NisimazineAbu Dhabi

#8, Friday 21 October 2011A magazine by NISI MASA, European Network Of Young Cinema

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مجلة تصدرها نيسي ماساـ الشبكة االوربية للسينما الشابة

العدد8 - الخميس 21 أكتوبر 2011

نيسيمازين

PinaMidaq AlleyShort Film Competitionبينازقاق المدقالقصيرة االفالم مسابقة

NISIMAZINE ABU DHABI

Friday 21 October 2011/# 8A magazine published by the NISI MASA in the

framework of a film journalism workshop

for young film journalists from Europe and the Arab

World with the support of

the Abu Dhabi Film Festival

EDITORIAL STAFF هيئة التحرير المدير المسؤول: ماثيو داراس

Director of Publication Matthieu Darras رئيس التحرير/التصميم الفني: مارجه ألدرس

Editor-in-Chief/Layout Maartje Alders المشرفان: جي وايسبيرغ و زياد الخزاعي

TutorS Jay WeissbergZiad Khuzai

المساهمون في العدد

جبهة تحرير الشريط السينمائي \ فيليبو زمبون\ برونو كارملو \ أليزابيث

علي شجاع العفيفي

رينولت-غسلين

Contributors to this issue

Ali Shujaa Al AfeefiJanka Barkoczi, Bruno Carmelo

Elisabeth Renault-GeslinCelluloid Liberation Front

Filippo Zambon NISI MASA 99 rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis

75010, Paris, FrancePhone: +33 (0)9 60 39 63 38

europe@nisimasa.com www.nisimasa.com

// editorial

BY M

ART

INA

LA

NG

(AU

STRI

A)

by Celulloid Liberation Frontجبهة تحرير الشريط السينمائي

,

picture of the day / صورة اليوم

تملك الصحاري سحرا خاصا، بعد ان استنفدت مستقبلها، وبالتالي فهي خالية من الزمن. ان كل شيء اشيد عليها من مدن وهرم وفنادق، وقف خارج الزمن. فليس من قبيل المصادفة، أن الزعماء الدينيين جاؤا من الصحراء. ويبدو ان مراكز التسوق الحديثة لديها، ضمن مواصفات كثيرة، لها هتلر وأدولف جوغ وفان المستقبل رامبو ان االمثل. الباع

سيخرجون من نفاياتهم الخالدة«جي. جي. باالرد ، »معرض البشاعة«

من المؤكد، أن هناك شيئا عميقا سينمائيا حول مهرجان لخطف يقام كل شيء، منظما، ومهيئا ، حيث أبوظبي اهتمام الزوار الساعين الى الحصول على بعض الغرائبية. ال يتطلب االمر سوى سياقة سيارة للوصول الى موقع يشبه االناقة والفخامة تقف في االبوكالبتية حيث فاجعة ما بعد ينتصر في لن الذي االجتماعي االنحالل عن بعيدة مواجهة الفرنس المخرج نصوص في شع الذي السحر ان النهاية. مكان الى الصناعية الثورة مابعد الصحراء حول ميليس الئق من مشاريع التطوير العقاري، حيث ال يحتاج المرءإلى سفرة فضائية بعد اآلن، لعدم وجود الجاذبية التاريخية كي يسلم للنعيم في نهاية المطاف. يصبح البذخ هواء اساسيا الخالد الحج هذا في فيه، مرغوب غير او المشروط، وغير

إلى ارض مقدسة استهالكية.

ومثلما قال »غي« ذات مرة ان: »المشهد في تراكم رأس ان صــوري«. فيض الى تحوله بفورة يصل النفطي المال الفن، كما هو الحال، في مصطلح »الفن االصطناعي« هو »ماتريكس« )استعارة من الفيلم الشهير( ثقافي للمدينة. اذن، ما هو أفضل مكان الستضافة مهرجان سينمائي غير أبوظبي؟ عندما ال تتبقى سوى األضواء التي تعمي الخيال التي الوحيدة هي السينما فان مصنعة، بيئة بنورانية

تتكفل بمهمة سوريالية الاختراع واقع بديل.

