Nisimazine Abu Dhabi
مجلة تصدرها نيسي ماسا ـ الشبكة االوربية للسينما الشابة
2011 أكتوبر21 الخميس- 8العدد
A magazine by NISI MASA, European Network Of Young Cinema
#8, Friday 21 October 2011
from Pina by Wim Wenders
نيسيمازين
Pina Midaq Alley Short Film Competition بينا زقاق المدق مسابقة االفالم القصيرة
ا فتتا حية// editorial
NISIMAZINE ABU DHABI
Friday 21 October 2011/# 8 A magazine published by the NISI MASA in the
by Celulloid Liberation Front
framework of a film journalism workshop
جبهة تحرير الشريط السينمائي
for young film journalists from Europe and the Arab World with the support of
، بعد ان استنفدت مستقبلها،تملك الصحاري سحرا خاصا ان كل شيء اشيد عليها.وبالتالي فهي خالية من الزمن فليس من قبيل. وقف خارج الزمن،من مدن وهرم وفنادق ويبدو ان. أن الزعماء الدينيين جاؤا من الصحراء،المصادفة لها، ضمن مواصفات كثيرة،مراكز التسوق الحديثة لديها ان رامبو المستقبل وفان جوغ وأدولف هتلر.الباع االمثل »سيخرجون من نفاياتهم الخالدة » «معرض البشاعة، باالرد. جي.جي أن هناك شيئا عميقا سينمائيا حول مهرجان،من المؤكد ومهيئا لخطف، منظما، حيث يقام كل شيء، أبوظبي ال.اهتمام الزوار الساعين الى الحصول على بعض الغرائبية يتطلب االمر سوى سياقة سيارة للوصول الى موقع يشبه فاجعة ما بعد االبوكالبتية حيث االناقة والفخامة تقف في مواجهة بعيدة عن االنحالل االجتماعي الذي لن ينتصر في ان السحر الذي شع في نصوص المخرج الفرنس.النهاية ميليس حول الصحراء مابعد الثورة الصناعية الى مكان حيث ال يحتاج المرءإلى،الئق من مشاريع التطوير العقاري لعدم وجود الجاذبية التاريخية كي،سفرة فضائية بعد اآلن يصبح البذخ هواء اساسيا.يسلم للنعيم في نهاية المطاف في هذا الحج الخالد، او غير مرغوب فيه،وغير المشروط .إلى ارض مقدسة استهالكية «المشهد في تراكم رأس:ومثلما قال «غي» ذات مرة ان ان.»المال النفطي يصل بفورة تحوله الى فيض ص��وري في مصطلح «الفن االصطناعي» هو، كما هو الحال،الفن .«ماتريكس» (استعارة من الفيلم الشهير) ثقافي للمدينة ما هو أفضل مكان الستضافة مهرجان سينمائي غير،اذن أبوظبي؟ عندما ال تتبقى سوى األضواء التي تعمي الخيال فان السينما هي الوحيدة التي،بنورانية بيئة مصنعة .تتكفل بمهمة سوريالية الاختراع واقع بديل
the Abu Dhabi Film Festival
“Deserts possess a particular magic, since they have exhausted their own futures, and are thus free of time. Anything erected there, a city, a pyramid, a motel, stands outside time. It’s no coincidence that religious leaders emerge from the desert. Modern shopping malls have much the same function. A future Rimbaud, Van Gogh or Adolf Hitler will emerge from their timeless wastes.” - J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition There definitely is something deeply cinematic about Abu Dhabi; all is staged, propped up, rehearsed for gullible visitors striving for some exoticism to take-away. It just takes a drive to be propelled into a post-apocalyptic set where luxury instead of social decay has finally triumphed. Magic as in Méliès turned the pre-industrial desert into a concrete oasis of property development, where man does not need to travel to space anymore for the absence of historical gravity delivers the ultimate bliss. Opulence becomes essential and unconditioned air undesirable in this timeless pilgrimage to the holy land of consumerism.
