Cinema returns to Nablus, Palestine

A ticket for the movies in Nablus (image from ALARAB Online)

The first new cinema to open in Palestine since the closures during the intifada in 1987 has been screening films in Nablus since the end of June. It is offering commercial releases from Egypt and Hollywood arranged via a distributor in Lebanon. The Cinema City screen has only 174 seats for a city of 200,000 people but its opening is symbolic as well as offering a new entertainment option for young people who have never been to the cinema before. Not everyone is in favour of the virtual freedom offered by a cinema visit (i.e. rather than the real freedom that could be achieved if the Israeli occupation of the West Bank was lifted). But I think that this must be progress of a kind. (For more on this story see ALARAB Online and the Guardian). Before 1987 Nablus had four cinemas.

Cinema Dunia in Ramallah

I took this photo in 1997. The cinema was closed in 1984 – information I retrieved from a marvellous account of visiting the cinema on the wonderfully named ‘Electronic Intifada‘. (Another reference suggests that the cinema was built in 1945, and that it was demolished later in 1997). Electronic Intifada also provided the name of the cinema shown below, which was still operating in 1997.

Cinema Walid, Ramallah

This cinema showed cheap US action movies (or possibly cheap French action movies). The poster on Electronic Intifada reports that in the 1970s some cinemas like this moved into soft porn since they couldn’t get the foreign films with Arabic subtitles (or indeed the Egyptian films) because of the occupation by Israel. The cinema may still be operating – does anyone know?

The article on remembering visits to Cinema Dunia mentioned above seems to have garnered an enormous response from older Palestinians and is mentioned on several other websites. I also found this terrific image of a Palestinian cinema from 1937.

Al Momia (The Night of Counting the Years, Egypt 1969)

The Night of Counting the Years [UK release title].

Egypt, 1969. Colour.  Arabic with English subtitles.

Director: Shadi Abdel Salam.

This is a classic Egyptian film that has been restored by the World Cinema Foundation at the Cineteca di Bologna and screened at Il Cinema Ritrovato. It was the only feature film to be made by the writer and director Shadi Abdel Salam, though he did make a few short documentaries. The film credits bear the title ‘sponsor Roberto Rossellini’. Apparently Salam visited Rossellini and asked him to direct the film, but Rossellini persuaded Salam to direct it himself.

The film dramatises events that occurred in 1881, when it was discovered that precious archaeological treasures from one of the tomb of an ancient Pharaoh were being sold to foreign collectors. This was the Deir el-Bahri cache, a tomb shaft that contained over 50 mummies, unusually, from five separate dynasties. These had originally been moved and secreted by priests to prevent looting as the Egyptian Empire collapsed. The cache was sited in cliffs away from the famous Valley of the Kings on the West Bank of the Nile. It is worth noting that 1881 was the year that a nationalist rebellion broke out against the colonial domination of Egypt. In 1882 the British fleet first bombarded Alexandria and then occupied the country.

The following contains plot spoilers

Salam turned the events surrounding the hidden cache into an evocative and haunting tale. In the film a local tribe, the Horabat, are secretly raiding a lost tomb near Thebes. The Egyptian Archaeological Society sets out to disrupt this illegal trading and find the actual location. However, the bulk of the film focuses on the activities of the Horabat tribe and dissension amongst its members.

The film is slowly paced and has a poetic feel. Martin Scorsese writes: “Al Momia has an extremely unusual tone – stately, poetic, with a powerful grasp of time and the sadness it carries. The carefully measured pace, the almost ceremonial movement of the camera, the desolate settings, the classical Arabic spoken on the soundtrack, the unsettling score by the great Italian composer Mario Nascimbene – they all work in perfect harmony and contribute to the feeling of fateful inevitability.” [Il Cinema Ritrovato catalogue 2009).

The scenes are presented one by one, without transition shots. Frequently an event seems disconnected from its predecessor. The film often uses tracking shots, mainly forward or reverse, which are grimly slow. The colours are muted and many scenes are fairly dark. Daylight is opaque and night-time or interiors have great blocks of darkness. The use of classical Arabic is unusual, even in Egyptian films.  There is an almost dreamlike quality, appropriate to the themes of death, memory and the past.