“Deserts possess a particular magic, since they have exhausted their own futures, and are thus free of time. Anything erected there, a city, a pyramid, a motel, stands outside time. It’s no coincidence that religious leaders emerge from the desert. Modern shopping malls have much the same function. A future Rimbaud, Van Gogh or Adolf Hitler will emerge from their timeless wastes.” - J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition

There definitely is something deeply cinematic about Abu Dhabi; all is staged, propped up, rehearsed for gullible visitors striving for some exoticism to take-away. It just takes a drive to be propelled into a post-apocalyptic set where luxury instead of social decay has finally triumphed. Magic as in Méliès turned the pre-industrial desert into a concrete oasis of property development, where man does not need to travel to space anymore for the absence of historical gravity delivers the ultimate bliss. Opulence becomes essential and unconditioned air undesirable in this timeless pilgrimage to the holy land of consumerism.

As the Debord-ian mantra goes, “the spectacle is capital/oil accumulated to the point it becomes images”. Art, as in ARTificial, is the cultural matrix of the city: what better place to host a film festival than Abu Dhabi? When only the blinding lights of fiction are left illuminating a manufactured environment, perhaps cinema can undertake the surreal task of inventing reality.

فتتاحية ا

by Filippo Zambon زمبون فيليبو صورة:

Free MenLife of Algerian immigrants in France during the World War II is not very well known. The immigration stopped at the beginning of the German occupation and most of the Algerians working in French factories fell into poverty. What most of us do not know is the part played by the Paris Mosque at the time of the Resistance. In fact, the chief offi-cer of the Paris Mosque helped hiding Jews. Si Kaddour Ben Ghabrit, interpre-ted on screen by the legendary Michael Lonsdale, undertook to welcome Nazis by obligation and to hide the Resistance by conviction within the mosaic walls of the Mosque.

The screenplay by Ismaël Ferroukhi and Alain-Michel Blanc is based on true events, but its main character, Younes (played by Tahar Rahim, the revelation of Jacques Audiard’s Prophet), is inspi-red by several Algerian heroes. Younes is an illegal underworld trader who gets arrested and put in jail. He becomes a spy against his will inside the Mosque for the French police. Refusing at first to take side in the political fight, he will soon become an active member of the Resistance once his friends get threate-ned.

Free Men (Les Hommes libres) follows a trend established by several French films released in the recent years, which celebrate the people of French colonies. Like Day of Glory (Indigènes) by Rachid Bouchareb, or Army of Crime (L’Armée du crime) by Robert Guédiguian, Free Men portrays the forgotten past of the alliance between France and communi-ties from its past colonies.

Ferroukhi films his hero Younes during long travels, alternating hand-held and steady camera to let us feel his anxiousness and the trouble of being between two sides of the Occupation. But despite having a great subject and a talented cast (including Lubna Azabal), the film falls short of the great state-ment it so blatantly wanted to be, and remains too often within the unstylish limits of a made-for-TV feature.

Elisabeth Renault-Geslin

review / عرض نقديAl Madina

Ismaël Ferroukhi, France/Morocco Narrative Competition

Thursday 20/10 VOX 5 - 9:00 PM

Friday 21/10 ADT - 4:00 PM

Asghar Farhadi, Iran Narrative Competition

Friday 21/10 VOX2 - 4:00 PM

العيش، لغط من سمرة( )باسم علي ضاق أن بعد بإحباطه مرورا به. بالتحكم والده ضغوط من بدءًا امتهان في برغبته كجزار،وانتهاء الرتيب عمله من نفسهمن قرارة في الشاب، البطل جعل التمثيل، ومخرجًا إليه، يصبو هدفًا باريس الفرنسية العاصمة نحو الحرية. وبدال عن المجد المنتظر يواجه خيارامغايرا

وسلبية. مريرة تجربة في

نصر يسري المصري للمخرج »المدينة« شريط يركز حي أهالي على أثرت اجتماعية ظاهرة على اهلل الخضروات سوق نقل الحكومة قررت عندما قاهري، منطقة في الفيلم أرباع ثالثة صور آخر. مكان إلى للعاصمة القديمة األحياء أحد وهي الفرج« »روض االف تستقطب كبيرة سوقا تضم والتي المصرية، اخرى مناطق من او ذاته الحي من سواء الناس من ُصور في فقد الشريط اآلخر من الربع أما المدينة، في

