Alternative Arab cinema: between archiving past and defining the future - Film - Arts & Culture
“I feel like I’m in a theater.”
This statement, pronounced by Khalid Abdalla, British-Egyptian actor and filmmaker, could have referenced the black curtains enclosing either side of Townhouse’s Rawabet Space for Performing Arts, or a sense of an alternative cinema that the space suggested, a fitting location to discuss the role of alternative films in the Arab region.The first day of “How can I see it, and where?” a two-day panel launched on Saturday 6 June, gathered an amalgam of film enthusiasts – producers, directors and distributors – discussing the difficulties of promoting alternative content in the Arab region.
The event was organised by Cimatheque and The Network of Arab and Arthouse Screens (NAAS) to fuel a discussion about techniques to bridge the gap between production and distribution, formation and dispersion.
While mainstream movies continue to dominate box office revenues and critics’ ratings, alternative ones often pass through the general public’s radar, be it out of indifference or inaccessibility, despite the success some films exhibited in film festivals.
The first day of the discussions focused on developing distribution and reviving archives and classics.
Defining alternative and looking forward
The initial panel featured Intishal Al Timimi, former director of Arab Programmes and head of SANAD Fund; Rima Mimsar, programmes manager for the Arab Funds for Arts & Culture (ACAD); Hala Lotfy, filmmaker and founder of 7assala; and Tamer El Said, filmmaker and co-founder of Cimatheque.
From the beginning, the tone was solidified on what the word alternative meant, or didn’t mean, with regards to the discussion, and how sometimes just the mere term constructs a barrier between a person and a film.
“We can never be an alternative to all cinemas found in any country, but I believe we can find new spaces and should put effort into changing mindsets,” said Al Timimi.
Mimsar emphasised that a key element affecting the success of alternative films was whether or not production companies took risks on different types of content.
“Sometimes a film may not be entirely entertaining, but it may present a different point of view, and we should not be rigid about this – we should be flexible. The films come in different types and languages,” Mismar stressed.
But if an independent film doesn’t fit into the typical entertainment paradigm, where can it be played to appease that specific audience seeking cerebral stimulation?
Al Timimi emphasised that there needed to be more of an initiative to show movies in cultural spaces, because most of the ones in malls are designed for people coveting amusement amidst a relaxing day of shopping.
“You have to attract the passionate movie-lovers, you have to find a way to connect with your audience… It’s that ultimate disconnect that leads to most films’ demise,” Al Tamimi said.
He was joined by El Said who stressed that “the problem is that there is no infrastructure, at the end of the day when we say what the audience wants and doesn’t want, it’s all mere speculation.”
Another issue clouding the success of these films is commercial distributor’s relative apathy towards alternative films. Lotfy drew from her own experiences to highlight this issue, citing how a previous deal to screen a film for two weeks turned into one and the distributor made no attempts to alter that.
“They know this film is not a lucrative business so they do not exert that much effort. We have definitely learned from that mistake,” Lotfy said.
Bringing independent films to the Arab world is about more than diversifying the genre selection. It is also about taking these distinct, unparalleled topics and broadcasting them to a place that needs to hear such stories.
Cinema sparks discussion in a way no other outlet can, and independent films, with their inherent need to stray from hackneyed plots and cliché characters, can bring about the most important types of conversation.
Archiving as a way of looking back
Taking place on the national day for film archiving, this fact added a new context to the event, while the second and third segments focused on how to restore classics and archives and garner public interest for aged cinema.
The two panels included notable cinema figures such as Nabila Rezaig, senior head of the Algerian Agency for Cultural Outreach; Léa Morin, programmer and independent researcher; Gabriel Khoury, managing director of Misr International Films; Robin Baker, head curator of the British Film Institute National Archive; Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, co-director of the Aresenal Institute for Film and Video Art; Ala Younis, research-based artist and curator; and Intishal Al Timimi for a second time.
The main focus was on taking something black and white and marketing it using unique methods to give it a new dash of color.
Baker recalled an experience in Britain at the inaugural screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Blackmail,” where everyone wore masks of Hitchcock and subsequently tweeted and posted pictures on Facebook. The thousands dressed as ‘The Master of Suspense’ sparked publicity for the event that spread like wildfire, causing the movement to occur abroad at other Hitchcock screenings.
“I think there were about 1,000 Hitchcocks in Shanghai,” Baker joked.
Maintaining and preserving existing archives is another dilemma facing the cinema sphere. Without proper care, films can deteriorate over time.
This discrepancy between preservation in the archives and circulation to the public can trigger conflict, especially in places like Lebanon, where many classics are stored in the Ministry of Culture and gaining access to them is difficult.
To make things worse, multiple original copies of films have been lost to the winds of time, and sometimes the distributor has one copy but needs to reconstruct it, something that requires a large sum of money.
“For me, the key thing of when to restore what you restore is knowing how to do it, knowing you have something new to say about it and knowing there’s an audience. I think the great thing is if you manage the story you can persuade people to go see films they never knew existed,” said Baker.
Taking advantage of the internet as a social tool and a platform to place movies, and finding the right curator were also imperative themes discussed in an ultimate effort to eliminate the cobwebs on the film prints stored in archives, and the cobwebs on them in Arab cinemas.
“I believe that our interest is to redefine the very idea of an archive…and it’s about a collective discourse,” said Strathaus. “Every viewer of a movie is an archivist just by viewing it and creating a specific memory for themselves, and therefore the film has a longer life.”
Source: english.ahram.org.eg