30
•
LMGI COMPASS Spring 2026
Education and teaching have always been a calling for me.
I feel strongly that sharing thoughts and ideas with other
colleagues makes us smarter and our profession stronger.
Sometimes for me, this manifests in organizing small two-hour
classes at my local union hall on scouting and mapmaking or
the ethics and etiquette of location management or building
multiday seminars to take to professionals a world away.
Long before I imagined a career in the film and TV industry,
as a teenager I was teaching swimming and horseback riding
lessons. If not for my need to be more outside than inside,
and on the go, instead of at a desk, perhaps I would have
made a decent schoolteacher. However, here I am.
Most of us working in the wild and wonderful world of
location management are by nature, curious people. If asked
to go to a distant city or foreign land, one in which you may
need to consult a map to see where it is, I'd bet most of us
would say yes—then look at the map. Such was the case last
November when I was asked by the LMGI to go to Kurdistan
to help teach local filmmakers about location management. I
said an enthusiastic yes! Then I looked at the map.
Kurdistan—not Kyrgyzstan, not Kazakhstan, not even
Kiribati, but Kurdistan. Go ahead, check the map. I'll wait.
Kurdistan is the semiautonomous area in northern Iraq,
bordering Syria to the west, Turkey to the north and Iran to
the east. The history of Kurdistan is layered and complicated,
with conflict, displacement, war and genocide. Kurdistan also
has a rich tradition of literature, poetry, music, cinema and
dance. Researching the region, the culture and the people
prior to my Kurdish adventure was overwhelming. I wanted
to learn all I could, and I quickly realized it would take years
to even scratch the surface. Lucky for me, there was not
going to be a test.
OK—we are done with our geography lesson for now—
back to filmmaking and location management.
Along with my colleague, LMGI President John Rakich, we
divided up tasks and got to work creating a course on the
ins and outs of professional location management. I had the
benefit of creating a similar curriculum several years back
with fellow LMGI member Kim Davis, which we brought to
filmmakers in Jordan in 2023. So, John and I weren't starting
from scratch, but we built on past experience and a tested
outline to improve. With oceans between us—time zones and
paid gigs taking priority—we managed to build a four-day
curriculum. It could have easily been 14 days.
The Kurdistan Film Commission Slemani is the brainchild
of Bavi Yassin. Director of the Film Commission, she is a
