How cin­e­ma is rewrit­ing the Mid­dle East narrative

Inter­na­tion­al news cov­er­age presents a very spe­cif­ic, often sim­plis­tic nar­ra­tive of the Mid­dle East. Cin­e­ma has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­vide an alter­na­tive. Elhum Shak­er­i­far, one of two BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val pro­gramme advi­sors for MENA regions, is ​“par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in chal­leng­ing those meta-nar­ra­tives that are cre­at­ed by the news, the reflec­tion of this area of the world sim­ply as a con­flict area.”

Film­mak­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly doc­u­men­tary mak­ers, have a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to present sto­ries that dif­fer from those that are usu­al­ly told; and pro­gram­mers, espe­cial­ly those work­ing for a high-pro­file fes­ti­val like the LFF, have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to help get them seen. ​“That’s where cin­e­ma has the role of shin­ing a light in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent way, of broad­en­ing under­stand­ings, of mak­ing things more per­son­al and pal­pa­ble, let­ting us under­stand beyond that news-bite image that we are con­stant­ly being relayed.”

A film in the fes­ti­val that does this par­tic­u­lar­ly suc­cess­ful­ly is Iran­ian doc­u­men­tar­i­an Mehrdad Oskouei’s ter­rif­ic Star­less Dreams, a film about an all-female insti­tute for juve­nile delin­quents that he bat­tled for sev­en years to make. In his deft­ly con­struct­ed, sen­si­tive por­trait of the young women con­tained with the cen­tre, Osk­ouei makes no attempt to hide his posi­tion as film­mak­er, includ­ing many of the ques­tions he pos­es to the girls in the film and mak­ing his pres­ence as an out­sider clear. Despite this, he man­ages to present the feel­ings, thoughts and sto­ries of the girls (whose crimes vary mas­sive­ly in scale and seri­ous­ness, as do their feel­ings towards soci­ety and their fam­i­lies) front and cen­tre, and remains com­pas­sion­ate and non-judge­men­tal towards each per­son he spot­lights. ​“Her sto­ry is the same as mine,” one girl says, col­laps­ing into tears at the rev­e­la­tions Osk­ouei draws from her friend.

Inter­cut­ting inter­view footage with every­day detail (children’s toys, a bird fly­ing into the prison’s court­yard, mon­ey stashed under a bed), and shoot­ing with con­sis­tent cre­ativ­i­ty, Osk­ouei cre­ates a rich pic­ture of the envi­ron­ment he is look­ing in on, mak­ing a doc­u­men­tary as cin­e­mat­ic as it is curi­ous and empa­thet­ic. A con­cise, sim­ple film that focus­es specif­i­cal­ly on peo­ple and their sit­u­a­tion, Osk­ouei avoids overt­ly politi­cis­ing what he por­trays. Ulti­mate­ly, Star­less Dreams refrains from offer­ing direct com­men­tary on the specifics of crim­i­nal jus­tice in Iran, nor on the gen­der pol­i­tics of the Mid­dle East, as it might be expect­ed to, instead pro­vid­ing insight into human­i­ty in gen­er­al. It leaves us with the ques­tion of how we can bet­ter rein­te­grate crim­i­nals into soci­ety – as one of the girls states, ​“our expec­ta­tion from soci­ety is obvi­ous, but what does soci­ety expect from us?”

Hala Alabdalla’s Farouk, Besieged Like Me is also con­cerned with soci­ety. Osten­si­bly a por­trait of writer, pub­lish­er and intel­lec­tu­al Farouk Mar­dam-Bey, it is also an open-end­ed inves­ti­ga­tion into the man’s home­land, Syr­ia. Alabdalla’s film uses the prob­ing intel­lect of it’s par­tic­i­pants to inquire into issues sur­round­ing a nation in flux – think­ing less about the cur­rent con­flict and more ​“its his­to­ry, its peo­ple, its cul­ture and its econ­o­my.” A sim­ple film in style and exe­cu­tion, vet­er­an doc­u­men­tar­i­an Alab­dal­la uses the voic­es of the par­tic­i­pants to speak for her and oth­er Syr­i­ans, hear­ing from Mar­dam-Bey alone first as he pre­pares for a Sun­day gath­er­ing, before the guests arrive and the documentary’s focus opens outwards.

