The 2nd Annual DOX BOX documentary film festival in Syria is now touring Tartous and Homs (through tomorrow), small cities north of Damascus. Jackie Reem Salloum, the Brooklyn-based director, producer and editor of the rabidly popular, Slingshot Hip Hop, is touring with them (her film won the Audience Award at the fest), as is Holland-based Moroccan filmmaker, Fatima Jebli-Ouazzani, with her beautiful film from 1997, In My Father's House. Both films played at the festival in Damascus this past week and I had the distinct privilege of participating in this nascent film event, an astounding feat of organization and perseverance on the part of festival organizers, Diana El-Jeiroudi, Orwa Nyrabia and Samer Khwaiss and their incredible team--friendliness and efficiency in equal measure. (A special personal thanks to Bethany Randell.)
The eight-day event was jam-packed with activity and there was an excited buzz in the air as there always is when you bring artists from disparate cultures together in a place in which most never expected to be. With two sidebar film programs, Voices of Women and Screenpeace: Notes on War; twenty-two official international feature film selections (all screenings were free to the public); three Best of Fest selections (Pavel Kostomarov and Antoine Cattin's gorgeous film from Russia, The Mother; Geoffrey Smith's transcendent, The English Surgeon; and Helena Trestiková's tour-de-force, René); guest master class artist, Nicolas Philibert; a "Writing the Documentary Workshop" (including 1-2-1 Consultations with international industry) led by Tue Steen Müller and EDN Chairman, Mikeal Opstrup, for filmmakers from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Egypt (more on this in a bit); an Open Day with industry guests presenting information on funds and festivals from all over the world (I represented the Tribeca Film Institute in the US); and a Producers' Meeting, a roundtable forum discussing producing an independent documentary from conception, funding, completion and distribution within a contemporary Arab world context--well, it was an exhausting week. I also don't want to forget to mention that a daily bulletin also managed to get published called "Point of View," prepared by the Gender and Cinema Journalism Workshop. The hands, minds and spirits of women were imprinted everywhere (again, more on this in a bit).
As is the privilege of traveling to foreign lands as someone's guest, we all also experienced the beauty and hospitality of the inhabitants of the city of Damascus, were wined and dined with the freshest, most exquisite food and drink, got to visit a Hamman (Turkish bath), and were hosted at plenty of parties where there were opportunities to chat about mutual passions, make new friends and give our hips a shake or two on the dance floor to the latest regional hits. (Photo, above, from Haifaa Al-Mansour's Women Without Shadows; Mansour is the first native female Saudi Arabian film director. To say she made her film "on the sly" is a gross understatement.)
This was the first time that an industry platform was launched in order to facilitate the development of creative relationships between international and Arab documentary filmmaking communities. We here in the States have our challenges, to be sure. However, the obstacles and challenges that face an independent artist in these regions is a whole other ball of wax. As for the festival itself: while it was under the auspices of the Syrian Ministry of Culture (thus our rock-star treatment at the airport, both coming and going), there were compromises aplenty. There was no actual funding that came from inside the country. DOX BOX is totally dependent right now on financial and in-kind support from the international community, entities ranging from the KVINFO in Denmark to the British Film Council (UK) to the IDFA (Holland) to Hot Docs (Canada) to the Heinrich Böll Foundation, FIDMarseille (France), the Arab Cinema Directory (the Re:frame project of the Arab world), ARTEEAST, DocPoint (Finland) and Cultures of Resistance, among others. Because of this generosity, visiting filmmakers received screening fees, as well as a daily stipend during their stay.
Because the theaters were provided by a governmental entity for free to exhibit the films, no Q&A sessions between visiting filmmakers and audiences were permitted, nor was there much of an opportunity to exhibit films by Syrian filmmakers, which is mighty odd since the event takes place in Syria. But, alas, most of the independent feature docs being made fall prey to the censorship boards and so cannot be exhibited within the country in which they were made. (This is a problem filmmakers in Iran face, as well.) One hand giveth, the other taketh away, and this permeates the modern culture in ways that a visitor isn't even aware of unless they're curious enough to ask how things work there. And I'm a curious person. (Taxi window decal of President Bashar al-Assad, his image ubiquitous everywhere you turn in Damascus. Photo courtesy of Emma Piper-Burket.)
Syria is bordered by Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and Lebanon with a small stretch of coastline along the Mediterranean Sea. Like most ancient Middle-Eastern cultures, there is an amalgam of religions, languages, peoples, histories and terrains that makes for a place that is impenetrable to a foreigner that is visiting for just a handful of days. But, as is our wont in our tiny little world of making creative nonfiction cinema, the main focus of discussion at formal events and casual get-togethers alike centered on Art vs. Commerce and the ways and means, both clandestine and overt, we must run the gauntlet of finding funding and support for our artistic endeavors and what compromises and choices present themselves along the way. This is why nurturing and collaboration with developing artists from wherever they happen to be living and working is an imperative for the international industry, for it is at this time and place in our civilization where that is becoming more and more possible. We have the ability to help one another not only usurp and trump governmental, religious, and other fundamental, roadblocks like the aforementioned, but to continue to educate one another and use our access to information and technology in ways that go beyond "friend-ing" one another on Facebook (although that's nice, too--except when you hear from your ex).
Since this post is getting a bit unwieldy (and I'm in Rome and it's a gorgeous day), I will end here for now. In my next couple of DOX BOX posts, I will continue this discussion by talking more about the A vs. C debacle, Voices of Women and "the dreams of making the films that we dream of making" (thank you, Mr. Omar Amiralay).
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