16 October 2008

Preview

BEIRUT: As the effervescent coverage of Abu Dhabi's "Middle East International Film Festival" suggests, this region is witnessing a proliferation of international film festivals. As in the region, so in Beirut, where a casual glance through the bi-yearly cultural calendar will reveal no less than seven festive gatherings concerned, in whole or in part, with projecting film and video.

No doubt someone, somewhere, is bending its mind as to what this competitive celebration of the moving images signifies about Lebanon's innate pluralism, entrepreneurialism, individualism or tribalism.

In the meantime, the fifth edition of Ayam Beirut al-Cinemaiya (Cinema Days of Beirut), the city's prestigious festival of Arab film, will flicker to life on Friday evening with the world premier of "One Man Village," the accomplished debut work of Lebanon's Simon al-Habre.

Over the ensuing nine days, Ayam Beirut will screen more than 60 films, several of them world or regional premieres. The program runs the gamut of the cinematic form, including feature-length and short films, fictions, art films and documentaries from young and veteran filmmakers from the Arab world, with a smattering of foreign films that look at the Arab world.

Hania Mroue and Eliane Raheb, who are among the founding members of Beirut Development and Cinema (Beirut DC, the cultural organization that founded the festival in 2001), have no difficulty delineating what makes Ayam Beirut different from its most obvious competitors, the Lebanese and Beirut International Film Festivals (LFF and BIFF).

"Our focus has always been on independent cinema - non-commercial, auteur cinema," Raheb explains. "Sometimes the regional representation is unbalanced. In the Gulf, for instance, there is little auteur cinema whereas in Morocco it is better established.

"We're interested in films that address the experiences of the people in this region with innovative cinema language - serious, provocative films that try to raise social issues and that question Arab society, rather than just showing what's going on," she adds.

Raheb sees the festival's role as being to "reassert the norms of cinema," which have been up-ended by the fluorescence of cheap populism in Arabic-language film production, "... television 'documentaries' that are mostly reportage and theatrical releases of made-for-TV movies.

"The Lebanese films that have appeared in theaters recently are basically made for television," she says. "These are the Lebanese version of Egypt's 'music clip movies.' Egyptian companies use these movies to expose singers. The singer is bad, the actor is actually a model and the script is badly written. They're poor inheritors of the Egyptian musical, but the formula works because people go see them.

"Independent films ignore these conventions."

"It doesn't matter how many festivals there are," says Mroue. "What matters is the quality if the films being shown.

"We've discovered that there are many audiences [in Beirut] - more than just the same thousand people who go from event to event. Many festivals means diversity and each should its own identity.

"Since the beginning we said [part of our identity involved] giving priority to films that haven't been screened before. And we never wanted this festival just to show films. We see it as a gathering point, a place you see films and discuss them, where audiences can express their opinions of the work and the filmmakers can discuss their ideas with the audience and other filmmakers."

Two prominent filmmakers will be at Ayam Beirut to premiere their new documentaries.

One of them is Syria's Hala Alabdalla, who will be on hand with her "Hey! Don't Forget the Cumin," which will screen as an avant-premiere. Alabdalla will be remembered for her lyrical documentary "I Am the One that Brings Flowers to Her Grave" from a couple of years ago.

The festival also features the Arab premiere of Moroccan filmmaker Leila Kilani's "Our Forbidden Places," about political prisoners and national reconciliation in her country.

Most of the documentaries in this edition of Ayam Beirut tell personal stories that evoke more universal themes about the socio-political situation in the Arab world. Among those that have already made waves on the festival circuit are Karim Goury's "Made in Egypt," the filmmaker's investigation of the celebrity father he never knew, and Mahmoud al-Massad's "Recycle," a study of a former jihadi in Jordan and his struggles to recover his life from militancy.

Of the feature-length fictions projected during Ayam Beirut, three of them will be Arab premieres, though all three were screened at the 2008 edition of the Cannes Film Festival.

Among the most anticipated of these is Annemarie Jacir's story of Palestinian return, "Salt of This Sea." The Palestinian-American writer-director's first feature follows the story of Thuraya, a child of the 1948 dispossession who returns to Palestine to finish some unfinished family business.

Algerian auteur Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche returns to Ayam Beirut with his contemporary allegory "Adhen." This microcosm of Muslim immigrant experience in contemporary France focuses on Mao, a North African businessman, and recounts how his relationship with his laborers changes when he decides to provide them an on-site masjid or prayer area.

