Arab women film-makers in spotlight

By Emma Jones Entertainment reporter, BBC News

The Qatar quartet behind The Lyrics Revolt

 

It's an event dedicated to women in film - and this year the Birds Eye View Film Festival in London focuses only on features made by Arab female directors.

The reason for this, according to its programme director Elhum Shakerifar, is that their work is currently on a size and scale unmatched elsewhere.

"Over the last year we have travelled to places like Doha in Qatar, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and there is a huge feeling of excitement in these places," she explains.

"There's a new wave of film-making in the Arab world, and women are at the front of it.

"However, we know that by doing this, we're facing a dual problem," she adds.

"Not only is there stereotyping around 'the female director', but we also have to contend with the Western media stereotype of the Arab female. But none of these films deliver what you expect."

 

'Beautiful tension'

The event opens with the UK premiere of When I Saw You, by Annemarie Jacir, who in 2007 became the first Palestinian woman to make a feature film.

It also features the work of a first-time British-Egyptian director. In The Shadow Of A Man, by 24-year-old Hanan Abdullah, exposes the beliefs of four Egyptian women on equality in the wake of the Arab Spring.

In 2012, the California-based Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film reported that just 9% of directors in the US were women.

In the same year, no woman competed for the prestigious Palme d'Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Yet the Doha Film Institute in Qatar, which funds local film-makers, reports that 42% of all its grants since 2010 have been to women, and that last year a third of all films shown at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival were by female directors.

Director Jehane Noujaim's film Al Midan - The Square won an audience award at the Sundance Film Festival

 

"We are a young part of the world," explains Haifaa al-Mansour, the breakthrough director of Wadjda - the first feature film made by a Saudi Arabian woman.

"Lots of young women are now online and want to form a new global identity. This clashes with many traditionalists around them, and I think this creates a beautiful tension for film-makers to explore."

"Gender bias hasn't hindered the film industry in the way it has more conventional professions in the Middle East," adds Nadine Kirresh, the presenter of the Big Screen cinema show on the al-Arabiya news channel.

"The cultural landscape is changing in the Middle East, the Arab Spring gave power to the people and women are challenging oppression, inequality and corruption - and from this, stories are born.

"Also, we have seen dozens of female film-makers living abroad return to their countries to tell their histories."

Revolution

Ultimately, though, Shakerifar believes the burgeoning industry is down to funding.

"These films we feature in Birds Eye View have been in the pipeline for four or five years, so while these women are very much the generation of revolution, things were changing before that, and that's because of money.

"There are institutions in place like the Doha Film Institute, but also in Lebanon, Jordan, and Dubai, to fund and nurture emerging film-makers.

"They also have international film festivals showcasing local talent, and encouraging a whole industry to develop. I'm just not sure that we have the same infrastructure.

"It's not an established industry either, as in the West, and that can make it easier for a woman to get a breakthrough."

Perhaps it's not the cause, but revolution has provided ample subject matter for these directors.

One documentary showing at Birds Eye View - As If We Were Catching A Cobra by Hala Alabdalla - started off as an exploration of Egyptian and Syrian cartoonists - and then abruptly deviated as insurgency broke out in both countries.

Cherien Dabis had to overcome a number of obstacles while making May in the Summer

 

Arab-American director Jehane Noujaim found herself in Cairo's Tahrir Square in 2011, and spent the next 18 months filming her documentary Al Midan - The Square. It won an audience award at the Sundance Film Festival and, thanks to online public funding, will now be released.

"I was beaten, shot at and arrested during filming," says Noujaim, 38, who collected hundreds of hours of footage. "But I am from three generations of political activists and I was compelled to be there."

Meanwhile, four graduates of Qatar's Northwestern University travelled across the Middle East during the Arab Spring to make The Lyrics Revolt, a documentary investigating the role of hip-hop music in the revolution.

"We want to tell stories from our part of the world," explains one of them, Palestinian Rana Khaled al-Khatib. "And on this journey we found a lot of support as young Arab film-makers.

"Our first private backer was another woman who said to us, 'I believe in young women doing what you are doing'."

While these films are bearing international fruit - the Sundance Film Festival opened this year with a Jordanian feature, May in the Summer, by 36-year-old Cherien Dabis - its director warns that the local infrastructure is still not in place to support film-makers.

"I was determined to make this feature in Jordan," Dabis says. "But a lot of the equipment, and most of the technical crew, had to come from the US. So it became very complicated.

"However, it was worth it. Where else in the world could I film both women wearing bikinis and burkinis?"

