Director

Jordi Esteva (Barcelona 1951)

He is a film maker, writer and photographer who has always been fascinated by Africa and the Middle East thereby focusing most his activity as a journalist and photographer on this part of the world.

He spent five years in Egypt working for Radio Cairo International. His book Los oasis de Egipto (Lunwerg, 1995), shows a collection of images that result from the time he spent studying everyday life in the desert in Egypt.  He was Chief editor and Art director of the Ajoblanco magazine from 1987 to the summer of 1993. In 1994 he participated in the UNESCO World Heritage Project for 2001 and was commissioned to photograph the Medina of Marrakech. In 1966 he was commissioned a photographic project to record the architecture of the Moroccan Atlas: Fortalezas de barro en el sur de Marruecos (Companía Literaria1996). Mil y una voces (El País/Aguilar 1998 and Círculo de Lectores1999), is a book of conversations with Arab artists and intellectuals of both sides of the Mediterranean about the challenge that Arab societies are facing to adapt to modern times. He then published Viaje al país de las almas, (Pre-Textos, 1999). This book is both a visual and written testimony of the African world of animism: its initiation rituals and spirit possession phenomena.

Los árabes del mar (Península/Altair) was published in 2006. This book explores the journeys of the old sailors of the Arabian coast who sailed along the various ports of  the Indian Ocean aided by the monsoon and following a route that had remained practically the same since the times of Sinbad the Sailor.

February 2009: After two months in Ivory Coast, the filming of “Return to the Land of Souls” is completed.

2011 Return to the Land of Souls receives several international prices.

September 2011: Atalanta publishes the book “Socotra, la tierra de los genios” (Socotra, the Land of Djinns”).

This melancholic travel to the Island of Sindbad is extremely beautiful, extraordinary and thrilling” according to Babelia, the literary supplement of El País the spanish leading newspaper.

The book receives the V Price of Routes of the Cid Travel Literature.

Four years after the filming of “Return to the Land of Souls”, Jordi Esteva went back to the Ivory Coast to film “Komian”. The film recounts the search for a priestess possessed by the Spirit of a Panther. Filmed in black and white, with the rhythm of a road movie, the narrator travelled to Ghana to look for the only drummers able to accompany the priestess and invoke the powerful Spirit.

2014: Jordi Esteva returns to the island of Socotra to film “Socotra, the island of djinns”. The film has been fully edited and ready for the 2016 circuit of festivals.

“Socotra, the Island of djinns” is selected by festivals like Visions du Réel (Nyon, Switzerland), International Full Frame Film Festival (N.C. USA), Documenta Madrid y Festival de Málaga. RAI (Royal Anthropological Film Festival) UK, among others.

October 2017, Atalanta ediciones, publishes “Socotra” a book of photographs in black and White that includes the DVD of the film.

March 2019. RM and Museu Egipci de Barcelona publishes “The Oases of Egypt” in a bilingual Edition, English and Spanish, with a new treatment and added new images.

Summer 2021: He puts an end to his memoir "El impulso nómada" that Galaxia Gutemberg will publish at the beginning of autumn

More information in: www.jordiesteva.com