Imag­ined Futures shorts at Shub­bak film fes­ti­val 2017

The world can be a con­fus­ing place. Art can offer a way in, pro­vid­ing a con­cen­trat­ed point from which to approach an incom­pre­hen­si­ble, intim­i­dat­ing whole. Shub­bak, mean­ing ​‘win­dow’ in Ara­bic – a ​“mul­ti-arts, mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary fes­ti­val that looks to give dif­fer­ent images of the Arab world reflect­ed by artists from the region itself” – serves to offer pre­cise­ly this, a frame to look through.

The festival’s film sec­tion, curat­ed by pro­gram­mer and pro­duc­er Elhum Shak­er­i­far, cov­ers the broad spec­trum of cin­e­ma found across the region, with the shorts pro­gramme of par­tic­u­lar inter­est. Col­lect­ed under the theme ​‘Imag­ined Futures’, these films attempt to show some­thing that has been large­ly absent: a hori­zon. ​“We focus so much on the imme­di­a­cy of dis­as­ter and the tragedy of what is unfold­ing in cer­tain areas across the Mid­dle East, that we’re not spend­ing much time think­ing about what is next.” With this selec­tion of shorts, Shakerifar’s focus is on ​“how film­mak­ers are artic­u­lat­ing this sense of future.”

The best film, Mou­nia Aki’s Sub­ma­rine, takes a real sit­u­a­tion, Lebanon’s garbage cri­sis, as a basis for some­thing more ethe­re­al. Set in a near-future where the waste dis­pos­al prob­lem has become so mono­lith­ic that the city faces forced evac­u­a­tion, Aki’s poet­ic, cor­po­re­al film fol­lows a young woman, Hala (Yum­na Mar­wan), who clings on to a sense of per­ma­nence, of place and iden­ti­ty, whilst every­one around her accepts tran­sience. It has con­sid­er­able scope for a short film; qui­et, omi­nous and haunt­ed in feel, but lent scale and grav­i­ty by the clas­si­cal cin­e­matog­ra­phy, strik­ing light­ing and impres­sive pro­duc­tion design – a mix of elab­o­rate­ly dec­o­rat­ed inte­ri­ors and trash-moun­tain exteriors.

At the end, walk­ing between the tow­ers of rub­bish as flies buzz ambi­ent­ly on the sound­track and an evoca­tive lam­bent haze sits in the air, the cam­era lingers on Marwan’s dis­tinc­tive, unknow­able face. She stands star­ing out over a waste­land, imag­in­ing a future where every­thing didn’t go quite so wrong, find­ing in her mind, if not in the dev­as­ta­tion of the real­i­ty around her, some­thing to hold on to.

Equal­ly impres­sive is Batoul Bennazzou’s Sel­ma, a low-key fam­i­ly dra­ma that while ground­ed in the present con­cerns itself with the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the future. A film of small details, the con­flict here is psy­cho­log­i­cal, emerg­ing from the dis­tance between a mother’s hopes for her daugh­ter and the child’s own imme­di­ate expec­ta­tions. Selma’s life appears to her like a series of denials, as her moth­er removes her agency now in the hope that doing so will forge a bet­ter future for her, all the while bal­anc­ing her own prob­lems against her desire to pre­serve sta­bil­i­ty for the family.

An Alger­ian-French pro­duc­tion made through the pres­ti­gious Parisian film school La Femis, Sel­ma feels like a Éric Rohmer film; unhur­ried, con­tem­pla­tive and imbued with a nat­u­ral­ism that feels prac­tised, if no less effec­tive for it. It has no great dra­mat­ic events and none of the film­mak­ing is showy, con­sist­ing most­ly of long takes in mid shot, with space left for con­ver­sa­tion to play out. The dra­mat­ic events that occur are small and per­son­al ones, real­i­sa­tions, rev­e­la­tions, and the space to grow, either togeth­er or apart.

Rana Kazkaz and Anas Khalaf’s Mare Nos­trum looks at how the effects of trau­ma can per­sist long past the inci­dent. Over a series of long takes, a father, seem­ing­ly con­tent, repeat­ed­ly and inex­plic­a­bly attempts to drown his daugh­ter, throw­ing her off the edge of a beach pier, his facial expres­sion har­ried and dis­tant. In the image there is a sim­i­lar dis­tance, between the seren­i­ty of the scene, bright, over­sat­u­rat­ed and high in fideli­ty, shot almost like a com­mer­cial, and the dis­turb­ing nature of the infan­ti­ci­dal instinct at its core. After the scene plays out a few times, a rupture.

A flash­back shows sev­er­al torch­es break­ing through the dark, fol­lowed by a dra­mat­ic cut to news footage, detail­ing an refugee cri­sis relat­ed inci­dent that con­tex­tu­alis­es all that comes before. As a device it is jar­ring but effec­tu­al, refram­ing the inex­plic­a­ble into some­thing dev­as­tat­ing but under­stand­able. Sur­viv­ing can be worse than per­ish­ing, when so many oth­ers did not.

The oth­er two films are more styl­is­ti­cal­ly diver­gent, using more dis­tinct and unre­al aes­thet­ics as sym­bol­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tions of real world sit­u­a­tions, or to digress from real­i­ty. Lebanese ani­ma­tor Cha­di Aoun’s com­plex, chal­leng­ing Silence has a grey, mono­chro­mat­ic look that explodes into colour spo­rad­i­cal­ly, work­ing out ideas of free­dom and restric­tion through a vio­lent, vis­cer­al nar­ra­tive that cel­e­brates deter­min­ism in spite of con­sid­er­able dan­ger and repres­sion. In a city where non­con­for­mi­ty is met with hos­tile means, the film’s char­ac­ters find cre­ative ways to express them­selves, and Aoun sim­i­lar­ly so, with his propul­sive, jaun­ty style of animation.

Laris­sa Sansour’s brief, bold Nation Estate is even more sur­re­al. In the film, San­sour imag­ines a ​“ver­ti­cal solu­tion to Pales­tin­ian state­hood”, rein­ter­pret­ing con­test­ed cities as floors in a mod­ern tow­er block, with robot­ic ele­va­tor scans replac­ing check­points. San­sour her­self stars in the film, wan­der­ing through the clin­i­cal, glass inte­ri­ors of the apart­ment block into her home, where she under­goes var­i­ous rit­u­al­is­tic acts with mechan­ic pre­ci­sion, water­ing a small tree, the sole organ­ic object in a enclosed city of glass and steel, and prepar­ing a plate of tabouleh. Pecu­liar with a dis­tinct sense of the uncan­ny, Sansour’s near-future is recog­nis­able but off-kil­ter, a failed utopia of the mind.

“I think there are dif­fer­ent ways to imag­ine the future. Some artists have done it with defi­ance and with humour, and oth­ers with dra­ma.” Beyond the propo­si­tion from which they begin, all of the films have a thread in com­mon. ​“All them take some sort of tan­gent from the real­i­ty they are rep­re­sent­ing.” In con­tem­po­rary cin­e­ma, Arab or oth­er­wise, there is too much famil­iar­i­ty, too great a focus on ​“what is already out there, and what peo­ple already know.” Many film­mak­ers are inter­est­ed in what is occur­ring right now, not what is pos­si­ble. ​‘Imag­ined Futures’ was born out ​“an obses­sion with what’s going to hap­pen next.”

Shub­bak runs 1 – 16 July at venues across Lon­don, with films being screened at the Bar­bi­can and Insti­tut Français. For more info vis­it shub​bak​.co​.uk