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Elyes Baccar’s Rouge Parole documents events that happened immediately after the revolution
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The telephone kept ringing for forever. My sixth attempt proved lucky as Sherif Elbendary finally answered. “I am so sorry I missed your call,” said the Egyptian filmmaker, sounding breathless. “I was at Tahrir Square.”
He has been going there regularly since early 2011, when Elbendary joined millions of Egyptians in sloganeering against the country’s hated leader, Hosni Mubarak. “I was only one of the millions of black dots that you saw at Tahrir Square in pictures and TV screens,” he laughs.
The Arab Spring has attracted a lot of attention from international film festival organisers and movie enthusiasts, many of whom believe it has the potential to help filmmakers from the region enter ‘the golden age of Arab film’. Apart from the Gulf Film Festival, Abu Dhabi Film Festival, Dubai International Film Festival and Doha Tribeca Film Festival (DTFF), even Cannes and the International Film Festival in Kerala (IFFK) screened Arab movies and documentaries the past year.
Though Elbendary agrees that Arab cinema is on the cusp of change, he has his reservations. “I hope people will not consider us and our movies only for this spicy subject (the revolution). Don’t look at us as a Palestinian, Lebanese or Egyptian first, and a filmmaker second,” says Elbendary, who has done two movie projects touching on the topic of the revolution — a short film called The Curfew and a documentary, On The Road To Downtown.
Ask about the positive effects the Arab Spring is likely to have on the Arab World, and you can almost feel his disapproval on the other end of the telephone line. “I hate the word Arab Spring,” he says. “People are dying every day in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Yemen. There is a lot of blood here, not Spring.” And a pause later, “The revolution is not over yet.”
‘Mubarak spoke like a countryman’
Another Egyptian filmmaker Amr Salama’s movie Asma’a has a hijab-clad, HIV-infected woman screaming that no one has the right to ask her where she got the virus from. In another scene, she is kicked out of a hospital minutes before a gall bladder surgery, as she tells the doctors about her medical condition.
Asma’a’s trailer on YouTube gives a gist of the movie: Asma’a is a middle-aged, HIV positive woman who faces the wrath of practically everyone who knows her. A fearless TV host of a bold and daring show, Mohsen, helps her find her voice in the conservative society. The movie also focuses on the corruption ridden health care system in Egypt.
Heartwarming, until you scroll down and notice that the trailer was ‘disliked’ by 14 people and attracted viewers’ comments like ‘F***k secularism’.
Amr Salama feels that the revolution is quite some distance from bringing about a truly radical change in Arab soceity. “Change needs a lot of time and effort. It cannot happen in one day.” His most memorable moment while working on Asma’a was his meeting with 25 HIV positive people. “I will never forget the look in their eyes. They were looking at me like this movie would save them,” he says. “But it was very difficult to find a producer for Asma’a as it was not a typically commercial topic,” he adds.
The story was dramatically different when it came to his documentary Tahrir 2011: The Good, The Bad and The Politician, which he co-directed with Tamer Ezzat and Ayten Amin. The revolution was still a hot topic and producers were falling over themselves to be a part of the project. The documentary covered all possible sides of the revolution: The true heroes (‘The Good’), the police (‘The Bad’) and Hosni Mubarak (‘The Politician’). It also became the first Epyptian documentary to get a theatrical release in Egypt.
Production work took the documentary’s three filmmakers to all kinds of people — from the photographer who was protected by the protesters so that he would be alive to upload pictures taken of Tahrir Square, to politicians close to Mubarak. Soon, little known facts about Mubarak began to tumble out. They discovered, for instance, that Mubarak truly believed that he alone was the right person to rule over Egypt. But the piece of information that interested Salama the most was that once the cameras were off, Mubarak spoke with a provincial accent. “On camera, he came across as a fine politician. But once the cameras were off, he would speak like a man from the countryside, in a certain dialect. I found it very funny.”
Meanwhile in Tunisia
Tunisian filmmaker Elyes Baccar’s documentary Rouge Parole (which he shot with just one sound engineer and a production coordinator) was widely acclaimed in the film festival circuit for the manner in which it was able to document the Tunisian revolution. In one scene, a woman stands by a book stall, where previously banned books like La Regente de Carthage (which was about Ben Ali’s wife, Leila, hated for her mafia-like ways) are now put on display. “God, these books are sold in Tunisia now?” The woman asks, her voice choked with emotion.
“That scene is really incredible,” says Baccar. “It shows how fundamental culture is to a society, how thirsty we were for basic culture, basic rights and a basic way of living.” In Baccar’s own words, Rouge Parole is the scream of a nation after more than two decades of frustration and torture. However, he too admits that the revolution is far from over and that Tunisians should be aware of the enormity of the political change that they have brought about, and start assuming responsibility.
Laws regarding censorship and freedom of association remain unchanged, says Egyptian filmmaker Fawzi Saleh. “The Arab revolution still faces repression from the military and religious fascists,” he explains. Perhaps Beena Paul, artistic director of IFFK, sums it up best: “It is not like Arab cinema was oppressed and after the revolution, it has found a voice. No, it is not as simple as that. We will have to wait and watch.”
However, the revolution (that turned one year old on January 14) gave Baccar his most cherished moment: Filming thousands of Tunisians gathered at the La Kasbah to raise slogans against the transitional government of Mohamed Gannouchi, demanding a parliamentary democracy. “At that moment, I felt that Tunisia had radically changed,” says Baccar.
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