Nisimazine Abu Dhabi 2011 #1

Nisimazine Abu Dhabi

‫مجلة تصدرها نيسي ماسا ـ الشبكة االوربية للسينما الشابة‬

2011 ‫ أكتوبر‬14 ‫الجمعة‬

A Magazine by NISI MASA, European Network Of Young Cinema

#1, Friday 14 October 2011

from Charulatha (1965)

‫نيسيمازين‬

Monsieur Lazhar ‫ا لسيد لزهر‬ SANAD ‫سند‬ Between Heaven and Earth ‫بين السماء واألرض‬

‫ ا فتتا حية‬// editorial

NISIMAZINE ABU DHABI

Friday 14 October 2011/# 1 A magazine published by the NISI MASA in the

by Janka Barkoczi (Hungary) ‫يانكا باخكوتسى ـ المجر‬

framework of a film journalism workshop for young film journalists from Europe and the Arab World with the support of

‫ نأمل أن تكونوا بخير كما‬,‫مر عام و ها نحن مرة اخرى‬ ‫نتمنى ان تكونوا قد قضيتم اوقاتًا رائعة منذ التقينا‬ ‫ إنه العام السادس لورش عمل (نيسيمازين) على‬.‫اخيرًا‬ ‫ و العام الثانى لنا فى مهرجان أبو‬,‫الصعيد العالمى‬ ,‫ نحن مجموعة من الصحفيين العاشقين للسينما‬.‫ظبى‬ ‫ و نأمل ان تظل‬,‫ننتمى الى شبكه دولية ما زالت شابة‬ ,‫ اذا اشتركت معنا فسندعوك للسفر حول العالم‬.‫كذلك‬ .‫بما اننا نمثل فى شخوصنا دوال ً مختلفة‬ ‫كيف تقابل ي��ون��ج و ف��روي��د؟ م��ا ه��و س��ر كعب المرأه‬ ‫العالى؟ الى أى مدى يمكن لفتى من الزولو و سيدة‬ ‫هندية االستمرار معا؟ ماذا يجب أن نعرف عن القرصنة‬ ‫البيئية؟ كيف تبدو ميلودراما من العصر الفيكتورى فى‬ ‫سياق أسيوى؟ هناك العديد من االسئله يطرحها مهرجان‬ ‫ فطالما‬.‫ و نحن ال نطيق انتظارًا للرد عليها‬,‫هذا العام‬ ‫ نحن‬,‫نحن نولى اهتمامًا فيمكنكم ضمان اال تملوا‬ ‫و مقابالت مع المواهب‬,‫نقدم ايضا عروض نقدية لالفالم‬ ‫ كما سنوفر منصة‬.‫و مقاالت رأى غير تقليدية‬,‫الصاعدة‬ ‫لألفكار الجديدة فى مدونة الفيديو الخاصة بنا الى جانب‬ .‫االصدار اليومى‬ ‫ و‬,‫ كنا نبحث عن شئيًا فريدًا‬,‫فى المرة االول��ى لنا هنا‬ ‫ نفس‬.‫عندما وج��دن��اه ص��ار محتمًا ان نعود م��رة أخ��رى‬ :‫العوامل التى جذبتنا ف��ى السابق م��ا زال��ت موجودة‬ ‫ اشياء‬,‫أشياء غير إعتيادية تنبع من نفوس شابة و حيوية‬ .‫مذهلة و ببساطة جميلة‬

One year passed and we are here again. We hope you are well and had a great time since we lastly met, just as great as we definitely had. This is already the 6th year in the history of Nisimazine workshops and the second together with Abu Dhabi Film Festival.

We are a group of cinephile journalists working in an international network; we remain young, as we hope, forever. If you associate with our team for the festival, we will invite you to travel around the whole world since we ourselves represent the most different countries.

How did Jung and Freud meet? What is the secret of women’s high heels? How far can a Zulu boy and an Indian widow go together? What should we know about ‘eco-pirating’? How does a Victorian melodrama set in Asia look like? There are so many questions and wonders the festival will raise, and we can hardly wait to answer them. As far as we pay attention you never to be bored, we also offer reviews, interviews with upcoming talents, essays thinking outside of the box.