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 العدد
جبهة تحرير الشريط السينمائي \ فيليبو زمبون علي شجاع العفيفي \ برونو كارملو \ أليزابيث غسلين-رينولت Contributors to this issue
Ali Shujaa Al Afeefi Janka Barkoczi, Bruno Carmelo Elisabeth Renault-Geslin Celluloid Liberation Front Filippo Zambon NISI MASA 99 rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis
As the Debord-ian mantra goes, “the spectacle is capital/ oil accumulated to the point it becomes images”. Art, as in ARTificial, is the cultural matrix of the city: what better place to host a film festival than Abu Dhabi? When only the blinding lights of fiction are left illuminating a manufactured environment, perhaps cinema can undertake the surreal task of inventing reality.
75010, Paris, France Phone: +33 (0)9 60 39 63 38 europe@nisimasa.com www.nisimasa.com
فيليبو زمبون:صورة
BY MARTINA LANG (AUSTRIA)
,
picture of the day / صورة اليوم
by Filippo Zambon
Al Madina المدينة
review / عرض نقدي
Asghar Farhadi, Iran )1999 Competition ،يسري نصر اهلل (مصر Narrative ،بعد أن ضاق علي (باسم سمرة) من لغط العيش مرورا بإحباطه.بدءًا من ضغوط والده بالتحكم به وانتهاء برغبته في امتهان،من عمله الرتيب كجزار في قرارة نفسهمن، جعل البطل الشاب،التمثيل ومخرجًا،العاصمة الفرنسية باريس هدفًا يصبو إليه وبدال عن المجد المنتظر يواجه خيارامغايرا.نحو الحرية .في تجربة مريرة وسلبية
يركز شريط «المدينة» للمخرج المصري يسري نصر اهلل على ظاهرة اجتماعية أثرت على أهالي حي عندما قررت الحكومة نقل سوق الخضروات،قاهري صور ثالثة أرباع الفيلم في منطقة.إلى مكان آخر «روض الفرج» وهي أحد األحياء القديمة للعاصمة والتي تضم سوقا كبيرة تستقطب االف،المصرية من الناس سواء من الحي ذاته او من مناطق اخرى أما الربع اآلخر من الشريط فقد ُصور في،في المدينة .أحياء باريس المتفرقة
Free Men
Ismaël Ferroukhi, France/Morocco Narrative Competition
)1981( »يطرح عمل صاحب «سرقات صيفية ) فكرة الهجرةغير المشروعة1993( »و»مرسيدس ،لقطاع عربيشاب في أواخر تسعينات القرن الماضي لكسب لقمة،وعملهم في الخارج بطرق غير قانونية وهذا ما المسهالشريط،العيش أو سعياُ الى الثراء في مقاطع كبيرة ضمن قسم الحكاية التي جرت أما الجزء اآلخر فالمس الصراع.احداثها في باريس الدائم لكل فرد من أفراد العائلة ومطامعه في هائم بين عشقة،فالشخصية الرئيسية علي.الحياة فيمايقضي،ومعضلة تقوقعه لمطالب أهله ُ للتمثيل .واألب يومه كله في السوق وينفق ماله على أهوائه أما األم فترمز إلى العاطفة والحنان وإلى ما يشبه .الوطن يستلهم «مدينة» نصراهلل قصيدة للشاعر اليوناني الكبير قسطنطين كفافي التي قال فيها «ليس يامن دمرت حياتك، وال من طريق،من سفينة لك )1999( » عرض «المدينة.» في هذا الركن الضيق،هنا ضمن فعاليات برنامج «خرائط الذات» الى جانب عمل والذي يُ قام،المغربي «ليامليام» ألحمد المعنوني للمرة الثانية على التوالي في مهرجان أبوظبي وغرضه عرض أفالم مرممة لحفظ كنوز.السينمائي . ا لسينما
Thursday 20/10 VOX 5 - 9:00 PM Friday
21/10
ADTالعفيفي - 4:00شجاع PM
علي
Life of Algerian immigrants in France during the World War II is not very well known. The immigration stopped at the beginning of the German occupation and most of the Algerians working in French factories fell into poverty. What most of us do not know is the part played by the Paris Mosque at the time of the Resistance. In fact, the chief officer of the Paris Mosque helped hiding Jews. Si Kaddour Ben Ghabrit, interpreted on screen by the legendary Michael Lonsdale, undertook to welcome Nazis by obligation and to hide the Resistance by conviction within the mosaic walls of the Mosque. The screenplay by Ismaël Ferroukhi and Alain-Michel Blanc is based on true events, but its main character, Younes (played by Tahar Rahim, the revelation of Jacques Audiard’s Prophet), is inspired by several Algerian heroes. Younes is an illegal underworld trader who gets arrested and put in jail. He becomes a spy against his will inside the Mosque for the French police. Refusing at first to take side in the political fight, he will soon become an active member of the Resistance once his friends get threatened.
