Malik Hassan Sayeed
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Malik Hassan Sayeed

Malik Hassan Sayeed is an acclaimed American cinematographer, producer, and director, known for his distinctive and influential visual style across feature films, documentaries, and a vast array of iconic music videos. Born in 1969, Sayeed graduated from Howard University in 1990, where he studied under filmmaker Haile Gerima. His career gained significant traction with his work for director Spike Lee, for whom he served as the main cinematographer on films like Clockers (1995), Girl 6 (1996), He Got Game (1998), and the documentary The Original Kings of Comedy (2000). He is also celebrated for his visually arresting cinematography on Hype Williams' 1998 cult classic, Belly, a film for which he received an Independent Spirit Award nomination.Beyond his feature film work, Sayeed is a prominent figure in the music video world, having collaborated on seminal videos such as Lauryn Hill's "Ex-Factor," Kanye West's "Gold Digger" featuring Jamie Foxx, and multiple award-winning projects for Beyoncé, including "Formation," Lemonade, and Black Is King. He was also a second unit director of photography on major productions like Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. In 2014, Sayeed, alongside Arthur Jafa and Elissa Blount Moorhead, co-founded TNEG, an independent film studio and production company dedicated to fostering a "Black cinema as culturally, socially, and economically central to the 21st century as was Black music to the 20th century." After a long hiatus from dramatic features, he returned to narrative cinematography to lens Luca Guadagnino's 2025 film After the Hunt, demonstrating the continued impact and demand for his unique cinematic vision.

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