After a crash course in the complex antics of independent film, Iman Hamam decides this is more than a case of wobbly camera syndrome Last week, the works of conceptual artist and cofounder of the Arab Image Foundation Akram Zaatari and documentary filmmaker-cum- As- Safir and An-Nahar critic Mohamed Soueid -- both from Lebanon -- were screened in Cairo over four days. The event took place in three spaces: the American University in Cairo (AUC), the Townhouse Gallery and the independent film production organisation SEMAT. The event shed light on the issues, concerns and limitations imposed on independent filmmaking in the Arab world. The question of location is one of these. While the title of the event, "Beyond Truth and Fiction", reflected formal and technical aspects of both artists' endeavours, the fact that it took place outside conventional screening venues created a situation in which the fraught relations of public to private were directly addressed. For many viewers it was a chance to see how Beirut figures in the imagination of two filmmakers; for others it solicited a review of the spaces in Cairo available for an encounter of this kind. Difficulties in categorising the material -- it can hardly be placed in a recognisable framework of production -- acted to cut off access to the work on the part of larger, less elitist audiences. As Samirah El- Kassim, head of film studies at AUC, filmmaker organiser of the event, stated, "I think it is true to say that both of these artists move beyond the preoccupations with history and memory that predominated documentary discourse of the 1980s and 1990s, and that their works continually pose questions about constructions of truth, reality, fiction and subjectivity, on both the formal and conceptual levels." Of Zaatari and Soueid's work she said, "This question of categories persistently comes up for them -- but they both categorically insist that they are not video artists, their work is not experimental and they are simply using the medium of video towards other, critical ends." Within Zaatari and Soueid's films, the depiction of personal testimonies, often the substance of filmic attempts to reconstruct the past, are themselves subverted, and their mechanisms of fabrication peeled away and exposed. The effect of such practices on concepts like truth, fiction and memory is immediate. Laura U Marks, theorist and curator of independent and experimental media, sheds some light on the matter in her book The Skin of the Film: intercultural cinema, embodiment and the senses, arguing that "intercultural cinema is characterised by experimental styles that attempt to represent the experience of living between two or more cultural regimes of knowledge." As a result, such films "draw on many cultural traditions, many ways of representing memory and experience, and synthesise them with contemporary Western cinematic practices", Marks continues. Thus, an assessment of such filmmaking must take into consideration the terms and conditions of production, predominantly in relation to funding, and secondly, given the formal constraints of mainstream cinema, the ways in which the resulting films constitute "traumatic dislocations of culture and efforts at remembering". The content of Zaatari and Soueid's films is all the more complex in the light of their place in the wider framework of independent, experimental, alternative films. Indeed, for Lebanese film, their work largely constitutes a construction of such categories, and necessitates the ambiguities they inevitably bring. Problems of definition are not always liberating, however: it was such issues that fuelled the roundtable discussion of "the situation of independent filmmaking in the Middle East" on Friday afternoon -- an occasion in which Zaatari and Soueid were joined by local filmmakers Sherif El-Azma,Hala Galal, Hadeel Nazmi (and chaired by Viola Shafik). Like all sessions of this nature, the meeting was not so much an attempt to "resolve" as it was a chance to discuss the various problems encountered by filmmakers who can only exist on the margins of mainstream production. Local, "untrained" audiences, furthermore, are seldom exposed to independent art -- a shame, for much of the work is suitable for wider dissemination, and encourages self-reflection and a widening of consciousness. In particular cases, the work, despite its subversiveness, could still be construed as popular. One wonders, for example, if independent television might provide an opening for such material, particularly considering these filmmakers' awareness of the significance of the medium in everyday public consciousness. As Zaatari explains, "Television provides us with instances of social and political decadence that are very representative of our times." During Friday's roundtable discussion, the bone of contention was, in fact, the term "independent" itself. As El-Azma pointed out, the distinction between "independent" and "other" is an important one to make. The work cannot be limited to its affliation with particular cultural centres or institutions. "Independent cinema in Egypt is a matter of economic independence," El Azma said. Thus, the term refers to artists who receive no funding from the government and are not affiliated with a major studio, and are obliged to obtain funding "elsewhere". "Other" film, however, refers to those which formally break with classical conventions, regardless of funding, while independant film is at times still in itself conventional. Drawing attention to the fact that such cinema functions independently of the star system, often employing non-conventional techniques of production (the lack of a conventional script, for example), El- Azma asserted that "other" films are bound to adopt an entirely different language of filmmaking. As such, the filmmakers in question seek out galleries in which to produce and exhibit their work, "posing as conceptual artists", or else they engage in temporary affiliations with well-funded cultural institutions. The main problem with this is the tendency of such venues to construct the artists' work around a particular event or topic, leaving little space for further consideration or engagement with the material. The work is by no means simple and effective entertainment, and as such demands further reflection and engagement. But this does not mean that the films should merely beckon text book '"intellectual" analysis. While non-conventional film forms are usually so obscure that they end up being subversive, marginalised, underground, it is also the case that independent "other" film holds a place in popular culture, and is potentially accessible to mass or popular audiences. Writing about the work of El-Azma, Hassan Khan and Wael El-Shawky, El-Kassim states that "these three are... most exciting in how their works reframe and comment upon social conditions, while challenging conventional forms of viewing. In this setting those who interrogate established forms while subverting them contribute to the future of 'democracy', providing evidence that history can move; that culture can be lateral; that creative and intellectual