Ádel Kháder

With a wide range of audiovisual skills, the multifaceted Khader is beginning to create a name for himself in the national panorama of short films and advertising. From his company in Malaga, Infodel Media, he lends his support to cinematographic creativity in Spain.
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Who could imagine that although able to direct teams of more than fifty people with the utmost confidence and a camera in one hand, Kháder claims to be shy amongst large groups of people. “You have to be determined”, explains Kháder, “the key is to surround yourself with great people”. The word artist, for Kháder, demands the utmost respect. For that reason, his career has leaned more towards telecommunications rather than audiovisual creation, and in but a few years he is like a fish in water.

Artist or not, Kháder was born in Tenerife and lived in Marbella until the age of eighteen before making Málaga“>Malaga his base camp. Since then he has been at the head of Infodel, in which cinema and publicity are his weapons. “I feel most comfortable when working in advertising. It allows me to use all my facets and gives me creative freedom”, explains Kháder. Several of his adverts have won prizes in Spain, including Aero-boxing. He was also director of production for the campaign for the Junta of Andalusia to foment reading in the region Todos tenemos una historia que leer (We all have a story to read), under the production company Borvoleta Films.

Notwithstanding, his cinema career has not fallen behind, and he has produced shorts such as Línea 57 (2006), La Bohème (2007) or Inseparables (2008). In his own words, short films are “the most difficult genre”, and Reconciliación (2008), a 35 mm film leaning towards comedy, includes performances by Agustín Jiménez and Cesáreo Estébanez.

Kháder has also produced several documentaries, a genre in which one can “work from a place of total ignorance and come to discover a new and fascinating world”. El dinero de Hollywood (2004) and Vida de una compañía de baile flamenco (2005) are just examples of the frenetic activity of Ádel Kháder. “I’m fascinated by this world. When I dreamt about it when I was little, I had no idea that behind the 90 or 120 minutes of fun on the big screen, there was a whole world which I now get to control”, highlights the director.

The only thing Kháder has not yet dared to conquer is scriptwriting. “I respect and place a lot of emphasis on the script of a film. I write things behind closed doors, but I practice self-censorship! It’s easy to direct a good story, and very hard as a director to fix a bad one”. And feature films? “If life leads you to make one, you should definitely do it. But it’s not the jewel in the crown. The path of making short films doesn’t necessarily take you there”.

“In Spain cinema doesn’t exist as an industry”, he comments. “There are five to ten large producer-directors who cover most of the process of making a film. The rest of us need to find public funding in order to take on new projects”. Kháder supports Spanish cinema, but not the genre is seems to have become (“social commentary signed by one director-author”). He’d like to see cinema in Spain take on a wide range of styles and possibilities. “I love Spanish thrillers: Amenabar, Fresnadillo… There is a lot of creativity here. What’s missing is an industry to support it”, he concludes.

Kháder has tried living in Madrid and Barcelona, but he enjoys the quality of life in Malaga. “Who knows if Malaga is going to become the place to be, in the same way that Madrid did in the 1980s?” Andalusia is one of the regions that most supports the audiovisual sector. “Andalusia gives funding to about 50% of all projects which ask for it. People need to give it a shot, and forget the attitude of ‘why bother, they always give funding to the same people’”. This is the advice he shares with new talent trying to make it on the scene. In the meantime, he works in Infodel Media, where he works on design, photography, editing, as well as being director of production in their latest feature by Rafatal Los minutos del silencio. If the price of success is dedication, hard work and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen, Ádel Kháder is a name you’ll be hearing of more in the future.

Video

Tráiler cortometraje "Reconciliacion" from Adel Khader on Vimeo.