المتفرقة. باريس أحياء

)1981( صيفية« »سرقات صاحب عمل يطرح المشروعة الهجرةغير فكرة )1993( و«مرسيدس« الماضي، القرن تسعينات أواخر في عربيشاب لقطاع لقمة قانونية، لكسب غير بطرق الخارج في وعملهم المسهالشريط ما وهذا الثراء، الى سعيُا أو العيش جرت التي الحكاية قسم ضمن كبيرة مقاطع في الصراع فالمس اآلخر الجزء أما باريس. في احداثها في ومطامعه العائلة أفراد من فرد لكل الدائم عشقة بين هائم علي، الرئيسية الحياة.فالشخصية فيمايقضي أهله، لمطالب تقوقعه وُمعضلة للتمثيل أهوائه. على ماله وينفق السوق في كله يومه واألب يشبه ما وإلى والحنان العاطفة إلى فترمز األم أما

الوطن.

اليوناني للشاعر قصيدة نصراهلل »مدينة« يستلهم »ليس فيها قال التي كفافي قسطنطين الكبير حياتك دمرت يامن طريق، من وال لك، سفينة من )1999( »المدينة« عرض الضيق«. الركن هذا في هنا، عمل جانب الى الذات« »خرائط برنامج فعاليات ضمن ُيقام والذي المعنوني، ألحمد »ليامليام« المغربي أبوظبي مهرجان في التوالي على الثانية للمرة كنوز لحفظ مرممة أفالم عرض وغرضه السينمائي.

. لسينما ا

العفيفي شجاع علي

المدينةيسري نصر اهلل )مصر، 1999(

by Filippo Zambon

Jean-Gabriel Périot

How do you feel about screening your film in Abu Dhabi?During the making process of The Barbarians, I hadn’t expected yet the coming of the Arab Spring. The film already had screenings on dif-ferent festivals, but I am not sure about the reactions of the Middle Eastern audience. I guess it will automatically connote the recent events, but the main feedback will be similar to the European one. Since we live in the same world, we share the same problems. The number of protest movements is growing nowadays, not only in this region, but on all the five conti-nents. The global situation is simi-lar to the sixties, when everybody was fighting because of, more or less, similar reasons. As I see, you can find the difference between the past and the present chiefly in the goals. Fifty years ago, people defi-nitely had the same goals: to abo-lish poverty and discrimination, to avoid repression. But what are the goals now? I am not sure at all.

Are you yourself a revolutionist, as well?Making experimental movies is not the best way to create a revo-lution. There is no doubt about the importance of political films, but I am sure they can’t change any-thing. The traditional artistic ways

of objection rising are important, because they can introduce a dis-cussion. However they will never be as strong as just walking on the streets and keeping the physical fight. Yes, I am against the capita-lism, and I try to do my best in this battle, but I prefer to choose my own arms.

Your film is screened at the Marina Mall, a huge shopping centre...After all, I am not naive. I criticize, but I would never deny the actual processes. If you attend festivals regularly, you will find one or two political films everywhere, even at the festivals taking place in the big cinema multiplexes. I couldn’t imagine myself in such a place be-fore, but now it seems to me very interesting. Of course I know that most of the films have a different conception, but I am always happy when I get the chance to give voice to my opinion.

Could you tell more about it?My film is a kind of poetic adapta-tion of one of Alain Brossat’s thou-ghts. He is a French philosopher, who once said: “If politics were to come back, it could only be from its savage and disreputable fringe. Then, a muffled rumour shall arise whence that roar is heard: ‘We are scum! We are barbarian!’” People

usually think that the word ‘barba-rian’ means something negative or suspicious. For me, it means just a point of view, just a way how we sometimes look at each other. It has more to do with a new beginning, than with the end. Sometimes, the so-called barbarians open the fu-ture, and you cannot be sure about who comes from among them.