The English language title of the film is set out in the first scene at a meeting at the Cairo Museum. Professor Raspére presents a quotation to his colleagues from the 3,000 year oldBook of the Dead. He offers an incantation that:

“. . . restores to the dead the power to remember his name. A spirit without name is doomed to wander in perpetual anguish.”

This sets up the major themes of the film, names and identity, memory and the past. It is worth noting that a number of key characters in the film are not identified by name. These include the leader of the Society’s expedition: one of the brothers in the tribe, his mother and the elders: and the officer of the Egyptian militia.

Professor Raspére also shows his colleagues a parchment that has been illegally trafficked to the West and which relates to an unknown tomb of a Pharaoh. This leads to the Archaeological Society visiting the valley near Thebes, out of season, hoping to catch the grave robbers unprepared. The only support for these effendi [as the locals call them], after a steam journey up the Nile, is a group of the Guards of the Mount of the Dead.

The viewer’s first encounter with the Horabat tribe is the funeral procession for the dead leader, Selim. The procession ends at a circle of white funeral obelisks. Here, Selim’s two sons are taken apart by tribal Elders and informed that they must take responsibility for a secret held by their father. This is the secret cache, which is regularly raided for valuables that are sold to a middleman, Ayoub. The sales appear to be the main source of income for the tribe.

The stealthy journey to the cache leads us through a chain of mazes and labyrinths. Such labyrinths recur throughout the film, in rock defiles, caves, and ruined palaces. At the end of these is the treasure. However, there is also a monster - desecration of the dead motivated by greed –  which leads to the death of the elder brother.

He tells the elders that they should ‘leave the dead in peace’, and refuses to continue the robberies. The younger brother, Wannis, is confused and uncertain. But their mother sides with the elders, and tells the older brother, ‘I no longer have a name to give you.’ This brother attempts to leave Thebes, but is killed on a boat, which bears a mysterious sign, ‘two hands in the shape of a butterfly’. This probably has some meaning in Egyptian culture, but certainly for foreign audiences it feeds into the overall ambiguity that envelops the film.

For much of the film the younger brother Wannis is torn between loyalty to his tribe and his revulsion at the grave robbing. He is subjected to a series of temptations, by the elders, and by Mourad, an accessory of Ayoub, who wants to take up dealing himself.

Finally Wannis visits the Society’s steamer and discloses the site of the cache. Guarded by the guards the 40 odd mummies are transported to the steamer, which then sets off to Cairo and the museum.  The ending resolves the problem of the film in one sense; the cultural treasures are passed into safekeeping. And it resolves one problem regarding names and identity.

“Rise you will not die out. You will be called by your name. You are given new life.”

However, the film’s ending has a desolate tone. Still bruised from an attack Wannis wanders away along the banks of the Nile. And the gulf between the tribe and their desolate area and the elite in their metropolitan city appears as wide as ever.

The World Cinema Foundation is dedicated the ‘preservation and restoration of neglected films from around the world’. The Chairperson of the Foundation is Martin Scorsese. Other noted filmmakers on the Board include Souleymane Cissé, Abbas Kiarostami and Wong Kar-Wai.The restored films are premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. www.worldcinemafoundation.net

These restored films are also screened at Il Cinema Ritrovato. This is an archive festival held annually in the city of Bologna: 2009 was the 23rd. The festival covers world cinema from the early silents up until recent productions. http://www.cinetecadibologna.it/cinemaritrovato.htm

Stills kindly provided by Il Cinema Ritrovato

Ordinary Boys (Chicos Normales, Spain 2008)

El-Khader with one of his siblings

The chicos normales are youths in the Jaama Mezwak district of the Northern Moroccan city of Tétouan in this film by the Spanish documentarist Daniel Hernández. This is the director’s first feature after 30 documentaries and is funded by the Catalan broadcaster Televisió de Catalunya (TVC). I was intrigued by the promise of a Spanish perspective on Muslim youth in the current political climate and wondered whether there would be similarities with British films like Yasmin (UK 2004).

