The Daily Star, Lebanon
Dec 30 2004

What was good; what was watched
If this year’s big name flicks failed to meet expectations, the
unexpected more than compensated

By Jim Quilty
Daily Star staff

BEIRUT: Writing a “year-end roundup” of cinema in this region is a
schizophrenic operation. The question that immediately arises is what
criteria should be used: What people hereabouts are watching? What is
being made available for them to watch (and in what medium)? Or what
is being made?

In a more integrated market you might imagine some overlap in the
answers to these questions. In this region, though, production and
consumption are generally divorced from one another.

Based on what’s playing in the multiplexes, most folks in this region
watch U.S. cinema. One exception to this rule is Iran, where Western
cinema doesn’t have the same unfettered access as in the Arab world.
Egypt is also exceptional, since the habit of domestic cinema
consumption, if not as voracious as it once was, remains a factor.

Sitting from this publication’s Beirut aerie, then, the two films
that seem to have had the greatest impact on moviegoers in 2004 were
Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9-11” and Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of
the Christ.”

Both received general releases and have done a brisk trade as DVDs.
Indeed, Gibson’s elaborate torture of the Son of Man adorned a number
of area television screens during the Christmas season, evidently
usurping Handel’s “Messiah” as the Easter-to-Christmas cross-over hit
of choice.

Though Middle Eastern characters – whether ancient Palestinians or
contemporary Saudis – played supporting roles in both films, people
here first caught wind of them because of the political patter they
aroused in the U.S. In this sense, local audiences were attracted by
a sense of voyeurism – vis-a-vis America – as much anything else.

If the wide viewing of these intensely ideological films remarks upon
globalization’s march into the region, the political subtext of their
success is no less striking. Taken together, “Fahrenheit 9-11” and
“The Passion of the Christ” are two sides of the ambient post-11
September dialogue.

One, oozing from the pores of an Aussie-American ex-action hero with
conservative-Catholic leanings, is emblematic of fundamentalist
America’s revision of Christ as hero, a sort of prototype Rocky. The
other, leaping from the brain of an overweight Left-populist,
embodies blue-state America’s best smack at mobilizing itself against
those who were so inspired by Gibson’s snuff film.

There has also been local cultural production to offset the Western
cultural imperialism. In purely aesthetic terms, 2004 had as many
positive surprises as disappointments and, in this regard, it’s
tempting to compile a list of “significant” films rather than simply
“good” ones.

The brightest star in the constellation of “Middle East feature film”
comes from the north-western frontier, with Hiner Saleem’s “Vodka
Lemon.” This remarkable movie is written and directed by a
Paris-based “Iraqi Kurd” (though Saleem would contest the label) who
takes some pride in having no film training whatsoever.

Any film that speaks Kurdish, Armenian and Russian could be
hopelessly inaccessible. Set in a snow-bound Kurdish-Armenian
village, where state and economy are so marginal that everyone seems
to be selling themselves to stay alive, “Vodka Lemon” should be truly
grim. Instead it transcends its locality to become pure art, its
visual and spoken language crackling with a humor that is as humane
as it is absurd.

Moving west, the Arab world’s cinema heartland had a sizeable
presence in the year of cinema, though the “heavy hitters” of Egypt’s
industry left an ambivalent impression upon audiences and critics.

Perhaps the most anticipated film of the year was “Alexandria … New
York,” the latest from Egypt’s eminence grise of cinema, Youssef
Chahine. It was also the most disappointing.

As fictional autobiography, “Alexandria … New York” contemplates
Chahine’s ambivalence toward the U.S. It follows the ascent of a
renowned Egyptian filmmaker and his two disrupted love affairs – one
with an American woman, the other with America itself. The movie
suffers from its melodrama, which is compensated by little in the way
of craft.

The one Arab film that might have been more anticipated than
“Alexandria … New York” was “Bab al-Shams,” by Chahine’s protege
Yousri Nasrallah.

An adaptation of a book of the same name by Lebanese novelist Elias
Khoury, the project takes the form of a diptych. Both films –
“Al-Rahil” (The Departure) and “Al-Awda” (The Return) – toured the
festival circuit together, with “Al-Rahil” getting a general release
shortly thereafter.

