, was nominated for the 2004 Man Booker Prize...

's ("Revolutionary Road

Revolutionary Road

Revolutionary Road, the first novel of author Richard Yates, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1962 along with Catch-22 and The Moviegoer. When it was published by Atlantic-Little, Brown in 1961, it received critical acclaim, and the New York Times reviewed it as "beautifully crafted.....

") adaptation of Michael Ignatieff

Michael Ignatieff

Michael Grant Ignatieff is a Canadian author, academic and former politician. He was the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition from 2008 until 2011...

's "Charlie Johnson In The Flames."

Nga served as an Executive Producer of writer/director Joel Hopkins

Joel Hopkins

Joel Hopkins is a British independent film director and screenwriter best known for his films Jump Tomorrow and Last Chance Harvey .-Career:Hopkins was born in London, England, though he moved to New York to attend university...

's upcoming "Last Chance Harvey." Starring Emma Thompson

Emma Thompson

Emma Thompson is a British actress, comedian and screenwriter. Her first major film role was in the 1989 romantic comedy The Tall Guy. In 1992, Thompson won multiple acting awards, including an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for Best Actress, for her performance in the British drama Howards End...

 and Dustin Hoffman

Dustin Hoffman

Dustin Lee Hoffman is an American actor with a career in film, television, and theatre since 1960. He has been known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters....

, the film was shot in London in late 2007.
On October 27, 2008 The Hollywood Reporter

The Hollywood Reporter

Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...

announced that Tiny Dancer Films has optioned best-selling cult author-illustrator Daniel Pinkwater

Daniel Pinkwater

Daniel Manus Pinkwater is an author of mostly children's books and is an occasional commentator on National Public Radio. He attended Bard College. Well-known books include Lizard Music, The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, Fat Men from Space, Borgel, and the picture book The Big Orange...

's 1974 young-adult fantasy novel "Lizard Music" for the big screen. The movie version of the Random House

Random House

Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...

 novel will be produced by Jawal Nga.

Heavenly States Film

On June 20, 2007, Tiny Dancer Films announced they had optioned life rights from band the Heavenly States with the aim of developing a comedy feature-length film "Rock the Casbah," based on the band's attempt to tour Libya in 2005. Heavenly States’ vocalist Ted Nesseth declined to name specifics of the option, which can run into the tens of thousands of dollars in Hollywood, but said the option is three-tiered. The band gets paid again when a production contract is signed and gets points on the backend if and when the film comes out. However, many films never make it out from option to screen. Chronicled by award-winning Village Voice music journalist Rob Harvilla for the East Bay Express

East Bay Express

The East Bay Express is an Oakland-based weekly newspaper serving the Berkeley, Oakland, and East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area...

the band journeyed and attempted to play a venue in Libya only to get denied by the government and threatened with arrest. Newsweek

Newsweek

Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...

also did a story on the band.

“When I read the Newsweek article, I immediately realized that this had to be made into a film,” said Nga. “The Heavenly States attempted something that no Western band has done before, and having grown up in Libya, I have the ability to appreciate the great humor in this real situation of almost impossible culture clash.”

Producer Credits

• Howl
  Howl (film)
  First Howl is an upcoming horror film directed by David Flores and written by Clint Morris and stars Parisse Boothe, Eric Stoltz and Kristina Anapau...
  
  (2009/II) (in production) (producer)
• Last Chance Harvey
  Last Chance Harvey
  Last Chance Harvey is a 2008 American romantic drama film written and directed by Joel Hopkins. The screenplay focuses on two lonely people who tentatively forge a relationship over the course of three days...
  
  (2008) (completed) (executive producer)
• Married Life
  Married Life
  Married Life was the first of a string of short run series Ken Finkleman made for CBC Television in the 1990s and 2000s. The show's four episodes were later edited into one two-hour TV movie....
  
  (2007) (producer)
• Forty Shades of Blue
  Forty Shades of Blue
  Forty Shades of Blue is a 2005 independent film directed by Ira Sachs. It tells the story of Alan James , an aging music producer who lives in Memphis, Tennessee with his much younger Russian girlfriend, Laura . Their life together is complicated by the presence of Alan's adult son Michael Forty...
  
  (2005) (producer)
• Chasing Daylight
  Chasing Daylight
  Chasing Daylight, released in 2003, is Sister Hazel's fourth studio album.-Track listing:#"Your Mistake" - 4:09#"Come Around" - 3:56#"One Love" - 3:29...
  
  (2004) (producer)
• The Clearing
  The Clearing
  The Clearing is a 2004 American drama film and the directorial debut of Pieter Jan Brugge, who has worked as a film producer. The film is loosely based on the real-life kidnapping of Gerrit Jan Heijn that took place in the Netherlands in 1987...
  
  (2004) (associate producer)... aka Anatomie einer Entführung (Germany)
• Underdog (2003) (producer)

Miscellaneous Crew

• Wo hu cang long (2000) (assistant: Mr. Schamus)... aka Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a 2000 wuxia film. An American-Chinese-Hong Kong-Taiwanese co-production, the film was directed by Ang Lee and featured an international cast of ethnic Chinese actors, including Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi, and Chang Chen...
  
  (International: English title) (UK) (US)