How can new media tools influen-ce your work?To tell the truth, I am a traditional experimental filmmaker, even if it sounds a little bit ironic. I usually work with very classic tools: pic-tures, archives, and so on. I don’t think that Twitter and Facebook can make revolution alone, becau-se they are just the combination of new inventions. People always find surprising tools for communication

and self-expression, and, of course, I also have a Facebook account to chat with my friends. We simply adapt to new technologies.

Your art addresses intellect and emotions at the same time...Using photographic pictures ins-tead of moving images gives a lot of freedom. Since I am originally an editor, I play with pictures with great pleasure. However I often mix the political and emotional messa-ge, I never consider politics as the main level in my works. I am sure you want to ask: “Why?” The expla-nation is very simple: sharing hu-man emotions is much easier than sharing politics.

Janka Barkoczi

Jean-Gabriel Périot is a French experimen-tal filmmaker in the classical meaning of the word. He uses traditional tools to express re-volutionary criticism on the present society and economics. His short film The Barbarians is a five-minute montage of various archives, accompanied by excellent music.

Director of The Barbarians (France)Short Film Competition

SHORTSAs our focus on the Short Film Com-petition, for the last issue we inter-viewed two short film directors: Jean-Gabriel Périot from France and Ariel Shaban from Kosovo.

photos by Filippo Zambon

Ariel Shaban

How did the writing process of your film look like?To tell the truth, where I am today has a lot to do with NISI MASA, a European network of young film enthusiasts associations. Since I am not a filmmaker by education, I could not find the way to get into the industry except of this organi-zation. First, I applied to the script contest, for which I wrote the script of the film, and this opened the op-portunity to find funding like the Kosovo Film Fund and co-produc-tion partners in Germany. Talking about the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, I would advise to any filmmaker to apply to. Here you can get an in-ternational view to your story, so if you are interested in connections between East and West, this is the most important festival to be. This place is particularly substantial to me, because 90% of the Kosovo in-habitants are Muslims.

Although you haven’t graduated from a film school, your film looks very professional...This is because the making process took almost three years, which is a very long time for a short. I consi-der these three years as a school, and I want to do a couple of shorts to learn more. Besides I like the short format itself; feature films are too big to fail. You can say that short films are business cards to the big feature, even though they don’t sell and you can’t make a li-ving with them. I still insist on developing a clas-sical storytelling. It is like the ABC to me: you have to know the rules

before starting to ruin them, for example in my next film. Besides, the actors of The Wedding Tape are the best professionals in Kosovo, but I want to work in the future with upcoming actors as well. I think we can learn from each other a lot, if we are in the same stage of development.

The story begins with the em-bassy agent asking the visa ap-plication for a wedding tape as a proof of the existing marriage. Is it a personal story?It is not my personal story, but almost everybody has such sto-ries with the visa application in Kosovo. I chose this one, because this was the most appealing. Of course it is also based on very true elements, because the case of the

wedding tape and the fake wed-ding is a story what I have indeed heard about. I am not 100% sure, because I wasn’t there, but I can believe that there are people who would go so far to get their visas. As you see, the main story is not about the authorities, but about love for a woman and for the fa-mily. We can say that this is a per-sonal film on the dilemma of lea-ving Kosovo. It is a conflict which has been for a long time with me. In each moment, when I am thin-king if I should stay or of I should go, I have to find the balance so-mehow.

What have you decided to do?Well, obviously I stay. I live in Ko-sovo. Nowadays, I am working on a script based on the 1999 war in

Kosovo from the aspect of mar-ginalized people. I am especially interested in stories of the women and youth of Kosovo. There is a ge-neration who didn’t experience the war, but they are living in an envi-ronment, which constantly talks about it. The marks of the war are still everywhere, the reality of the older people is very much connec-ted to them. I was a kid in that ti-mes, so I remember very well. The memories of war are fresh and de-fining moments, which shape your character for the entire life. One way or another, these memories come to my movies, although not necessarily on the forefront.

Janka Barkoczi

Ariel Shaban’s The Wedding Tape is the only Kosovar entry of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. Laureate of the NISI MASA European Script Contest, this touching story goes around the issue of immigration bureaucracy, portraying a fake marriage using typical Balkans black humour.

