York) Vanessa talks, among other related incidents, about the circumstances that led to the production of her documentary with Farouk. The Making Of Omar Mukhtar – Lion Of The Desert In late 1979 Farouk was hired by US’ Falcon International to write and produce a documentary on the making of the company's Hollywood major feature film; Lion of the Desert. The mega million dollar movie was produced and directed by Mustapha Akkad, with an all Academy Award winner cast and crew. Farouk wrote the script and conducted the interviews with Anthony Quinn, Rod Steiger, Oliver Reed and Jack Hildyard in addition to the Producer/Director Akkad. Two original versions in Arabic and English came out upon the film's release in 1981. NHK and other ventures The liaison with NHK, Japanese TV started after the release of Farouk's production of the Arabic version of the Swiss production and sales consortium Telepool's The Great National Parks of Europe. Farouq was commissioned in 1987 to produce the international version of NHK's 18-hour The Silk Road. Farouk ended up co-writing the series (segments related to the Islamic world) and directing the English version for a worldwide release including England's ITV and Canada's History Channel. The following year Farouk had received yet another commissioning from Turkey's Ministry of Culture to write, produce and direct the 35 minute documentary Merhaba, a visual rendition of Turkey's historical and cultural fresco. The first Gulf War got Farouk involved in researching and producing stories to serve many a client including BBC, Channel 4, CBS and NBC for a period of 7 months after the liberation of Kuwait in February 1991. In the same period Farouq researched and produced the Kuwait segment of Mark Magidson's 70 mm production of Ron Fricke's film Baraka, a non-verbal feature film. In the mid 90s Farouk was busy developing and pitching his first feature film venture Love in Exile. The project was set for a co-production deal with the Irish production entity Meem Productions, with Farouq writing and helming. It had been announced during the 1996 edition of Cannes Film Festival in the 17 May Cannes issues of The Moving Picture and Screen International. The project didn't take off though. Religion vs science By April 2008 Farouk kicked off the production of two documentaries in two original versions exploring the interaction of Holy Scriptures with science; a job that took almost 2 years. Maurice and