The setting for the film is the district which was the home of several of the Madrid bombers in 2004. I’ve only been a tourist in Morocco, but I do know two important facts about the country. One is its proximity to Spain, and therefore the EU, via both the short sea crossing from Tangier across the Straits of Gibraltar and the rather longer and more hazardous routes further across the Mediterranean and from the West coast to the Canaries. The second is the pressure to travel to Europe, prompted by the growth of the Moroccan population and the inability of the local economy to find jobs for young people.

[Spoilers follow]

The film is a form of neorealist fiction based on the day-to-day lives of two young men, Youseff and El-Khader, and Rabia a female law graduate. All the actors are locals, the credits list Youseff as playing ‘himself’ and the other actors also use their own names for their characters. The narrative begins with a funeral and flashes back to explain what happened during the previous months. Like Yasmin, the events of the story came from discussions with the actors and other members of the local community themselves although the script was written by Daniel Hernández and Gabi Martínez. The credits list a translator/interpreter and I was impressed by the seeming authenticity of the whole enterprise. It could have been a Moroccan film for me (though since I’ve only seen a couple of other Moroccan films, that might not mean much).  

Youseff is the ‘bad boy’. He has been stabbed in the leg in a fight and has allowed the wound to become infected, consequently he needs an operation and is on crutches. He has failed to learn to read and becomes easily frustrated when attempting to earn a living with a market stall. Youseff wants money quickly – for the operation to heal his leg and to spend with his friends. The most lucrative form of ‘employment’ is offered by the local drug smugglers.

El-Khader is a more sympathetic character, but in a sense equally lost. He wants most of all to become a performer and attempts to engage in street theatre, but it doesn’t pay and his friends and relatives mock him for not having a more ‘masculine’ interest. He begins to fret about how he can support his mother and his younger siblings. Taking the illegal route to Europe seems the only answer.

Rabia

Rabia has decided that she wants to become a fashion designer rather than use her law degree. She manages to join a co-operative and get started as a seamstress on local commissions whilst she plans her future, but she is also struggling to decide how to be a modern young woman in Morocco. Her boyfriend has gone to Austria and doesn’t look like returning soon. She has a dalliance in an online chatroom and an interesting encounter with a young (and rather arrogant) religious teacher. She is not wearing a headscarf in the first part of the film and says that she will wear one when she deems it appropriate rather than be forced to wear it by the pressure of patriarchal society. Later we see her carefully putting on a headscarf, carefully covering her hair but otherwise presenting her very beautiful face to the world – it isn’t clear why she is now doing this.

At first, I found the film difficult to watch. Shot on digital, I found the scenes ‘cold’ and brash. I wasn’t sure if this was a fiction or a documentary and I missed the familiar cues as to which were the central characters and how the narrative was developing, so although I was learning something about the community, I wasn’t being drawn into a story. After about 20 minutes or so, I finally found my way into the narrative and from then on I enjoyed the film.

What is most interesting from a UK (and especially Bradford) perspective is that instead of focusing on what may propel Muslim youth towards an engagement with terrorism, the three main characters have their own concerns and the ‘fundamentalists’ are generally marginalised and only mentioned because they used to meet in a similar location “in another street” to the one in which Rabia sets up her sewing business. The youth are generally not interested in politics except in the case of Palestine, where they recognise that resistance to occupation is justified and should be supported. Youssef’s older brother was sent abroad by the fundamentalists and now he is missing assumed dead since he has not returned (or been listed as being in an American gaol). Yousseff continues to look for news and he has help from older people in the community – another difference to representations of British Muslim communities is that there is little suggestion of a generation gap in attitudes (although the youth are not surprisingly sometimes more aggressive). The future which faces the three Moroccan youths is not rosy and their chances of success are not high but at least this film has offered us a glimpse of what those problems might be and has presented us with recognisable characters in a human drama – even if the events may be too low key and predictable for fans of mainstream cinema.

Yousseff and El Khader

I hope the film gets a release – or a showing on UK television. I think it would work on BBC4 or Channel 4. It is an interesting venture to put alongside the work of British directors like Michael Winterbottom who have been willing to go to Muslim countries to attempt to make films about issues that concern us all. As Spain enters a deep recession, I can only fear for the future of young Moroccans for whom a dangerous trip across the Med may prove to be futile.