We will also be giving platform to the fresh thoughts in our videoblog and our daily.

the Abu Dhabi Film Festival

‫ هيئة التحرير‬EDITORIAL STAFF ‫ ماثيو داراس‬:‫المدير المسؤول‬ Director of Publication Matthieu Darras ‫ مارجه ألدرس‬:‫التصميم الفني‬/‫رئيس التحرير‬ Editor-in-Chief/Layout Maartje Alders ‫ جي وايسبيرغ و زياد الخزاعي‬:‫المشرفان‬ TutorS Jay Weissberg

Ziad Khuzai ‫ المساهمون في العدد‬Contributors to this issue

Janka Barkoczi, Fuad Hindieh Mohamed Beshir, Maartje Alders Celluloid Liberation Front Ziad Abdul Samad, Filippo Zambon NISI MASA 99 rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, 75010, Paris, France.

Phone: +33 (0)9 60 39 63 38 europe@nisimasa.com www.nisimasa.com

The first time we came we were looking for something unique; as we found it, we had to come back. Now we are here and still attracted by the same issues: something extraordinary from dynamic, young souls, something astounding or simply beautiful.

BY MARTINA LANG (AUSTRIA)

,

picture of the day / ‫صورة اليوم‬

by Filippo Zambon (Italy)

Monsieur Lazhar

review / ‫عرض نقدي‬

Philippe Falardeau - Canada Opening Film Through a well written, directed and performed drama (that is actually the opening film of Abu Dhabi Film Festival), Canadian director Philippe Falardeau aims at communicating with a large audience. He thus behaves just like the main character of his story, Bachir Lazhar, who seeks to engage with his pupils. “It’s a desire to communicate”, simply says the professor. Supported by a rather traditional method of teaching, ‘Monsieur Lazhar’ tries to help the teenagers to open up and talk about their fears. Later on we discover that his passion towards helping these kids comes from his attempt at releasing himself from his own fears as well.

Two stories clearly mirror each other in Monsieur Lazhar. First, there is the story of a man, who has a painful past in Algeria, while in Quebec he is traumatized from the perspective of being

Cave of Forgotten Dreams Werner Herzog - USA/France - Showcase

deported at any time as he is illegal immigrant.

Second, there is the story of children who are traumatized from the tragic death of their beloved teacher. In both stories we feel suffering and a need for healing.

The most interesting idea of the film comes for me when Mr. Lazhar goes to the post office to get a parcel. It is an apricot jam box. At least, this is what is stamped on the outside. Later on we discover that the box has no jam, but contains elements of his painful memory. Eventually Bachir decides to open the box and to use the objects inside as tools for teaching.

While talking about big issues like death, love, or violence, we have to be courageous enough to open the ‘box’, and not just judge by appearance.

And the best way to achieve this, as the film cleverly implies, is by communicating!

by Fuad Hindieh (Palestine)

14/10

VOX 6

-

6 PM

What is the logic of filming a painting in 3D? Herzog answers this question with his latest project on the cave of ChauvetPont-d’Arc, one of the lesser stomped prehistoric sites in the south of France with the oldest paintings attributed to our species (more than 30 000 years old).

Fragile drawings in black, white and red adorn the rough cave walls. We are once again taken to the edges of the earth, of humanity and above all of time.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams sketches the modern landscape of the cave through some usual suspects of Herzog’s filmography, such as a retired perfume tycoon sniffing his way through the bushes looking for more forgotten caves. Without seemingly much effort, the director jumps gently from the small details in the movement of the drawings, via the small talks with the scientists and their idiosyncrasies to the bigger picture of the passing of millennia, without it feeling clumsy. But big the effort must have been if you imagine a crew of just three (one camera, one sound, one light - Herzog himself ), in a space of not more than 4m2 in the most positive conditions, making a 3D shooting. But nothing could have brought out the use of depth in the cave drawings better. Herzog recreates the original viewing effect through his li-

ghting, making the paintings come to life in a manner as with torches, the torches whose scrapings on the wall you can see as fresh as yesterday.

