Sayed Najem’s Victim — a film he wrote, directed and stars in — will premiere tomorrow night at the Providence Performing Arts Center.

The Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

With the availability of high-class video equipment these days, it seems half the people in the state are making their own films. Certainly that seems to be the case if the ever-growing number of entries in local film festivals are any indication.

For the few lucky filmmakers, there are screenings at film festivals. For a very few there are later screenings at small theaters and maybe a DVD sale.

But first-time filmmaker Sayed Najem has taken the fast track around all that. Tomorrow night he will hold the red-carpet world premiere of Victim — a film he wrote, directed and stars in — in the gold-leaf splendor of the 3,200-seat Providence Performing Arts Center.

It is the beginning of a new phase of life for the 38-year-old Olympic medal-winning Tae Kwan Do instructor who once was hired to show actor Hayden Christensen how to wield a light saber for his role as Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones.

Najem emigrated to Canada with his family from war-torn Lebanon in the 1970s at age 6. He later became a Tae Kwan Do master, competing in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul and winning a silver medal at the 1992 Barcelona games. He is well known in Rhode Island, having moved to Cranston where for many years he had his own Tae Kwan Do studio.

He sold the studio two years ago and, although he still gives private lessons, concentrated on making Victim become a reality. His screenplay, about a married couple who discover the husband is HIV positive shortly after the wife discovers she is pregnant, is based on a story by his friend Erkut Yigit, who was influenced by a story he’d read in a Turkish magazine.

Najem found the story powerful and spent a feverish 90 days writing the screenplay. He shopped the script around but, finding it difficult to find someone to produce it, he decided to do it himself.

“I maxed out my credit cards buying cameras and equipment.” Soon he found himself “working 85 percent of my time on the film.”

He filmed from May to October last year on Rhode Island locations with a cast that includes Alejandro Nones from Mexico, Mireille Eid who is a former Miss Canada and Shannon O’Brien of Rhode Island, who plays the wife.

Then he hired a film editor in Toronto to put the film together, working from last November to April. You can get a hint of the results in the film’s trailer at victimthemovie.com, and it seems well acted and emotionally powerful. It will be shown “on the big screen” at PPAC via a digi-Beta system, “the same system they used to show [Brotherhood] there.”

Najem began selling tickets to tomorrow night’s PPAC screening last April, using the proceeds for a down payment on the theater rental. The premiere is a benefit for AIDS Project Rhode Island, which “will get a portion of the proceeds after all the debt is paid.”

He wouldn’t say how the husband in Victim contracts HIV, not wanting to give away too much of the plot, but Najem did allow that there is a sex scene, tastefully done in shadows. Because of that and some profanity, he says it probably would get an R rating. He is in the process of finding a distributor that will release the film on DVD worldwide.

Since it’s a benefit, tickets for the premiere, which goes on screen at 7 p.m., are not inexpensive. For the movie alone, tickets are $49; $25 for students. A VIP ticket, which includes a cocktail reception beforehand, is $100. They’re available at the box office and at ppacri.org.

Najem sees this as the start of a new life.

“All I want to do is direct and act,” he says. “My work is in martial arts, but my love and future are in films. This is just the beginning.”

mjanuson@projo.com