"Don't think that the situation in the Middle East isn't often very difficult for a woman," adds al-Mansour.

"It's still a lot of struggle, and it's very important for a woman not to feel afraid, and to create stories which are not only daring, but genuine in the way they see the world.

"For a woman to take charge, and make films, still often goes against our society. I am from a tribal society, where decisions are taken collectively and there is still a lot of ignorance.

"However, now is our time."

The Birds Eye View Festival runs from April 3-10 at the London venues the Southbank Centre, Barbican, ICA and Hackney Picturehouse.

Afghan female artist beats the odds to create

KABUL/KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Charred bodies lie scattered against blood-stained walls and debris covers the ground. For Afghanistan, the only unusual thing in this gruesome scene is that the blood is red paint - and part of an art installation.

It's a work by 23-year-old Afghan artist Malina Suliman, who risks her life, sometimes working by flashlight after dark, to create art in southern Kandahar province, the birthplace of the Taliban and still one of the country's most dangerous areas.

Her pieces, which range from conceptual art to paintings and sculpture, are bold representations of the problems facing her generation and have drawn praise from top officials in Kandahar, making her exceptional in a place where women face even greater restrictions than in other parts of the country.

"Many people had never seen an art installation... Some were offended and others were hurt because they'd experienced it before," Suliman said of "War and Chaos," which was in an exhibit last year and depicts the aftermath of a suicide bombing, an all too common event in Kandahar.

Her haunting, powerful pieces earned her an invitation last year to President Hamid Karzai's palace in Kabul, where she showed her art to the Afghan leader, who is also from Kandahar.

Suliman's artwork is now making waves in the Afghan capital of Kabul, where she lived after fleeing the violence of her native province as a child. In December, she had two exhibits there, a highlight of which was a sculpture of a woman in baggy clothing with a noose tied around her neck.
An exhibit in Kandahar, where the Taliban and tribal elders dominate public opinion, was the first there in three decades. She drew a mostly male crowd of around 100, including Kandahar governor Tooryalai Wesa and some of Karzai's relatives.
"I was taken aback by her work. I had only seen great art abroad, but never here," Wesa later told Reuters, recalling the exhibit, which featured a painting of a foetus in the womb suspended from a tree and being pulled in different ways. "I hope it persuades more women to do the same."
Suliman said this piece, called "Today's Life", reflected the frustrations of her generation.
"Before a child is born, the parents are already thinking that a son can support them and a daughter can be married off to a wealthy suitor. They don't stop to think what the child may want," she said.



SLOW PROGRESS FOR ART
Thirty years of war and conflict, starting with the Soviet invasion of 1979, effectively shelved Afghanistan's art scene. The austere 1996-2001 rule of the Taliban then banned most art outright, declaring it un-Islamic.
Since the Islamist group was toppled by U.S.-backed Afghan forces almost twelve years ago, large Afghan cities have resurrected something of an art movement, but progress is slow.
Herat city, in the country's west, now has art studios for rent, while Mazar-e-Sharif in the north has an artist collective and a lively graffiti scene.
Suliman, who is self-confident and energetic with almond-shaped eyes, joined the Kandahar Fine Art Association, a relatively new, all-male group whose goal is to support and exhibit local art, one year ago.
The small collective of 10 artists caught the eye of the Ministry of Information and Culture, which funded and last year opened Kandahar's first art gallery, where Suliman has exhibited. Since she joined the collective, several more Kandahar-based female artists have come on board.
But the stakes remain high.
"One of our biggest fears is that people will mistake us for creating art for foreigners or working with NGOs. People who work with NGOs get shot without question in Kandahar," she said.
Despite her success, Suliman has received threatening phonecalls warning her against attending her own exhibits, and the Taliban have spoken out against her.
Even creating her art must take place away from public view. She often waits until after dusk, working with a dim flashlight.
Suliman recalls her first exhibit in Kandahar last year, and how she trembled as she made her way towards the gallery, in fear of it being bombed.

"I was so scared... Whenever there is a gathering of government officials it becomes a target," she said.

But one of Suliman's greatest challenges lies at home.

"The night of my first exhibit my family told me 'if you go, don't come back'," she said with a wry laugh.

While her sisters and mother now support her ambition and passion, her brothers and property developer father remain fiercely opposed -- attitudes typical for Afghanistan.

She is now looking to expand Kandahar's budding art scene to nearby Helmand, hoping to secure locally-sourced funds for workshops and training.

When asked if she is scared, she mentions her sculpture of the hanged woman and smiles.

"That's what happens to women when they ask for their rights in this country," she says, impudently.