The film is not didactic, a history lesson, but more about sensations. Back then those early humans had a different relation with nature, a different concept of self that luckily Herzog never tries to explain. The effect of the cave under his light and camera (dark, deep, impenetrable) illustrates this point. The images of paintings are slowly coming in and out of view, making it enough to observe in silence.

The subject here is not only history, but also the medium of film itself, as an historical record. The camera becomes the archaeological tool showing us what we would not be able to see in such high proximity and detail. Towards the ending, the camera turns on the crew (us), appearing as little dots on the shore. Masterfully realised through a toy helicopter perspective, we end up gazing at a point in history, feeling small and big at the same time.

by Maartje Alders (The Netherlands)

14/10 VOX 5 18/10 VOX 6

-

4 PM 6:45 PM

For the first two issues of Nisimazine Abu Dhabi this year, we present multiple interviews with the filmmakers of SANAD. Today, we focus on filmmakers in exile: Samir, Mahdi Fleifel and Malek Bensmaïl.

samir

photo by Filippo Zambon (Italy)

SANAD

Iraqi Odyssey

Sanad Project – Documentary (Development)

War is the first, often the only image conjured up when the word Iraq appears on our television screens, newspapers or political tribunes. Yet, Iraq some fifty years ago was enjoying a western-like lifestyle, women had access to the countries’ universities and foreign culture was flowing in uncensored. What happened then? Samir, an Iraqi filmmaker living in Switzerland decided to tell the untold history of his country through the story of his family. We met him to find out more about the causes of this dramatic shift.

Does your project spring from the need to show contemporary Iraqis what was their own country like 50 years ago or to address Euro-American misconceptions about Iraq?

Of course my intention is to address both. Though I have lived abroad I grew up with my family’s stories about Iraq in the 20th century, we came from a very religious Shiite background but the whole family embraced a modern way of life driven by the idea of social justice and not bound to sectarian or religious ideas. We wanted to be part of a modern world with a fair relationship between “north” and “south”. Guided by the memories my family passed on to me and by my political and historical knowledge I would like to build a bridge between Euro-American misconceptions about Iraq and its own national memory.

History is often linearized to support the political status quo. Does this apply to Iraq too? If yes, which are the political factors that shaped this change you are describing in your new film?

These are all very political questions. In the first place I don’t want to do a political film, of course the subject is political but on the other hand I would like to do a film on my family history. Needless to say our family was always related to po-

litics in some way and this will make my film a political one but as a filmmaker, driven by my curiosity, I’m much more interested in trying to understand the world with my own instruments which does not necessarily make my work political. My point of view will naturally emerge from this film: which is that Iraqis, in my opinion, should have a go at secular and progressive politics representing the different cultures in Iraq.

Iraqi living abroad so I believe that we do represent a strong part of the Iraqi society.

You describe the progressive customs of Iraqi society 50 years ago as “western-like”. Are the current ones “western-induced”?

Oh, come on! I’m just saying that the society at that time, particularly the middle classes, was incarnating a modern worldview wherefore customs were

...the question is: will Iraq find its own independent way to live with its own diversity..

Is the story of your family representative of Iraqi society at large or characteristic of a specific sector of it?

That’s a good question. Honestly in my film I’m talking only about my own family. Yet, being surrounded by many other Iraqis, especially from the diaspora but also in Iraq who do not really relate to theocracies, I think my family is representative of a large section of Iraqi people. It must be said that nowadays in Iraq fewer are those who share secular and progressive values since the middle class has almost disappeared, a large part of it having moved out of the country in the last 20 years. I can’t give you the figures but there are 5 millions

developing toward a non-rural model.

This is not about “good” or “bad”, “right” or “wrong”, it is just a phenomenological look at the surface, for the surface in a way represents the state of a society.

At the time the majority of the people took off the veil, they took off the “Abaya” and the “Dishdasha”, the cloth of the peasants; the so called westerner look represented in my opinion only the ideal society we wanted to have.