Le Grand Voyage (France/Morocco 2004)

 

Father and son wait at customs control in Le Grand Voyage

I thought this film was much more interesting than some of the rather sniffy reviews that appeared at the time. Le grand voyage won various prizes around the world, including one at Venice and was then dubbed a conventional ‘festival film’ or, worse, a ‘road movie’. To be fair, however, lots of people clearly enjoyed it as much as I did. I don’t accept that recognition of a film as a road movie means that it won’t be an interesting film.

The plot is very simple. A Moroccan who has lived in France for 30 years decides that the time has come to make the hajj to Mecca. But instead of flying or going by sea to Saudi Arabia, he opts to go by car, commanding his younger son Reda to drive him. Reda is due to take his high school exams for the second time and is upset to be parted from his French girlfriend, Lisa. The pair set off in a reconditioned Peugeot estate supplied by Reda’s older brother. It is indeed a classic ‘road trip’ with two travelling companions who have little in common and barely speak to each other. Many of the elements of the road movie are covered – strange, unannounced extra passengers, comic misadventures etc. – and the overall thematic about characters learning about each other and about themselves through the adventures. Yet, it isn’t anything like an American road movie, or one across any other large country. One of the important narrative threads is the change in the sense of which of the two characters is ‘in control’ of the journey. At first Reda is comfortable driving in France and Italy – although he still has to obey his father, he is still justified in chastising the old man who gets them lost because he can’t read maps. But as they cross the Balkans it slowly becomes apparent that Reda’s French culture is less and less useful – while the father becomes more capable of sensible decision-making.

For any monoglot English speaker, it is rather chastening to think that Reda actually speaks three languages – French, some English and the Moroccan Arabic of his family. But because he has rejected Islam and his Arab heritage, he doesn’t know the classical or the ‘Egyptian Arabic’ that is more useful travelling the back roads of Syria and Jordan. His father has this and is anyway much more comfortable dealing with the farmers and local villagers they meet on the way. The last part of the film deals with the pair’s arrival in Mecca. Many of the reviews find this the most interesting part of the story – especially the crowd scenes. I’m not sure that these scenes are that unusual in news footage terms, but it is true that for a fictional story to include such scenes is very rare (probably unique). I would certainly agree that the closing scenes of the narrative are important. Once again, it’s quite interesting to compare the ending with the generic conventions of the road movie. What have the two characters learned/achieved? For me, although the personal stories were interesting, I was more taken by the commentary which emerged about the whole issue of ‘North-South’ relationships and the process of migration. For the last thirty years, the assumption has been that migrants have travelled from the ‘South’ (i.e. North Africa) to Western Europe to find employment, just as Reda’s father presumably did. But now with EU membership opening up to Eastern Europe and eventually the Balkans and Turkey, the definitions need to change. The old man, not the 2nd generation ‘French man’ who is his son, moves more freely through what might soon become the new extended Europe. Allied to this, the director, French-Moroccan Ismaël Ferroukhi  has said that he wanted to represent a new sense of the wider Muslim community – one which dealt with the majority of community-minded Muslims travelling to Mecca, not the minority involved in conflict. I think he succeeds.

Youssef Chahine, 1926-2008

Chahine himself and Hind Rostom in Cairo Station

On July 27, Arab Cinema lost its premier director, Youssef Chahine, who died aged 82 in Cairo. It was good to see obituaries in print and online. A detailed and informative obit by Sheila Whitaker appeared in the Guardian on July 28. Visit the ‘official’ site at http://www.youssefchahine.us/

It seems a long time since I watched Chahine’s most famous early film, Cairo Station (Egypt 1958) so I must dig out the videotape. Unfortunately, it is difficult to find DVDs of his later films (in fact, any of his films) in the UK, but I did find a Region 1 DVD of An Egyptian Story (1982) at a reasonable price on Amazon and I’ll try to review it when it arrives. In the last few years, we’ve lost Sembène Ousmane and Gillo Pontecorvo – also very badly served by DVDs in the UK, forcing dedicated cineastes to search for American or French editions – with attendant problems of Region coding and subtitling. UK DVD distribs please note.