Free Men (Les Hommes libres) follows a trend established by several French films released in the recent years, which celebrate the people of French colonies. Like Day of Glory (Indigènes) by Rachid Bouchareb, or Army of Crime (L’Armée du crime) by Robert Guédiguian, Free Men portrays the forgotten past of the alliance between France and communities from its past colonies. Ferroukhi films his hero Younes during long travels, alternating hand-held and steady camera to let us feel his anxiousness and the trouble of being between two sides of the Occupation. But despite having a great subject and a talented cast (including Lubna Azabal), the film falls short of the great statement it so blatantly wanted to be, and remains too often within the unstylish limits of a made-for-TV feature. Elisabeth Renault-Geslin
Friday 21/10 VOX2 - 4:00 PM
photos by Filippo Zambon
As our focus on the Short Film Competition, for the last issue we interviewed two short film directors: Jean-Gabriel Périot from France and Ariel Shaban from Kosovo.
SHORTS
Jean-Gabriel Périot Director of The Barbarians (France) Short Film Competition
Jean-Gabriel Périot is a French experimental filmmaker in the classical meaning of the word. He uses traditional tools to express revolutionary criticism on the present society and economics. His short film The Barbarians is a five-minute montage of various archives, accompanied by excellent music. How do you feel about screening your film in Abu Dhabi? During the making process of The Barbarians, I hadn’t expected yet the coming of the Arab Spring. The film already had screenings on different festivals, but I am not sure about the reactions of the Middle Eastern audience. I guess it will automatically connote the recent events, but the main feedback will be similar to the European one. Since we live in the same world, we share the same problems. The number of protest movements is growing nowadays, not only in this region, but on all the five continents. The global situation is similar to the sixties, when everybody was fighting because of, more or less, similar reasons. As I see, you can find the difference between the past and the present chiefly in the goals. Fifty years ago, people definitely had the same goals: to abolish poverty and discrimination, to avoid repression. But what are the goals now? I am not sure at all. Are you yourself a revolutionist, as well? Making experimental movies is not the best way to create a revolution. There is no doubt about the importance of political films, but I am sure they can’t change anything. The traditional artistic ways
of objection rising are important, because they can introduce a discussion. However they will never be as strong as just walking on the streets and keeping the physical fight. Yes, I am against the capitalism, and I try to do my best in this battle, but I prefer to choose my own arms. Your film is screened at the Marina Mall, a huge shopping centre... After all, I am not naive. I criticize, but I would never deny the actual processes. If you attend festivals regularly, you will find one or two political films everywhere, even at the festivals taking place in the big cinema multiplexes. I couldn’t imagine myself in such a place before, but now it seems to me very interesting. Of course I know that most of the films have a different conception, but I am always happy when I get the chance to give voice to my opinion. Could you tell more about it? My film is a kind of poetic adaptation of one of Alain Brossat’s thoughts. He is a French philosopher, who once said: “If politics were to come back, it could only be from its savage and disreputable fringe. Then, a muffled rumour shall arise whence that roar is heard: ‘We are scum! We are barbarian!’” People
usually think that the word ‘barbarian’ means something negative or suspicious. For me, it means just a point of view, just a way how we sometimes look at each other. It has more to do with a new beginning, than with the end. Sometimes, the so-called barbarians open the future, and you cannot be sure about who comes from among them. How can new media tools influence your work? To tell the truth, I am a traditional experimental filmmaker, even if it sounds a little bit ironic. I usually work with very classic tools: pictures, archives, and so on. I don’t think that Twitter and Facebook can make revolution alone, because they are just the combination of new inventions. People always find surprising tools for communication
and self-expression, and, of course, I also have a Facebook account to chat with my friends. We simply adapt to new technologies. Your art addresses intellect and emotions at the same time... Using photographic pictures instead of moving images gives a lot of freedom. Since I am originally an editor, I play with pictures with great pleasure. However I often mix the political and emotional message, I never consider politics as the main level in my works. I am sure you want to ask: “Why?” The explanation is very simple: sharing human emotions is much easier than sharing politics. Janka Barkoczi
focus / بقعة ضوء
Ariel Shaban
