12 November 2005

Obituary

BEIRUT: Moustafa Akkad, the Syrian-born American film director who helped spread understanding of Islam in the West through his films, died from a heart attack Friday morning as a result of wounds sustained in the Amman hotel bombings. Born in Aleppo in July 1930, Akkad was one of the few Arab film directors known in the West, his best-known works being 1977's "The Message" and 1981's "Lion of the Desert" both starring Anthony Quinn.

If not exactly a rags to riches story, Akkad's was one of those tales of a boy from a simple background achieving his dream. From an early age, he had wanted go to Hollywood and become a film director much to the amusement of the local community in Aleppo. But leave for L.A. he did in 1954 at the age of 18, with $200 and a Koran in his pocket given to him by his father, a government customs officer.

He gained a place studying film at the University of California in Los Angeles graduating in 1958 and then took a masters at the University of Southern California where he was exposed to the "The New Wave" realistic approach to documentary filmmaking that was popular at the time.

After many unsuccessful attempts to find work in the early 1960s Akkad was recruited by the director Sam Peckinpah who needed an Arabic speaker    to help him on a movie about the Algerian Revolution. Unfortunately when Algeria got its independence, the project was cancelled.

Peckinpah would become a mentor for Akkad, who worked for him as an unpaid assistant, encouraging him to write something if he wanted to be a director.

Eventually from his experience as an Arab living in America, Akkad noticed that Americans were increasingly concerned at how others saw them,  so he pitched a documentary series on the subject to CBS and NBC.

As Akkad would famously tell the story to friends and relatives, NBC offered him $400 a week but no credit, while CBS offered him $100 a week and the producer credit to do it as a current affairs show on Sunday afternoons.

When he told Peckinpah he was going to take the NBC offer the reply was swift: "You sonofab****. What do you want the money for? Take the credit."

From there, as a producer for CBS, Akkad never looked back making documentaries around the world.

Though he became best-known in Hollywood for producing all eight films in the "Halloween" horror movie franchise originally directed by John Carpenter in 1977 and which ended most recently last year with "Halloween: H20," Akkad became recognized for "The Message" and "Lion of the Desert."

The former, a movie about the Prophet Mohammad told the story of the beginning of Islam, and featured Quinn as the Prophet's uncle Hamza. The movie was particular in that the viewers neither see nor hear the main character because of Islam's ban on images of the Prophet, a challenge that Akkad mastered well.

But it didn't do well at the U.S. Box Office as a result.

"You can not see the Prophet," Akkad said in one interview. "I get upset when I see Jesus or Moses portrayed by an actor. To me, you don't touch these things. The film is about Mohammad but he's not portrayed. Therefore, the camera takes subjective angles. It's good for those who know the religion."

The movie was a big hit on video and in the Arab world.

But Akkad faced problems when the "The Message" was declared sacrilegious by a group of black American Muslims, who took hostages in three Washington, D.C. locations when the movie opened in March 1977, demanding that it not be shown in the U.S.

The director said at the time he was baffled by the reaction to the $17 million film.

"I did the movie because it is a personal thing for me. ... There was something personal, being a Muslim myself who lived in the West, I felt that it was my obligation [and] my duty to tell the truth about Islam."

"It [Islam] is a religion that has a 700 million following, yet it's so little known about it which surprised me. I thought I should tell the story that will bring this bridge, this gap to the West," he added.

"Lion of the Desert" made five years later was no less controversial. Starring Oliver Reed and Anthony Quinn as the real-life Bedouin leader Omar Mukhtar, who fought Mussolini's invading troops in the deserts of Libya, the film was funded by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to the tune of $35 million. Yet it took only $1 million at the box office, one of Akkad's great disappointments that he felt was due to bad publicity about Gadhafi. The movie received much critical acclaim.

With the "Halloween" franchise, Akkad realized his skill as an accomplished and able producer and alongside those films also produced the thrillers "Free Ride" and "Appointment with Fear" in the 1980s.

Often to be found at the trendy cafes populated by artists and intellectuals when in Beirut, a town he loved, Akkad was never without his pipe and a witty comment for those around him.

Remembered by his friends and family here as a humble man whose words spoke volumes, he lived life to the fullest always loving the art of filmmaking and never stopped in his pursuit of bringing a true and peaceful image of Islam to the West.

It is the most tragic of ironies that he died a victim of fellow Muslims claiming to fight in the name of the religion he so loved. - With agencies