“Bab al-Shams” was an important film for any number of reasons. It
marks the first time an Arab feature has been made about the
Palestinian dispossession. Secondly both the source material and the
director have a very high profile – Nasrallah is considered one of
the region’s most talented independent filmmakers. Finally the budget
– between $3 and 4 million – was mammoth by local standards and
suggested that the producers wanted the job done right.

For some, it was not. “Al-Rahil” in particular, set largely in
Palestine before and just after the nakba, has the unfortunate look
of a Ramadan musalsala. Unbearably sentimental and utterly alien to
anything that’s come from Khoury’s imagination, its long historical
episodes can, at best, be reasoned away as second-hand nostalgia. On
the other hand, Nasrallah’s loving application of Egyptian pop cinema
conventions to Khoury’s stories might just make them more accessible
– that was certainly the feeling amongst those who watched the film
in Beirut’s Shatilla refugee camp.

Egypt’s more refreshing contribution to 2004’s festival circuit came
from its younger directors. Hana Khalil’s “Ahla al-Awkat,” for
instance, is quite important because (following on the success of
Hani Khalifa’s “Sahar al-Layali”) it marks the industry’s increasing
willingness to compromise commercial imperatives and independent
creativity.

The film has been dismissed in certain circles as a girls’ movie – a
la “The Sweetest Thing” – in an Egyptian idiom. On the other hand the
film cannot be faulted technically and the story (if saccharine) has
touched many for its jokey winks at Egypt’s filmmaking heritage.

Another important Egyptian film, though for completely different
reasons, is Osama Fawzi’s “Baheb al-Cima” (“I Love Cinema”), an
amusing little film set among Egypt’s Coptic community in the
mid-1960s. Aside from its artistic merits – it’s one of the more
entertainingly whacky movies to come out of Egypt in a while – the
film was fascinating for the stink it caused in Egypt itself.

Within weeks of its national release, some Copts protested that its
portrayal of Christian doctrine was demeaning and demanded it be
removed from cinemas and that the production crew be tried for
religious contempt.

If cinema is supposed to hold a mirror up to society, then “Baheb
al-Cima” is one of the most successful films of the year.

Of the bouquet of features to emerge from the Maghreb in 2004, the
one that has received most attention – and deservedly so – is
Moroccan director Mohammed Asli’s “In Casablanca the Angels Don’t
Fly.”

Beautifully shot and gritty, Asli’s film eschews the historical
romance and self-conscious orientalism that marks some of the other
features coming out of North Africa. It follows a trio of Berber
guest workers in Casablanca and the cruel ironies that mark their
lives and dampen their dreams.

The unfortunate consequence of shopping lists like this one is that,
by focussing on features, they tend to overlook some of the year’s
most interesting films – which happen to be shorts. There are too
many excellent shorts to draw up a fair list here, but among the more
interesting projects to emerge have been “Van Express,” a featurette
by Lebanon’s Elie Khalife, and the faux documentary “Like 20
Impossibles,” by Ramallah-based Annemarie Jacir.

Khalife’s film follows the misadventures of a pair of entrepreneurial
scamps who vend coffee on Beirut’s seaside Corniche from their
beat-up

Volkswagen van – until they lose the espresso machine for want of a
license.

In an effort to make money with their only asset, they try using the
van to vend a commodity even more contentious. The film is mercifully
denuded of any trace of the exotic.

Rather a different beast, “Like 20 Impossibles” follows the efforts
of a Palestinian-Israeli film crew to make a film, despite the
inhibitions of Israeli checkpoints. When the crew tries to drive
around the checkpoints, they are held hostage by a squad of Israeli
soldiers who refuse to allow them to either proceed or return to
where they came from.

Understated and precise, the film is a marvellously compact metaphor
for the plight of Palestinian and Israeli civilians trying to work
together.

The most anticipated non-event of 2004 was the general release of
Ziad Doueri’s “Lila Dit Ca” (“Lila Says”), the Lebanese director’s
long-waited follow-up to “West Beyrouth.” Its regional premier at
Beirut’s Middle East Film Festival was disrupted when that festival
was suddenly cancelled. This minor disaster was offset by its
acceptance at 2005’s Sundance Film Festival.

The general release of “Lila Dit Ca” will follow in the new year,
allowing 2004 to bleed nicely into 2005.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress