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Jan 25 2012

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WSJ(1/25) In Egypt, Televising the Revolution

   (From THE WALL STREET JOURNAL) 
   By Anna Louie Sussman 

A few days later the pair were in Tahrir Square filming their friend Sharif Abdel Kouddous, an Egyptian-American journalist for Democracy Now!, whose personal connection to the revolution and to Egyptian history (his grandfather was a prominent journalist and his uncle was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood) became the backbone of their resulting film.

Ms. Nevins called Mr. Alpert, with whom she's worked for 15 years, "my Batman," for his fearlessness and ability to land in the middle of any crisis at a moment's notice. Mr. O'Neill later became her Robin, accompanying Mr. Alpert to Baghdad for 2006's "Baghdad ER," and to Sichuan, China, following the 2008 earthquake, for "China's Unnatural Disaster."

On Wednesday, HBO will air the duo's 39-minute film, "In Tahrir Square: 18 Days of Egypt's Unfinished Revolution," to mark the one-year anniversary of the uprisings in Egypt. The Wall Street Journal sat down with Mr. O'Neill this week at his office in the former fire station in Chinatown that now houses the DCTV headquarters. Mr. Alpert joined by phone.

Mr. Alpert: I've always been impressed by Sharif as a person; I respect his intelligence and his curiosity as a reporter. He's not the boy next door, because he has more charisma than the boy next door. We all agreed that this would be an interesting way for Americans to experience the revolution, because he spent so much time in the U.S. that there is a part of him that is deeply American.

WSJ: The film feels like a snapshot, with minimal narration by Sharif and very little music. Why did you decide to home in so closely on these 18 days in Tahrir Square?

Mr. Alpert: This film for us, more than anything, is an experiential film. Even now people are trying to read the entrails of the Egyptian revolution and trying to predict where it's going. We felt our job was to help somebody who wasn't there actually feel like they were there and were part of a revolution. Like, wouldn't it have been neat to be at the Boston Tea Party?

Mr. O'Neill: More like the Boston Massacre than the Tea Party.

Mr. Alpert: It was an opportunity to put a historic moment in the bottle so people can open it up at a later date and see what it was like to be there. So there are no professors, no policy analysts. . .

Mr. O'Neill: No commentary, just revolution in a bottle. Usually you have media personalities commenting on the events as they occur, rather than listening to the people who are driving the events themselves. We didn't want to be looking down on the square, we wanted to be in the center of it -- at the barricades with the people and then later in the center of the elation. Jon has never put himself in front of the camera, and I learned documentary filmmaking from Jon.

WSJ: You arrived in Cairo on Feb. 9, two days before president Hosni Mubarak resigned. How did you re-create the full experience of those 18 days?

Mr. O'Neill: We got there right on the eve of the success of the revolution. Between the ninth and the 13th, we were basically nonstop in Tahrir Square, or with Sharif as he commuted from his home in Zamalek to Tahrir Square. The footage from the earlier days is a mixture. A lot of footage was shot by another producer, Jacquie Soohen, and filmed with Sharif. She had gone over there earlier in February. We put this together with footage from a lot of independent journos, and footage from Sharif's cell phone and his Flip camera. When our cameras weren't there, we went out and found people who were, and re-created the verite environment of those who were there, using their footage.

WSJ: The end of the film hints at some of the issues that have crystallized in the past year: the role of Islam in politics, the military's grip on power. Could you feel those tensions emerging while you were there, or did you add those parts later?

Mr. O'Neill: The words that you heard there -- Sharif's words, his uncle's words -- those were things that were being said in the immediate aftermath. Those are two men who know the politics of the country intimately, and they said those things on day one. This film is about those 18 days: the bloodshed, the heartache, the heroism and in the end, the elation. The end is the natural coda that points to, "What's next?"

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

25-01-12 0411GMT