Ishmael Fiifi Annobil
ISHMAEL FIIFI ANNOBIL
Ishmael Annobil is a London-based film producer, director, screenwriter, cinematographer, poet, critic, photographer, emblemist, drummer and digital composer. Born in Accra, Ghana, in 1958, Ishmael started writing poetry at the age of eleven, and entered journalism soon after high school. He has lived in Southern Sudan and Kenya, where he performed his acclaimed poetry show, Criers on the Thresholds of Reality, for the homeless. He came to London, in 1983, as the correspondent of a Kenyan magazine. In 1987 he moved with his family to Wales, where he lived for eleven years, and founded the international poetry festival, Iolo’s Children, and Wales’ first serious arts publication, Circa21 Newspaper.
Ishmael has directed several keynote art documentaries for Stonedog, including Kenji Yoshida: Artist of the Soul; In the Presence of Awe: The Transvangarde, and Hornsleth: Product of Love. His surreal fictional feature, Salamander Walks, is currently in post, and his forthcoming fictional films include Icarus, a folksy Sci-fi set in Yorkshire, and Drosophila, a psychological thriller. He is currently producing and directing a definitive documentary about American artist Linda Karshan, and a documentary tribute to the Late Jose Ferez Kuri, international curator, agent, essayist, aesthete, and agent/friend of the great artists, Brion Gysin, William Borroughs, and Kenji Yoshda.
Known to most as a diehard artist, Ishmael also enjoys a strong business pedigree, dating as far back as 1987, when, as a publisher, he was a bearer of the exclusive Department of Trade and Industry credit card. Thwarted by unscrupulous bankers, he used his business nous to develop a non-cash-dependent system for projects such as Circa21 Newspaper and Stonedog. He calls this approach "Organic Economics". To that end, he sees every creative project as: "a pooling of ideas and skills between artists, and therefore only minimally dependent on finance.". Above all, he champions working environments that are free of apparent hierarchies.
A master photographer, and pioneer of important low-light techniques, his photography has also been published in prominent publications, including The Independent Newspaper, and the prestigious French magazine M3. He has published two books of poetry, Seven Horn Elegy and Ethiop, and one music album, Zingliwu. He enjoys the rare honour of being anthologised in by The Poetry Foundation of America and Tupelo Press in Another English: Anglophone Poems from Around the World (2014).
Ishmael attended Christian Methodist Secondary School (Ghana), studied Social Anthropology extramurally at Goldsmith’s College, and he took a PgDip in Visual Communications at West Herts College. A prince of the Twafo warrior clan of Winneba, Ghana, Ishmael is passionate about loyalty and honesty, and he abhors all forms of misogyny and ageism. His passions include travel and cooking, which got him a two-page spread in the Observer Food Monthly, in 2001.
Ishmael is Stonedog's Founder / Chief Executive Producer.
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