The for­mal cen­tre­piece of the doc­u­men­tary, this din­ner sees many intel­li­gent voic­es from across the Ara­bic lit­er­ary scene gath­er to debate all man­ner of issues relat­ed to their coun­tries and cul­ture. The seg­ments with Mar­dam-Bey alone are no less enlight­en­ing, as we observe him dis­play­ing his humil­i­ty as much as his intel­li­gence. With it’s focus on thoughts and words, Farouk, Besieged Like Me con­sists pri­mar­i­ly of talk­ing heads and observed con­ver­sa­tion, but it also con­tains the occa­sion­al cin­e­mat­ic flour­ish. In the clos­ing shot, record­ed from a dis­tance through a win­dow frame, we see Mar­dam-Bey sat down, sur­round­ed by his books with his black cat perched beside him, check­ing the news on his com­put­er (“a rit­u­al for all Syr­i­ans”). It is an image that lingers; qui­et yet profound.

At one point Mar­dam-Bey asks if it is, ​“pos­si­ble that his­to­ry may come to a stand­still in our appalling present?” The oth­er doc­u­men­tary about Syr­ia at the LFF, Andreas Dals­gaard and Obaidah Zytoon’s The War Show sug­gests not, reveal­ing a nation that is any­thing but sta­t­ic. It’s at once a dense chron­i­cling of the expe­ri­ence of liv­ing and resist­ing in Syr­ia 2011 and onwards, and a fit­ting trib­ute to the per­son­al cost of that strug­gle, a bar­rage of war trau­ma and lost lives as expe­ri­enced by a group of friends uni­fied at first by their desire for a free Syr­ia, and then, trau­mat­i­cal­ly, torn apart by it. A poet­ic doc­u­ment con­struct­ed from cit­i­zen jour­nal­ism-style footage col­lect­ed over sev­er­al years, and nar­rat­ed with a wea­ried, mourn­ful lyri­cism by Zytoon her­self, the film is an ambi­tious attempt to make sense both of a nation­al con­flict and the indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ence of it.

Switch­ing between Zytoon’s own sto­ries and those of the Syr­i­ans she meets along the way, Zytoon and Dals­gaard recog­nise the role of the cam­era that has been cen­tral to the under­stand­ing of con­flict and rev­o­lu­tion dur­ing the Arab Spring. ​“In any con­flict, truth is the first vic­tim,” Zytoon announces ear­ly on, address­ing the slip­pery propo­si­tion of try­ing to write a his­to­ry-in-progress. But while the record that the two film­mak­ers con­struct togeth­er – from some 300 hours of footage – encom­pass­es a great deal of the top­ics cen­tral to dis­cus­sion of Syr­ia (resis­tance, sup­pres­sion, extrem­ism), The War Show is not an attempt to pro­vid­ed a cross-sec­tion of the Syr­i­an con­flict for exter­nal view­ers. It suc­ceeds by hom­ing in on the suf­fer­ing expe­ri­enced with­in a sin­gle group, which in itself is sug­ges­tive of that of the hun­dreds of thou­sands not fea­tured. One of Zytoon’s con­clud­ing poet­i­cisms says it all. ​“The Syr­ia we know has gone, and the Syr­i­ans, wher­ev­er they are, have become the new map.”

If the aim of doc­u­men­tary is tru­ly to reflect the real­i­ty of the region, in a man­ner that coun­ters what we usu­al­ly see, Shak­er­i­far believes that film­mak­ers shouldn’t need to ​“ref­er­ence every­thing that is hap­pen­ing on a day to day basis.” As in these doc­u­men­taries, film­mak­ing in the wake of the Arab Spring can hope­ful­ly con­tin­ue to ​“be more inti­mate, per­son­al and show unusu­al and unex­pect­ed things,” sub­vert famil­iar rep­re­sen­ta­tions and show­case the thoughts, beliefs and view­points of the film­mak­ers as well as the diver­si­ty of the expe­ri­ence of liv­ing in this mis­un­der­stood, often mis­rep­re­sent­ed region.