Iraq in the ninth century was a place where Adab, intellectual curiosity about all cultures, was thriving. Diverse ethno-religious groups debated, in relative freedom, about math, scien-

ce, philosophy, theology and poetry.

Is this heritage alive in the national consciousness?

The question should be: what constitutes the national consciousness? At the moment we do not have a media discourse in Iraq that articulates and illustrates at home and abroad what is our national consciousness. When I was young the idea that was in everybody’s mind was that we would have lived in a modern society where both religious and non-religious aspects would have been contemplated. Back then it was not a question of being Kurd, Iraqi, Shiite, Sunni or Christian, so in this sense now we have a lack of consciousness because there is no real freedom as we know it here in Europe or in other parts of world. Now things are better, we can more or less talk freely but certain taboos around religion for example do persist and each group insist on being “the real” Iraq while diversity is and will be the funding principle around which this nation revolves. Funnily enough, I now live in Switzerland where diversities do coexist; the question is: will Iraq find its own independent way to live with its own diversity without the influence of its neighbours?

By Celluloid Liberation Front

mahdi fleifel

After the Last Goal

Sanad Project – Documentary (Post-Production)

It is a long way from the refugee camp of Ain El-Helweh in Lebanon to the shining city of London, but for Mahdi Fleifel it is worth the travel. The young Palestinian filmmaker whose shorts were successful in many festivals has his new documentary project on his football loving compatriots as part of SANAD selection.

The Young Will Forget is about the feeling of excitement invading Palestinian refugee camps during the football World Cup. Considering that having no country means having no chance to take part, what does this mean to you?

Actually, my new film is not so much about the World Cup but more about memory and ‘the need to remember’. The title The Young Will Forget (its working title was After the Last Goal) - refers to a quote

by David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, who famously said about the dispossessed Palestinians that, one day «The old will die and the young will forget». Making this film for me has been a way of

today with all the experiences and contradicting imprints it has left me with over the years. Born in Dubai, raised in Ain El-Helweh and later Denmark, and now living and working in London, I feel I have been blessed with my own unique experience of being Palestinian. And being Palestinian is a different story every time, depending on who you ask. What unites us is the 1948 Nakba, our own personal ‘Big Bang’, our reference point. Growing up with my father’s sense of humor and his curiosity to record his surroundings (he has always been obsessed with video cameras) I have shared his enthusiasm and the necessity to tell stories. And Ain El-Helweh is

..my new film is not so much about the World Cup but more about memory and ‘the need to remember’. challenging that. Forgetting for us Palestinians would simply mean ceasing to exist. Our fight throughout history, and still today, is to remain visible. Making my film is a way of reinforcing and strengthening our collective memory. But most important, it was to make a record of my own family history, a history of three generations, a record of a dispossessed family li-

ving as refugees in Lebanon and emigrants in Europe. Basically it is an attempt at exploring the state of being in exile.

Since you spent your childhood in a refugee camp, we can say you make movies there as a native.

Could you describe any special gift that you got from there as a filmmaker?

I am blessed to have the life I have

full of stories. All you have to do is to sit at the market and listen to old men gossiping about each other or reminiscing times past.

Your previous film Arafat & I told the funny story of a young Palestinian boy who meets a girl with some unbelievable characteristics, especially sharing a birthday with Yasser Arafat. Is humor unique to a particular culture?

I guess having grown up in Ain ElHelweh before moving to Denmark, I have coped with transition in my life by seeing the world in a rather comic and cynical way. I believe that my stories reflect my history while at the same time being influenced

by London, the place where I currently live and work. Also, I think that Palestinians, in particular from Zaffourieh, have a terrific sense of humor, maybe only matched by Jewish or Balkan humor.

Your films usually mix the languages of documentary and fiction in a unique way. Which one do you prefer?

