From The Huffington Post:

Recently I sat down with David Osit, the 25-year-old cameraman, director, editor and producer behind the film. Osit created Building Babel as his MFA thesis in social documentary filmmaking for New York's School of Visual Arts (SVA).

Stroud: What interests you about the subject matter of Building Babel?

Osit: At 16, I took a trip to Turkey as part of a high school scholarship program. I was exposed to a world that I had never really thought about or seen before. From that point on, I really wanted to study the situation in that part of the world.

Stroud: How did you get involved with this project and, in particular, with Sharif El-Gamal?

Osit: After my first year of graduate school, I heard about this project in the Downtown Express, before anyone really cared at all. I thought it sounded interesting. The Cordoba Initiative was one of the entities involved in building the center. I interned with them as an HTML web guy. I went in on May 7th and started interviewing them and filming in the office. Within two, three weeks there were throngs of angry people screaming about "the mosque" and the news outlets showed up. I met Sharif when Scott Stringer, the Manhattan Borough President, spoke in favor of Park51. I had the access to people involved with Park51, but right away I knew that Sharif had to be the focus of the film. This is a rare chance to see a Muslim-American family that was not involved in anything suspicious -- they were just a good family. There are too many instances when Islam is mentioned that it's in the context of extremism or terrorism. There is no mention of "moderate Islam." I don't like that phrase "moderate Islam"... (continue reading)

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