The festival will close with "I Want to See," by Lebanese artist-filmmakers Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige. Shooting in May 2007 in the manner of a documentary, the filmmakers literally follow Catherine Deneuve as the French cinema icon makes her first visit to South Lebanon after the summer 2006 war with Israel, accompanied by actor Rabih Mroueh. Both Deneuve and Mroueh will be on hand for the screening.

Among Ayam Beirut's other fictions are "Aquarium," the most recent feature by Egypt's pre-eminent independent filmmaker, Yousri Nasrallah; "WWW, What a Wonderful World" by Morocco's Faouzi Bensaidi; "The Yellow House" by Algerian Amor Hakkar; and "Out of Coverage" by Syrian Abdellatif Abdelhamid, all of which have been well received on the festival circuit.

In addition to new-ish festival films, Ayam Beirut includes a number of tributes and retrospectives designed to mark the rise of younger talent and established filmmakers, two of whom have recently died.

Tunisian-born Abdellatif Kechiche's newest film, "The Secret of the Grain," won four Cesars (the Gallic Oscar), among other awards, in 2008. Ayam Beirut will project this film as well as his previous features "Games of Love and Chance" and "Blame it on Voltaire." Kechiche, who has found great success with non-professional actors, will also hold a master class on "Acting Techniques in Cinema," conducted in the framework of the festival.

Festival organizers will also pay a tribute to the late Lebanese filmmaker Randa Chahhal, screening two of her documentaries that underline her political engagement as well as her relationship with the region. Her documentary "Our Heedless Wars" (1996) is an open discussion between herself and her parents about the Lebanese Civil War. In "Step by Step" (1979), she documents the social class conflicts that underpinned that war. 

In tribute to the late Youssef Chahine, the festival will project his documentary "Cairo As Told by Chahine" and one of his features, "The Sparrow." These works fit naturally among the other Arab cinema classics being projected, Salah Abou Seif's "Shabab Imra'a" and Ali Abdel Khalek's "Oghniya Ala al-Mamarr." In this connection, "Mazen and the Ant," the new children's short by Lebanese auteur Borhane Alaouie, will also be shown.

Ayam Beirut's screenings are complimented by a series of off-festival events, geared to independent filmmakers and those who appreciate their work.

"We always ask ourselves what this festival can do to support this type of cinema," Mroue says. "Each year we still feel this is our mission. In the 2004 edition we screened 120 films. In retrospect this was too many. We want the films and filmmakers to have their space. That's why it's been important to have off-festival events."

Ayam Beirut will have five of these, beginning with "Two Sides of the Coin," a "pitching workshop" on how to get your film funded and produced. It follows on the heels of Beirut DC's July 2008 documentary-scriptwriting workshop and will take place in the presence of European, Arab, and Lebanese producers.

A forum discussion, "The Situation of Auteur Cinema in the Arab World," will gather several Arab filmmakers to debate the challenges they face in terms of funding, the evolution of the cinema box office and the Arab world's omnipresent censorship. The forum will be lead by the critic and film economy analyst Alaa Karkouti, editor-in-chief of the Egyptian magazine "Good News Cinema."

"Insight Out" is a workshop on High Definition (HD) technologies in cinema held in partnership with Germany's Insight Out. Rama Consulting L.L.C. will conduct a seminar on "Copyright and Media Industry in Lebanon according to the Lebanese and International Laws and Regulations" featuring speakers Hamelkart Ataya and Nader Obaid. 

Finally, Moroccan-French filmmaker Bruno Ulmer will hold a Master Class around his documentary "Welcome Europa," during which he will tackle mise-en-scene, production, the "fiction" side of his documentary, shooting, and editing, among other things.

In a welcome move, Ayam Beirut al-Cinemaiya has decided to donate a third of its box office receipts to support the making of a Lebanese feature film (fiction or documentary), currently in production. It is hoped that this sum will serve as a stimulus to encourage Lebanon's Ministry of Culture to establish a box office tax on all films released in theaters. As it has proved to be in France, such a tax could be a great source of funding for Lebanese cinema.

Ayam Beirut al-Cinemaiya runs from October 17 - 26 at Empire Sofil in Achrafieh. Tickets sell for LL3,000. For more information, please call + 961 3 370 972 or check out www.beirutdc-abf.org

Copyright The Daily Star 2008.