I don’t distinguish the two as such, but the authenticity in each moment is crucial. I feel that finding the truth is the most important aspect of any attempt to create cinema. I personally enjoy combining the two ‘forms’, but I also respect that they each have their own sensibilities and ways into the creation of a cinematic experience, i.e. different working methods.

by Janka Barkoczi (Hungary)

FOCUS / ‫بقعة ضوء‬

interview

malek bensmaïl

Origines Sanad Project – Narrative (Development)

An Algerian filmmaker exiled in France, Malek Bensmaïl is at SANAD with the project Origines, a road movie following two theater personalities through Algiers, Cairo, Istanbul and Tokyo.

How did you discover the Far East, an important theme of your next film?

My latest feature China is still far, dealt with childhood and the transfer of knowledge in Algeria mentioning another Far-Eastern country as well. China, a symbolic land in the area of Islam, is a reference to a citation by the Prophet Mohammed inciting Muslims to “seek knowledge, all the way to China if you must.”

My project Origines depicts the encounter of a well-known Algerian actor and a Japanese woman. Historians drew fascinating parallels between the movements of the modern Arab renaissance and the Meiji era in Japan. For my movie, the most valuable aspect is the common history of ‘renaissances’. The current trends of Islamic reform will enable me to build interesting metaphors with the present. One of the historic issues of the film is the broken thread of the Arab-Islamic world’s reform as it is told in Ibrahim, a tale of an Ulama who travelled to Japan at the turn of the last century. My leading characters and the audience encounter those old places, where the cultures of East and West, or tradition and modernity, are again entwined nowadays, and they notice that the questions of yesterday, posed by Ibrahim, are still relevant today.

Why is it worth to bring out the long standing question of the split between East and West in 2011?

People’s desire for the understanding of the Arab-Muslim region and its relationship to the West seems never to have been as strong as today. Since I have been doing research for Origines, I have been able to observe how scarce the audiovisual documentation of this part of the world really is. Motion pictures often confine representation of the area either to terrorism and Islamism, or to the golden age of Islam with Arab arts and sciences. Each of us, on either side of the cultural divide, has only the vision of “the other” that our education has left us, mixed with the information presented by the media. History has its dark

areas and injustices, of course, but the news of the media is still exacerbated to the point of encouraging simplistic and/ or mythological descriptions that feed a definitely Manichean view of one place or another.

Your previous films, such as Le Grand Jeu (on the Algerian presidential elections in 2004), tend to put history at the forefront...

History is part of our life, but it happens to be only the transmission element. In my other documentary, Alienations, I was confronted for example with the world of madness in Algeria through the predominant issues of identity, religion and language. In count with the actual revolutions of the Arab world, I want my new film to be in phase with the modern, living world, like an evidence of the personal and collective renaissance. I believe it is urgent to propose another, tighter, more contemporary key for interpreting the history of the present, but little known, period.

In your opinion, should a filmmaker remain neutral when looking at these sensitive contemporary issues?

Individualism, neo-nationalism and religion should be viewed for the first time through the prism of “non-Western” experiments of modernity. I will endeavor to explore the deeply buried aspects of the modern experience by shifting the focus away from the Western experience to tell the Arab-Muslim one. Since I am an Algerian filmmaker exiled in Europe I claim multiple identities: Algerian, Berber, Arabic, Western, and so on. It is amazing that, though I wasn’t aware of it, I began to create my identity when I began to create my film work, because identity is also a free, perpetual movement of creation.

by Janka Barkoczi (Hungary)

focus / ‫بقعة ضوء‬

14/10 VOX 1

6:30 PM

Ray of Hope One of the few Indian movies screening at Abu Dhabi Film Festival this year is Charulatha, one of the best ever to come out of the sub-continent. Winner of the Silver Bear in Berlin for Best Direction in 1965, Charulatha is arguably Satyajit Ray’s greatest creation. It was also the one that gave him the most satisfaction. In his own words, “Well, the one film that I would make the same way, if I had to do it again, is Charulata.”

The backbone of the story is the suppressed love and creativity of Charulatha, a housewife, how it evolves alongside her idealist husband’s singleminded search for truth and finally, the untimely expression of her inner desires. The film is based on the novel Nastanirh (Broken Nest), by Nobel Prize laureate Rabindranath Tagore and true to the title, of the novel on which it is based, the storyline is given a jolt by the arrival of dashing younger brother of the husband, fresh out of art school. In the novel, Tagore takes a brief yet intimate look into the workings of the mind of a woman, the trappings of genius in a paternalistic world.