Director of The Wedding Tape (Kosovo, Germany)Short Film Competition

focus / بقعة ضوء

focus / بقعة ضوء

Pina - 3D in art house cinema

However, a new kind of respectability reaches this technique once it transforms art house and auteur films. That’s the case of Wim Wen-ders and his homage to German dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch. When the film-maker announced his intention to make use of this method, many critics and producers welcomed the news with suspicion. It seemed somehow heretical to represent the presti-gious Bausch with the same technique mostly used to give shape to Shrek’s flatulence or the human slaughter in the Saw series.

Maybe that’s why Pina is a surprise on so many levels. It is curious to see this tool, usually as-sociated with magic and fantasy, representing the realistic movements of human bodies. The “immersion” produced by the third dimension does not imply an absence of rational spec-tatorship, but a sort of estrangement built by the conflict between the immersion of images and the distance of nature, that of the dancers and the distant voice-over of the in-terviewees. The traditional image of a passive public, merely entertained during a spectacle, is confronted with this documentary with no documents, no dates, no names of dancers, almost no information or context. Wenders believes the dancers are better represented by dance itself, thus ignoring Bausch’s evo-lution as an artist, her personal life, or her relationship with the world surrounding her creations.

In the silent and demonstrational image of dance, the greatest innovation proposed by the filmmaker consists in disposing the dancers as much on scene as on wide open spaces, both empty natural fields and isolated industrial sites – all of them perfectly modern and symmetrical. The subways and the iron architecture are accompanied by nothing but a contemporary electronic soundtrack and body movements. The film removes from the dance its noble and elitist character in order to expose it in a much more popular and ex-citing way, dynamic as a rollercoaster, with its rhythms, shapes, volumes and colors.

Whereas a few dancers portray Bausch as a metaphysical goddess (“she can see our souls”, “she has a strength that no one else has”, some of them say), the younger artists admit their difficulty in working with this person who didn’t speak much, who explained even less, but who demanded a lot. The experienced ones prefer auteur worship, while the new ones see Bausch as a mysterious artist, as talented as many others from her generation. It’s on this side of modernity that this auteur film finds its discourse, on the same side of feelings and sensations as any big studio pro-duction normally rejected by film critics and so-called “erudite cinephilia”.

To sum up, Pina is based on the constant confrontation between proximity (the 3D, the feelings, the adoration of Bausch) and dis-tance (because everything that is put on a pe-destal is, by definition, far from the common man), in a sort of homage not exactly to an exceptional dancer, but to dance as a whole, and to everyday movements, the choreogra-phy of day-to-day life, the one found in the parks, the subways, the streets. “Dance, dance, otherwise we’ll go mad.” This is one of Bausch’s quotations and the slogan of the film – an idea that Wenders respects and understands very well.

Bruno Carmelo

The technology of stereoscopy, with its effect of depth-of-field in photography or motion pic-tures, has represented the major marketing tool in recent cinema. This “novelty,” which has existed for several decades, is the main reason for the increased success of many animation films, such as Avatar and Up – both for the num-ber of spectators and for the fact that 3D films are more expensive than regular 2D ones. With fewer spectators than Titanic, Avatar has raised a larger income than its predecessor, thanks to inflated ticket prices and 3D. Therefore this technique has become res-pectable as an economic tool. Cinematic genres normally as-sociated with impact and public immersion, such as adventure, horror and war, quickly started experimenting with 3D.

Midaq Alley

meet mahfouz

Like domino pieces on the battered table of a tiny Mexican cantina, four fascinating stories are joined by the plot of Midaq Alley (El callejón de los Milagros). The Mexican remake of 1963’s Hassan Al Imam film is based on the evergreen novel by Naguib Mahfouz which seems to provide good cinematic material for any developing country.

