Hi. My name is Hamza Ali. I am a Richmond based art director. I see in pictures and then I make them.

I make the best curry in town, which I can say confidently having never tried anyone else’s. It would be an honor to make you curry sometime, reader of my website, so you don’t just have to take my word for its superiority.

We are warned that the best About Me sections do not contain life stories, but I am including a succinct version of mine despite this advice. If you are content with what you have thus far read, you may move along.

Short story long….

I grew up in Pakistan and wanted to be a doctor. Until I came to America for the first time as a sophomore in high school and spent the year with a family in Pennsylvania, a family whom I now call my second family. There, I was introduced to music, theatre, writing, dance: all things free and creative. I wasn’t a prodigy at any of these things, but I was happier doing them than I ever had been studying medicine. After a year in the states, I went home, completed my two-year pre-med program and then left for a university where I did not specialize. (American translation: liberal arts.)

Between my second and third in college, I spent the summer teaching history at a small village in the middle of nowhere. There, I made my first documentary about the lives of my students and in the process, realized a new passion.

For the remainder of my time in college, I worked as a production assistant and following graduation, made my own commercial documentaries.

The years went on, as years tend to do, and while I was very sick in bed, back at home, feeling a bit lost following a troublesome documentary experience, I discovered the VCU Brandcenter online. Ads? Maybe I … could make ads? So make ads I did!

Because of that illness, I am where I am today. I don’t know where my career will take me, but as long as I am surrounded by interesting and funny people, I am quite happy.

I also really like movies and spend most of the money in cinema.