The winner of the honorary Oscar in 1992 for Lifetime Achievement not only directed and wrote the screenplay, but also composed the music. Almost resembling a musical at times, this Ray succeeds in bringing together an array of poetry, folk songs and Western classical music, along with a mesmerizing combination of sounds of late 19th century Calcutta. As the legendary Japanese director and close friend of Ray, Akira Kurosawa once said: «Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon.»

The central character Charulatha is a delight to watch. Madhabi Mukherjee, one of those timelessly beautiful Bengali actresses, is a director’s dream and plays the role of bored, intelligent housewife to the point of perfection. One can almost imagine Ray prompting Madhabi like a puppet on strings. Pause the movie anywhere, her action and facial expression would a cinematic moment. The film was shot entirely in a studio and perfection of Ray is visible in every nook and corner of the film - the placement of a bird cage outside a window, the wallpaper in the living room, the way Charulatha moves through the house - every second is moment of poetry.

Despite being an ardent fan of the Apu Trilogy, I admit I was a bit skeptic when asked to review a black and white movie of Ray’s. After all, a film festival is an occasion to watch the very latest in serious cinema. But the opening scene itself hooked me, an 8 minute sequence without dialogue where Charulatha waltzes through what appears to be a morning routine.

Moreover, Ray being something of a perfectionist, the composition and texture of the rooms were brilliant. I felt that the lavish use of 3D, visual effects and green room technology today as an excess, a distraction from the simplicity of good story-telling. How many dialogues can you remember from the latest Harry Potter of Transformers series?

A scene from the movie that still resonates in my mind is a scene in the overgrown garden outside, where Amal, the younger brother is lying down, writing a poem while Charulatha sits on a swing, eyeing him as if

in a trance. Amal says, “The sun, the moon, the river, the waves in an ocean.

Everything in nature moves forwards. Except the mind, the mind of men looks back.”

It is said that greatness is a quality decided by time. Ultimately, the timelessness is the success of Charulatha. The central themes of the film - the struggle between art and everyday life, work-life and family, blindness of love and morality: these are values that will exist in society forever. Simply put, the cinematic poetry of Ray has to be worth a couple of hours in the evening and a few 10 AED notes. Shouldn’t it?

by Ziad Abdul Samad (UAE)

meet mahfouz

Between Heaven and Earth

‫بين‬ ‫السماء‬ ‫واألرض‬

Salah Abu Seif (Egypt, 1960)

‫ مصر ـ صالح أبوسيف‬1960

Celebrating a century of Egyptian cinema, Cairo International Film Festival conducted a survey to determine the most significant Egyptian films. Of the list of top 100 films, 9 had Naguib Mahfouz’s name attached to them as a writer, surpassing almost all professional scriptwriters in the field.

‫بمناسبة مرور قرن على بداية صناعة السينما فى‬ ‫ أجرى مهرجان القاهرة السينمائي الدولي‬،‫مصر‬ ‫استفتاءا لتحديد أهم األف�لام فى تاريخ السينما‬ ‫ فيلما لتحمل‬100 ‫ و جاءت محصلة أفضل‬.‫المصرية‬ ،‫اس��م نجيب محفوظ ككاتب فى تسع منها‬ ‫متجاوزا أغلب كتاب السيناريو المحترفين في‬ .‫هذا المجال‬

The Nobel Prize winner did not suffice with his novels being adapted into the screen. His interest in cinema -evident in how frequent it comes up in his work- made it a natural transition for Mahfouz to co-write his first screenplay Mughamarat Antar was Abla with director Salah Abu Seif in 1948.

Between his attachment to this new medium and his commitment to literature comes Between Heaven and Earth, Mahfouz’s pioneering experiment with a new position: Cinematic Story Writer.