Caramel (Sukkar banat, Lebanon/France 2007)

Nadine Labaki in Caramel

I spent a very enjoyable 95 mins watching Caramel. Afterwards, the more I thought and read about the film, the more I thought this is exactly the kind of film that I want to discuss on this blog. It isn’t just the subject matter of the film, but what its production, distribution and exhibition raise as issues in global film culture.

To take the narrative first, Caramel offers a specific location – a hairdressing salon/beauty shop in Beirut – which acts as the locus for the intersecting stories of five women. (The title refers to the sugar solution used in depilation treatments.) The five women are different in terms of age and religion (and possibly ethnicity?) but they face similar problems in finding happiness in the still traditional society in this the most cosmopolitan of Arab cities.

The film has been widely described as a ‘romantic comedy’ but this is misleading, I think. Certainly, there are comic moments but these are matched by sad and downbeat scenes. This could make it a ‘bittersweet’ comedy, but the structure is wrong for a romantic comedy. Although the film ends with a wedding for one of the women, it isn’t the defining moment for the other four and no one story is really more important than the others, even if Nadine Labaki is the stand-out presence in the film, playing the character who runs the salon as well as directing and co-writing.

I think this is a good example of a melodrama. Were it not for the usual misunderstanding about terms, I would see this as a soap opera/telenovela kind of narrative – massively popular throughout the region whether from Egypt or imported. It isn’t as sensational as the TV soaps, but it has the same kinds of ingredients – the struggles of the women, the constraining family ties and that melodrama essential, a wonderful music soundtrack.

According to the press release and interviews by Nadine Balaki, most of the cast were non-actors so the film has the feel of a neo-realist melodrama. The playing is generally very good and deeply moving in very different ways – the frustration of living with a partner (it’s not clear if this is a sister, mother or aunt) with either dementia or learning difficulties, the cruelty of the modelling/acting game for older women, the gentle beginnings of a relationship between two younger women as well as the pain of a relationship with a married man. Haircutting is a potentially erotic activity and here it leads to a breathtaking transformation of an already beautiful woman into someone of astonishing beauty.

Caramel is a pleasure on almost every level. The shooting of the film must have been difficult (it wrapped just as the 2006 war broke out) and we actually see little of Beirut as a city, but there is a great deal of local culture and ‘colour’ crammed in. I may have missed a few things related to local culture, but overall I thought the film was well conceived in speaking to both local and international audiences.

Considering production, this is one of many films from Africa and Asia that have reached screens around the world thanks to the tradition of French producers and cultural agencies looking ‘outwards’ to promote films from Francophone countries and others – British producers please note. Lebanon was only directly under a French mandate for around 25 years from 1918 to 1943, yet French became the language of the Christian middle-class in Lebanon and a French language culture was established. (The importance of French-speaking as a marker of middle-class status and education is an ingredient in the plot.) Of course, French colonial policy was not necessarily benign or progressive, but its legacy has meant more films getting a wider release than their equivalents (not that there are many) from Britain’s colonial legacy.

Caramel was co-produced by a French company and it got its first break via an appearance at Cannes in 2007 and a subsequent entry for the foreign language Oscar. In the UK the film opened a year later with support for digital prints and has proved a notable success. In week 1 it opened on 46 screens courtesy of independent distributor Momentum and entered the UK Top 10 at 9. After three weeks it was still at No 10 and looks likely to make nearly £400,000 which I suspect will be a record for a film in Arabic in the UK (does anybody know a higher grossing film – Battle of Algiers possibly?). I’m pleased it has been a success and I’m sure the large numbers of people disappointed by Sex and the City would have had a much better time watching Caramel. Momentum is a UK company releasing both European specialised films and US/UK genre pictures.

Here’s a useful American review focusing on the representation of ‘modern women’ in Beirut: http://www.reverseshot.com/article/caramel

and here are a couple of regional reviews/discussions which include video clips:

http://www.bloggingbeirut.com/categories/76-Lebanese-Movies

http://saroujah.blogspot.com/2008/02/caramel.html

And if you haven’t seen it yet, here’s the US trailer to whet your appetite: