"When I was in high school, I was the only one who wore one," Aleem says. "There were too many people who didn't understand why they're worn. It's important for me to address these issues."

But after the events of 9/11, Aleem saw many similar programs on television that illustrated the Muslim culture to her dissatisfaction. "Muslims should not just be associated with terrorism," she says. "We were keeping ourselves too secluded."

Her solution was to take her documentary and expand it on an exponential scale by forming a film festival on Muslim culture, one of the first of its kind. After soliciting works created by and about Muslims, Aleem has a collection of about 10 short and feature-length pieces that debuted in Berkeley in March. The festival is hitting the road for its first showing in the South Bay on May 29 at De Anza College.

The selections range from a Danish music video that prominently features a young Muslim girl to a full-length film called Oil Children, which is about a family struggling to live in the shadows of Iranian oil pipelines. Like that original short piece that Aleem produced as part of an ethnic studies class, the entire slate is intended to illuminate all areas of the Muslim way-of-life. "Overall, I would love for people to come out and say that they've learned something about Muslims," she says.

Aleem, who currently works as a multimedia director, first thought about putting a film festival together in 1999 when she realized that over 7,000 people saw her film on women and the hijab. "If one person can make that much of a difference, imagine what a number of filmmakers can do," she says.

But while working on her career, she didn't have the inclination to go beyond the planning stages until after 9/11. "I could not wait," she says. "I had to get something out there." This film festival has been in the works for about a year, and after a great deal of work, Aleem now has a staff, a committee that chooses film submissions and has nearly achieved non-profit status for the festival.

By Aleem's standards, the first go-round in Berkeley in March was a success. The space she rented held 400 people total, and over the course of the eight-hour festival, about that many people came and went. She had worked on building up a website and was discouraged when few people were buying tickets ahead of time. But then, she remembered her own culture. "It's not a typical Muslim thing to go to film festival, and anyway, the Muslim community are last-minute people," she says with a laugh.

The diversity of the South Bay inspired her to try for a second venue in Cupertino. Despite a full-time job and working on a master's degree at San Jose State University, Aleem hopes to take the festival on the road to Los Angeles and New York at some point soon. She said she's already been contacted by interested parties overseas, which is encouraging for her eventual goal--to bring filmmakers from Islamic countries like Iran to the U.S. to share their insights.

Aleem's own filmmaking effort demonstrated that wearing the hijab reflects a strong concept of modesty among American Muslim women. She said she hopes to prove that other films created and featuring Muslims are just as informative, but also hit just as close to home. "This isn't propaganda, and this isn't just Islamic topics," she says. "The quality of that music video is just as amazing as anything you'd see on MTV."

The Muslim Film Festival will take place on May 29 between 2 p.m. and 10 p.m. in Forum 1 at De Anza College.

De Anza is at 21250 Stevens Creek Blvd. For more information, visit http://www.muslimfilmfestival.org.