‫لم يكتفى صاحب نوبل باالفالم المقتبسة عن‬ ‫الواضح من خالل تناولها‬- ‫ فشغفه بالسينما‬.‫رواياته‬ ‫ ادى الى‬-‫باستمرار ف��ى قصصه بشتى ال��ص��ور‬ ‫االنتقال الطبيعي لمحفوظ ليشارك في كتابة‬ ‫سيناريو (مغامرات عنتر وعبلة) مع المخرج صالح‬ ‫ و بين تعلقه بهذا الوسيط الجديد‬.1948 ‫أبو سيف‬ ‫و التزامه تجاه مشروعه األدب��ى جاء فيلم (بين‬ ‫ كتجربة رائ��دة في موقع جديد‬،)‫السماء واألرض‬ .‫ كاتب القصة السينمائية‬-:

Produced in 1960, Between Heaven and Earth permeates the post-1952 revolution brisk society, through the story of a group of strangers caught in a jammed elevator, and despite their widely dissimilar stances and objectives, they are forced to share the same fate. Amongst the characters is a woman about to give birth, a man about to die, a pickpocket, a madman, a famous actress, a snobbish aristocrat and a proud doorman amidst others.

1960 ‫(بين السماء واألرض) ال��ذى أنتج ف��ي ع��ام‬ ‫ من خالل قصة‬,52 ‫يستشف مجتمع ما بعد ثورة‬ ‫مجموعة من الغرباء يتعطل بهم المصعد فى‬ ‫ ورغ��م مواقفهم و‬،‫اح��د عقارات وس��ط المدينة‬ ‫ فإنهم يضطرون إلى تقاسم‬،‫اهدافهم المتباينة‬ ‫ من بين الشخصيات ام��رأة على‬.‫نفس المصير‬ ،‫ نشال‬، ‫ رج��ل على وش��ك الموت‬،‫وش��ك ال���والدة‬ ‫ممثلة مشهورة‬، ‫هارب من مستشفى المجانين‬ ‫أرستقراطي متغطرس و ح��ارس عقار فخور و‬، .‫اخرون‬

The ensemble cast of B-class actors and stars like Hind Rostom and Mahmoud El-Meliguy are being trapped physically in the same location for the whole shooting period, summoning in a way the main theme of innovative collaboration evident in the process of making this film. Being the second collaboration between Abu Seif and Mahfouz, the story witnesses more landmarks imported from Mahfouz’s literature realm; the significance of the elevator beyond being just a place that hosts the story, the sociopolitical undertones and the condensed treatment for the idea of fate.

‫يجمع الفيلم ممثلين غير معروفين مع نجوم‬ ‫مثل هند رستم ومحمود المليجى في نفس‬ ‫ عاكسا بطريقة ما‬،‫الموقع طوال فترة التصوير‬ ‫التيمة الرئيسية للمشاركة االبداعية التى ميزت‬ ‫ كونه التعاون الثاني بين أبو‬.‫صناعة هذا الفيلم‬ ‫سيف ومحفوظ فقد ساعد على افساح المجال‬ ‫الستقطاب المزيد من العناصر المميزة لعوالم‬ ‫ كالمصعد ال��ذى يتجاوز‬:‫نجيب محفوظ االدب��ي��ة‬ ‫ أو‬،‫كونه مجرد مكان يستضيف اح��داث القصة‬ ‫ أو المعالجة‬,‫الربط ما بين السياسي و االجتماعي‬ .‫المكثفة لفكرة المصير‬

Between Heaven and Earth contains the unique mix between the narrative that adheres to the cinematic rhythm, and the detailed texture of characters and place specific to Mahfouz’s literature. The match between Salah Abu Seif’s realism, inspired by his direct contact with Italian neo realism, and Mahfouz’s naturalistic style helped make an inimitable film that stood the test of time.

by Mohamed Beshir (Egypt)