Director of The Wedding Tape (Kosovo, Germany) Short Film Competition
Ariel Shaban’s The Wedding Tape is the only Kosovar entry of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. Laureate of the NISI MASA European Script Contest, this touching story goes around the issue of immigration bureaucracy, portraying a fake marriage using typical Balkans black humour. How did the writing process of your film look like? To tell the truth, where I am today has a lot to do with NISI MASA, a European network of young film enthusiasts associations. Since I am not a filmmaker by education, I could not find the way to get into the industry except of this organization. First, I applied to the script contest, for which I wrote the script of the film, and this opened the opportunity to find funding like the Kosovo Film Fund and co-production partners in Germany. Talking about the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, I would advise to any filmmaker to apply to. Here you can get an international view to your story, so if you are interested in connections between East and West, this is the most important festival to be. This place is particularly substantial to me, because 90% of the Kosovo inhabitants are Muslims. Although you haven’t graduated from a film school, your film looks very professional... This is because the making process took almost three years, which is a very long time for a short. I consider these three years as a school, and I want to do a couple of shorts to learn more. Besides I like the short format itself; feature films are too big to fail. You can say that short films are business cards to the big feature, even though they don’t sell and you can’t make a living with them. I still insist on developing a classical storytelling. It is like the ABC to me: you have to know the rules
before starting to ruin them, for example in my next film. Besides, the actors of The Wedding Tape are the best professionals in Kosovo, but I want to work in the future with upcoming actors as well. I think we can learn from each other a lot, if we are in the same stage of development. The story begins with the embassy agent asking the visa application for a wedding tape as a proof of the existing marriage. Is it a personal story? It is not my personal story, but almost everybody has such stories with the visa application in Kosovo. I chose this one, because this was the most appealing. Of course it is also based on very true elements, because the case of the
wedding tape and the fake wedding is a story what I have indeed heard about. I am not 100% sure, because I wasn’t there, but I can believe that there are people who would go so far to get their visas. As you see, the main story is not about the authorities, but about love for a woman and for the family. We can say that this is a personal film on the dilemma of leaving Kosovo. It is a conflict which has been for a long time with me. In each moment, when I am thinking if I should stay or of I should go, I have to find the balance somehow. What have you decided to do? Well, obviously I stay. I live in Kosovo. Nowadays, I am working on a script based on the 1999 war in
Kosovo from the aspect of marginalized people. I am especially interested in stories of the women and youth of Kosovo. There is a generation who didn’t experience the war, but they are living in an environment, which constantly talks about it. The marks of the war are still everywhere, the reality of the older people is very much connected to them. I was a kid in that times, so I remember very well. The memories of war are fresh and defining moments, which shape your character for the entire life. One way or another, these memories come to my movies, although not necessarily on the forefront. Janka Barkoczi
focus / بقعة ضوء
Pina - 3D in art house cinema The technology of stereoscopy, with its effect of depth-of-field in photography or motion pictures, has represented the major marketing tool in recent cinema. This “novelty,” which has existed for several decades, is the main reason for the increased success of many animation films, such as Avatar and Up – both for the number of spectators and for the fact that 3D films are more expensive than regular 2D ones. With fewer spectators than Titanic, Avatar has raised a larger income than its predecessor, thanks to inflated ticket prices and 3D. Therefore this technique has become respectable as an economic tool. Cinematic genres normally associated with impact and public immersion, such as adventure, horror and war, quickly started experimenting with 3D. However, a new kind of respectability reaches this technique once it transforms art house and auteur films. That’s the case of Wim Wenders and his homage to German dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch. When the filmmaker announced his intention to make use of this method, many critics and producers welcomed the news with suspicion. It seemed somehow heretical to represent the prestigious Bausch with the same technique mostly used to give shape to Shrek’s flatulence or the human slaughter in the Saw series.
