Kulsum Ebrahim

Screenshot from film. Live action footage of a foam store in Shepherd's Bush Market overlaid with a sleeping ghost.

Kulsum Ebrahim is an animator and filmmaker from Karachi, Pakistan, currently based in London. She graduated with a BA in International Relations and Art from Pomona College in Claremont, California in 2015.

She is interested in representation, power, culture and is drawn to the revolutionary potential of animation. She has collaborated with doctors, lawyers, activists, and policymakers to direct and produce animated campaigns that aim to bring about social change, for example increasing uptake of sexual health services or creating access to legal information. Clients include the CW+ Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Ministry of Human Rights Pakistan, Legal Aid Society Pakistan, SOC Films.

Her studies at the RCA are supported by the Apple Scholarship.

A photo of a young Kulsum makes a frame with her hands

At the RCA, I have been exploring links between film studies and urban studies and investigating how cities and cinema construe one another. My interdisciplinary praxis focuses on urban animated sites and I have been developing methodologies to examine these unfixed, changing, liminal sites. I take a hauntological approach to study Shepherd’s Bush Market in West London.

Market Haunting Teaser

Market Haunting

Market Haunting is an animated documentary that explores ghosts and gentrification in Shepherd's Bush Market using 2D digital animation, live action footage, oral histories, memories, imprints, and archival images. The film presents this West London market as a vital urban common, a site for community, care, resistance in a predominantly immigrant neighborhood. It centers market traders as they claim their right to the city by articulating what the market means to them, sharing their visions for the market whilst vigilant about the upcoming development in the Old Laundry Yard next door.