‫(بين السماء واألرض) يحتوي على مزيج فريد من‬ ‫و الوعى‬، ‫السرد الملتزم باإليقاع السينمائي‬ ‫ فتجربة‬.‫االدبى بتفاصيل الشخصيات و المكان‬ ‫ المستوحاة من‬،‫الجمع بين واقعية صالح أبو سيف‬ ‫تفاعله المباشر مع الواقعية الجديدة فى ايطاليا‬ ‫ و بين أس��ل��وب محفوظ الطبيعي‬،‫ف��ى اوج��ه��ا‬ ‫جعلت الفيلم احد عالمات السينما المصرية التى‬ .‫اجتازت اختبار الزمن‬

14/10 VOX 3

‫محمد بشير‬

9 PM

portrait / ‫بورترية‬

Chen Kaige

Abu Dhabi audiences will have the opportunity to discover today Chen Kaige’s latest epic, Sacrifice, whose title and historical setting evoke a very familiar vision to the director.

This is the perfect occasion for Nisimazine to revisit the Chinese filmmaker’s career.

Born in 1952 in Beijing, Chen Kaige was still a child when he befriended fellow director Tian Zhuangzhuang, whose The Horse Thief (1986) is one of Martin Scorsese’s favourite films of the 90’s.

During the Cultural Revolution Chen joined the Red Guards and like many of his generation denounced his father, an act that will inevitably mark his personal as well as professional life. As the Cultural Revolution came to an end in 1978 Chen entered the Beijing Film Academy from which he will graduate in 1982. Two years later, in 1984 Chen debuted with Yellow Earth narrating the story of a communist soldier travelling to the north of China collecting popular songs for the revolution. Already in this first feature Chen’s preoccupations emerged, the conflicting relationship between culture and politics, past and present, private and public seen through the allegorical lenses of a refined visual style (cinematography by Zhang Yimou).

A very evocative and philosophically dense film Life on a String (1991) sees the Chinese director trying his hand at meta-cinematographic musings following two blind musicians through the wastelands of creation. His most famous film to date, Farewell, My Concubine (1993) was awarded the prestigious Palme d’Or, the first given to a Chinese film. In what many consider his most accomplished film Chen revisits the defining moments of 20th century China, from the civil war to the Japanese invasion, on to the Cultural Revolution.

In a film where the director seems to be dealing with his personal past, the two central characters at some point defame their friendship denouncing each other just as Chen did with his own father; it is interesting noticing the presence of the latter, Chen Huaikai, as art director. Farewell, My Concubine manages to seamlessly unite aesthetic research and epic storytelling without sacrificing a cogent narrative tension.

If in his previous films political events would in turn influence the characters’ actions, in Temptress Moon (1996) the director decides to show a love story utterly removed from its social context so as to offer a glimpse into Chinese society exclusively through the characters (Leslie Cheung and Li Gong). The tormented thread running through the private and the political is once again explored in The Emperor and the Assassin (1998), the story of the King of Qin and his quest to unite China. Set in the third century B.C., the film follows the King’s concubine as she enters the Han Kingdom as a spy but finds herself unsure about which side her heart is beating for. By now it is quite clear that Chen’s vision of history cannot transcend the irrational force of love jeopardising the cold strategic calculations of politics.

There is, throughout his career a marked penchant toward the unresolved relation between one’s inner will and the over-determined forces of history, as if the two could never match. For a man who lived through the ambition and the colossal failure of the Cultural Revolution, it comes as no surprise.

In 2002, after having contributed to the collective episode film Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet, Chen catches his

audience off guard with a thriller set in London, Killing Me Softly, a film that to these days stands out as an unconventional chapter in his filmography. Most recently, with Forever Enthralled (2008), the director returns to the Opera of Beijing recounting the story of Mei Lanfang, its brightest star.

Scoring 51 millions yuans ($7 millions) when it opened in China the first weekend, Sacrifice, Chen’s latest work is an adaptation from Orphan of Zhao, one of the first Chinese operas reaching European audiences. The original text narrates the killing of a son at the hands of his own father committed to preserve the bloodline of a noble clan. The director formulated a complex revenge tragedy set in 583 B.C. involving brain teasing plot twists showing once again his predilection for the complexities of history and the unsettled relations of its agents.

Celluloid Liberation Front