Maybe that’s why Pina is a surprise on so many levels. It is curious to see this tool, usually associated with magic and fantasy, representing the realistic movements of human bodies. The “immersion” produced by the third dimension does not imply an absence of rational spectatorship, but a sort of estrangement built by the conflict between the immersion of images and the distance of nature, that of the dancers and the distant voice-over of the interviewees. The traditional image of a passive public, merely entertained during a spectacle, is confronted with this documentary with no documents, no dates, no names of dancers, almost no information or context. Wenders believes the dancers are better represented by dance itself, thus ignoring Bausch’s evolution as an artist, her personal life, or her relationship with the world surrounding her creations. In the silent and demonstrational image of dance, the greatest innovation proposed by the filmmaker consists in disposing the dancers as much on scene as on wide open spaces, both empty natural fields and isolated industrial sites – all of them perfectly modern and symmetrical. The subways and the iron architecture are accompanied by nothing but a contemporary electronic soundtrack and body movements. The film removes from the dance its noble and elitist character in order to expose it in a much more popular and exciting way, dynamic as a rollercoaster, with its rhythms, shapes, volumes and colors.
Whereas a few dancers portray Bausch as a metaphysical goddess (“she can see our souls”, “she has a strength that no one else has”, some of them say), the younger artists admit their difficulty in working with this person who didn’t speak much, who explained even less, but who demanded a lot. The experienced ones prefer auteur worship, while the new ones see Bausch as a mysterious artist, as talented as many others from her generation. It’s on this side of modernity that this auteur film finds its discourse, on the same side of feelings and sensations as any big studio production normally rejected by film critics and so-called “erudite cinephilia”. To sum up, Pina is based on the constant confrontation between proximity (the 3D, the feelings, the adoration of Bausch) and distance (because everything that is put on a pedestal is, by definition, far from the common man), in a sort of homage not exactly to an exceptional dancer, but to dance as a whole, and to everyday movements, the choreography of day-to-day life, the one found in the parks, the subways, the streets. “Dance, dance, otherwise we’ll go mad.” This is one of Bausch’s quotations and the slogan of the film – an idea that Wenders respects and understands very well. Bruno Carmelo
meet mahfouz Friday 21/10 VOX 3 - 9:00 PM
Midaq Alley
El Callejon de Los Milagros
Jorge Fons (Mexico, 1995)
