Safar Curator Rasha Salti on this Year’s Film Selection

08 September '16

Safar Film Festival 2016

The story goes that when the first film theater was going to be inaugurated in Egypt (around the late 1910s), there was a question as to how it should be referred to in Arabic, whether “cinema” should simply be appropriated into Arabic, or whether there should be a proper composite Arabic phrase, as was the case for train, locomotive, station, car, electricity, etc. The Arabic phrase that had the most currency was ‘dar al-khayal’, which means literally, ‘house of the imaginary’. In spite of its charm and relevance, ‘cinema’ was in fact appropriated to Arabic and ‘dar al-khayal’ was totally forgotten.

Sadly, the anecdote ends without further explanation. With the expectation of film to have a role, or define a mission (as reluctant as I am to give an answer), I usually recount that anecdote. Autocracies, dictatorships and tyrannies consolidate their rule essentially by monopolizing the administration of excessive violence and terrorizing a population into subservience. Disseminating a discourse of moral high-ground and manufacturing consent, becomes truly dangerous when they conquer people’s imaginations and are internalized to generate self-censorship. Dictatorships sit comfortably when all other existing political alternatives seem (and/or are) untenable, and when imagining new ones becomes inhibited (as opposed to prohibited) or blocked. When the political imaginary is bankrupt or aghast, art can become a surrogate territory for imagining what is politically unimaginable or prohibited, for representing the censored, saying the unsayable, provoking an emancipation.

Five years after the fact, the legacy of the Arab spring seems currently sinister. The present political configurations in power in some of the Arab countries and the violent conflicts raging in others, overshadow the profound transformations that have taken place in Arab societies. Unfortunately, electoral and protest politics are the only ‘indicators’ that capture the media’s attention and stand in for the lens by which the significance of the Arab spring is broadcast to the rest of the world. Since the Arab spring, auteur filmmakers across the Arab world have directed films that defy and transgress a number of social and political taboos that are a herald of the profound transformations in subjectivity and of the dissipation of inhibitions. Cinema is not the alternative to news, quite the contrary, it is a profoundly subjective and poetic exploration in artistic language and the craftsmanship of forging narratives and representations. As such, it is a far more compelling testament of the legacy of the Arab spring.

Within the Arab world, the market for Arab films has shrunk, and internationally, the market for “world cinema” is in even deeper trouble than a decade ago. The pressure to conform to mainstream formulas of success is increased, and governments presently in power are enforcing a new set of forbidding prohibitions. Yet the vitality, versatility and creativity of filmmakers, screenwriters, producers, cinematographers, composers, editors and actors is unflinching. This year’s edition of Safar celebrates a selection of recent films from Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Palestine, Kuwait, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, that are singularly defiant of stereotypes, social taboos and self-censorship. The program includes: As I Open my Eyes, Leyla Bouzid’s brilliant directorial debut with music by Khyam Allami, Let them Come, Salem’s Brahimi’s hard-hitting noir film adaptation, Borders of Heaven, Fares Naanaa’s searing drama, Starve your Dog, Hicham Lasri’s audacious punk narrative, Before the Summer Crowds, master filmmaker Mohamad Khan’s uninhibited voyeur drama, Love, Theft and Other Entanglements, Muayad Alayan’s absurdist comedy and a selection of videos by firebrand Kuwaiti artist and filmmaker Monira al-Qadiri. Subversive, engaging, intriguing and enchanting: prepare to be charmed!

By Curator of Safar Film Festival 2016, Rasha Salti

You can see Safar full programme and book your tickets HERE