life can merge; that politics are not outside of culture; that conversely we are perhaps always outside of culture; that vision is complex; and that there can be alternatives to the stagnant discourses that proliferate in this place." In Egypt today, Hollywood blockbusters and the spell of comedy currently predominating might reveal a particular contraption of mainstream production. Bearing in mind the ways in which a society entertains itself often reveals ideological delusions that run much deeper, there is no doubt that audiences are entertained because they are used to a particular form of cinema and find other films difficult to digest. As Galal emphasised in the discussion, organisations like SEMAT attempt to widen the scope of the issues as part of the creative process, and to formulate audience concerns and interests. What an event such as "Beyond Truth and Fiction" reveals is a dense body of material, of images and sounds that manifest a particular consciousness. Zaatari and Soueid's work constitutes a project of "dodgy documentation", in which the marginalised, the oppressed and the forgotten, are systematically given voice. In many instances, this is only possible through the agency of anonymity and artifice.. Zaatari and Soueid's work may be grouped together, albeit somewhat arbitrarily in terms of their national origins and attempts to reconstruct, consciously, artificially, a relationship with the past, whether in terms of the imprint left behind by war, or the nostalgic presence of times gone by. The relationship between Lebanon and Egypt, for example, is apparent -- something confirmed by the presence of Egyptian film stars and singers, their photographs, voices and songs in all of the films I watched by Zaatari and Soueid. If you are wondering what happened to Egypt's grand film industry, then you need only look through the archival memory of these two minds to find out. The dislocation and trauma of war is exposed through more friendly references to popular Arab culture. As Soueid admits, "I came to film from Egyptian melodramas and comedies and American classics. I am sensational and not intellectual in my work, which may evoke intellectual issues, but not through intellectual means." The relationship might be reciprocated in Lebanese pop music and dance, which fills cafés and suburban homes here in Egypt, the "material presence" of contemporary culture and classic tradition in film being equally apparent. Egypt has a history of filmmaking that Lebanon does not. And as far as local independent filmmakers go, this is a question of the burden of history or the cultural remnants that "other" cinema may or may not still desire to reference -- a tricky issue. You might characterise the work of these two filmmakers by saying that Zaatari's background and involvement in photography, television and the art world have led to his becoming a sort of collector and exhibitor, a time travelling archivist. This is most apparent in the films Her and Him: Van Leo (1997) and This Day (2003), in which Zaatari explores the utterances of the photographic image, while at the same time drawing attention to the capacity of film as a mechanism able to manipulate, reconstruct, and examine the past. At once exposing what has conventionally been a matter of social shame and private concealment, the figure of the grandmother whose nude photograph was taken by Van Leo in 1959, also mediates the temporal lapse between the real, documentary images filmed by Zaatari of the photographer, and Van Leo's own self portraits, taken when he was much younger. As numerous theorists on the subject of photography have pointed out, one can contemplate at length the ways in which photography preserves and captures a moment in time. Perhaps it is through film that photography ages. It is in All is Well on the Border (1997), on the other hand, that questions of space, so easily transgressed in Van Leo and This Day, that Zaatari practices self- reflective documentary filmmaking, and a tribute to French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard's Ici et Ailleurs (Here and Elsewhere, 1977). Demonstrating an alternative form of imagination and storytelling, Zaatari depicts, here in direct reference to Godard, a young boy reciting poetry of resistance. Children too construct that imaginary space in the past, gathering stories from elders and drawing images of elsewhere, of home. Interspersed with three accounts of Lebanese prisoners in Israel, a voiceover reads letters written by an 18-year-old named Neruda to his mother. Only at the end does Zaatari peel away the layers to reveal the characters being coached and practising their lines, or reading from the autocue. It is this very notion of staged interviews that makes one turn a suspicious eye towards Soueid. In person, seemingly egoless, his presence within the films is both hilarious and humane. While he is constantly addressed by interviewees, one nonetheless frequently doubts his existence. Apparently, the three films Tango of Yearning (1998), Nightfall (2000) and Civil War (2002) constitute a trilogy. There is no doubt that his persona is one that plays trick after trick on the spectator. His interviewees talk about events and people that might be standing right before them, might have lived and died, or might not have existed at all. In Civil War, for example, Soueid investigates the mysterious death of Mohamad Dou'aibas. From the opening, character confusion prevails, with the name Mohamed called throughout the film, and though the voice emerges from ambiguous spaces. This is a different kind of interpellation, compounded by Dou'aibas's reflections on post-war Lebanon and visually present in the army chic that scatters the streets. The relationship between film and preservation is solidified in the humorous accounts of Dou'aibas (and Soueid's) dentist. Our teeth and photographs will outlive us all. Out of these remnants, on the other hand, how can identity and experience be reconstructed? In Ba'albek, a three-part film directed by Ghassan Salhab, Zaatari and Soueid, the process of documentation mimics a travelogue. In Zaatari's section, the journalist picks up chocolate wrappers and bags them with labels as would a forensic examiner. He writes in his diary. It is all a matter of organising, ordering, arranging the images, of labelling them for future reference. For both filmmakers, whatever recording device is employed, the medium is still used, glamourised and scandalised, but only to the extent of presenting an awareness of the tools of the trade. As El-Kassim argues, "Just as Beirut is always an element that is integral but not the point on which they want us to rest our final focus -- the video medium is also integral, necessary, but used towards something else -- so you don't see a reflexivity about technology or the use of video towards visual abstraction that are common to video art." Given the range of Zaatari's work, and the deceptive stability of Soueid's, it is apparent that there is much to be said for those who don't want to tell straight stories, and, perhaps especially, many ways of saying it.