The vivid tableau of the urban slum introduces the most diverse characters afflicted by the de-moralizing reality of poverty, hopelessness and falsehood. The destinies of Midaq Alley’s resi-dents meet in a thousand and one ways until they fill up the neighbourhood with sad and beautiful tales. Bar tender Rutilio falls in love with a young boy; Abel leaves the lovely Alma to search for a job and money in the United States: this self-willed girl becomes a prostitute and her mother tries to get her own husband but only the middle aged tenant lady succeeds in matri-monial plans.

Veteran director Jorge Fons uses dozens of fa-tes to depict the negative impact caused by the modern lifestyle, not forgetting alcohol, herb smoking or girl trafficking. The novel and the film deal with societal issues of disillusionment, while Mahfouz’s reality gives admirable aspects of humanism as well. Parallel to people belie-ving deeply in the existence of ideal love, there exist women in various stages of emancipation. In spite of the four decades between the novel and the film, the phenomenon of women sear-ching for themselves in a repressive society is still alive.

One area in which Jorge Fons’ movie constitutes a true achievement is the disjointed narration of the story, a form that became so stylish from the mid 90’s. We can make a shrewd guess that Ale-jandro González Iñárritu, someone of such high stature in contemporary Mexican cinema, main-tains the tradition perpetuated by Midaq Alley in the complex narrative of his films.

Janka Barkoczi

مقصف في لعب طاولة على الدومينو قطع مثل ثيمة في معا ترابطت اخاذة حكايات اربع مكسيكي، التي للرواية الجديد االقتباس ان المدق«. »زقاق شريط سبق للمخرج المصري حسن االمام ان اخرجها في العام العمل ان يثبت محفوظ، نجيب الكاتب نص عن 1963العالم في للسينمائيين خصبة ارضية يوفر الكبير

الثالث.

Jorge Fons (Mexico, 1995)

زقاق المدق

1995 المكسيك - جورج فونس

What does revolution mean to you?- Tatiana Huezo- Khadija Al Salami- Amr Salama- Goran Olsson- Peter Toribiörnsson

vimeo.com/nisimasa

Friday 21/10 VOX 3 - 9:00 PM

El Callejon de Los Milagros

والستولة محفوظ لعمل الحية اللوحة تقدم شخصيات المدن في الفقيرة األحياء من والفقر اليأس من تعاني وحيوية متنوعة المدق زقاق حي ارادات والبطالة.تجتمع حتى وطريقة. طريقة الف في ومصائرهم ولكن جميلة بحكايا منطقته بهم تكتظ بحب روتيللو النادل يقع بالمرارة. مليئة متوجها ألما الحسناء أبل الشاب يترك صبي، فتاة عمل، عن بحثا المتحدة الواليات الى والدتها تحاول وقت في عاهرة تصبح عنيدة الخمسينية السيدة لها، لكن هذه زوج تأمين

تصيده. التي الوحيدة هي

فونس خورخي المخضرم المخرج يستخدم السلبية اآلثار لتصوير المصائر من عشرات عدم مع الحديثة، المعيشة نمط عن الناجمة االتجار أو والتدخين الكحول تأثير الى إغفاله من الرغم على االبيض. والرقيق بالمخدرات القضايا مع تعامال والشريط الرواية من كال تلك تكتسح التي األمل وخيبة االجتماعية الحيوات. اضفت واقعية محفوظ جوانب مثيرة

نصه. انسانية على لإلعجاب

الحب بوجود يؤمنون الناس نرى ناحية، من في نساء باربع نلتقي أخرى، ومن المثالي، الرغم وعلى التحرر. من مختلفة مراحل الرواية بين تفصل التي األربعة العقود من عن الباحثات النساء ظاهرة فإن والفيلم، مازالت قمعي اجتماعي نظام في أنفسهم

حية.

فونس شريط يحقق واحدة، نظر وجهة في المتشابكة سرديته ناحية من كبيرا انجازا منتصف في سينمائية موضة اضحت التي يمكن عليه الماضي، القرن تسعينات في الصيت الذائع المخرج ان التخمين غونزاليس أليخاندرو المكسيكية السينما في تعقيدات على اعماله في حافظ ايناريتو »زقاق الرائد الشريط عليها توافر التي السرد

المدق«.

باركوزي جنكه

by Filippo Zambon

ونو زمب

ورة: فيليبص