Like domino pieces on the battered table of a tiny Mexican cantina, four fascinating stories are joined by the plot of Midaq Alley (El callejón de los Milagros). The Mexican remake of 1963’s Hassan Al Imam film is based on the evergreen novel by Naguib Mahfouz which seems to provide good cinematic material for any developing country. The vivid tableau of the urban slum introduces the most diverse characters afflicted by the demoralizing reality of poverty, hopelessness and falsehood. The destinies of Midaq Alley’s residents meet in a thousand and one ways until they fill up the neighbourhood with sad and beautiful tales. Bar tender Rutilio falls in love with a young boy; Abel leaves the lovely Alma to search for a job and money in the United States: this self-willed girl becomes a prostitute and her mother tries to get her own husband but only the middle aged tenant lady succeeds in matrimonial plans. Veteran director Jorge Fons uses dozens of fates to depict the negative impact caused by the modern lifestyle, not forgetting alcohol, herb smoking or girl trafficking. The novel and the film deal with societal issues of disillusionment, while Mahfouz’s reality gives admirable aspects of humanism as well. Parallel to people believing deeply in the existence of ideal love, there exist women in various stages of emancipation. In spite of the four decades between the novel and the film, the phenomenon of women searching for themselves in a repressive society is still alive. One area in which Jorge Fons’ movie constitutes a true achievement is the disjointed narration of the story, a form that became so stylish from the mid 90’s. We can make a shrewd guess that Alejandro González Iñárritu, someone of such high stature in contemporary Mexican cinema, maintains the tradition perpetuated by Midaq Alley in the complex narrative of his films. Janka Barkoczi
تقدم اللوحة الحية لعمل محفوظ والستولة من األحياء الفقيرة في المدن شخصيات متنوعة وحيوية تعاني من اليأس والفقر تجتمع ارادات حي زقاق المدق.والبطالة حتى.ومصائرهم في الف طريقة وطريقة تكتظ بهم منطقته بحكايا جميلة ولكن يقع النادل روتيللو بحب.مليئة بالمرارة يترك الشاب أبل الحسناء ألما متوجها،صبي فتاة،الى الواليات المتحدة بحثا عن عمل عنيدة تصبح عاهرة في وقت تحاول والدتها لكن هذه السيدة الخمسينية،تأمين زوج لها .هي الوحيدة التي تصيده يستخدم المخرج المخضرم خورخي فونس عشرات من المصائر لتصوير اآلثار السلبية مع عدم،الناجمة عن نمط المعيشة الحديثة إغفاله الى تأثير الكحول والتدخين أو االتجار على الرغم من.بالمخدرات والرقيق االبيض كال من الرواية والشريط تعامال مع القضايا االجتماعية وخيبة األمل التي تكتسح تلك اضفت واقعية محفوظ جوانب مثيرة.الحيوات .لإلعجاب على انسانية نصه نرى الناس يؤمنون بوجود الحب،من ناحية نلتقي باربع نساء في، ومن أخرى،المثالي وعلى الرغم.مراحل مختلفة من التحرر من العقود األربعة التي تفصل بين الرواية فإن ظاهرة النساء الباحثات عن،والفيلم أنفسهم في نظام اجتماعي قمعي مازالت .حية يحقق شريط فونس،في وجهة نظر واحدة انجازا كبيرا من ناحية سرديته المتشابكة التي اضحت موضة سينمائية في منتصف عليه يمكن،تسعينات القرن الماضي التخمين ان المخرج الذائع الصيت في السينما المكسيكية أليخاندرو غونزاليس ايناريتو حافظ في اعماله على تعقيدات في السرد التي توافر عليها الشريط الرائد «زقاق .»المدق جنكه باركوزي
What does revolution mean to you? - Tatiana Huezo - Khadija Al Salami - Amr Salama - Goran Olsson - Peter Toribiörnsson
vimeo.com/nisimasa
زقاق المدق
جورج فونس- المكسيك1995 مثل قطع الدومينو على طاولة لعب في مقصف اربع حكايات اخاذة ترابطت معا في ثيمة،مكسيكي ان االقتباس الجديد للرواية التي.»شريط «زقاق المدق سبق للمخرج المصري حسن االمام ان اخرجها في العام يثبت ان العمل، عن نص الكاتب نجيب محفوظ1963 الكبير يوفر ارضية خصبة للسينمائيين في العالم .الثالث
فيليبو زمبون: صورةby Filippo Zambon