monthly newsletter of NISI MASA

más ymás

arab spring

REPORT: Abu Dhabi

NOV11

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C O N V E R S AT I O N :What is revolution?

editorialFilms, papers, specials, videos, and conferences on the Arab Spring are shooting from the ground at rapid speed, trying to grasp something that cannot be grasped as of yet but answering an undeniable need to connect. Through one of the important functions of cinema, the (let’s call it) New wave of Spring cinema provides perhaps not yet a way to understand, but to feel the importance of the movement. For example, Tahrir, Liberation Square by Stefano Savona, shot with a 5D during most of the 18 days in the square in Cairo (see cover), follows 3 of the young revolutionaries, observing their every move. Without explanation this is not to be understood, but to be felt. Excite-ment, confusion, fragility and grandness seep through the sounds and im-ages, the tears and smiling faces. Even such a residue is electrifying for those who were not present, making your heart race and find the edge of your seat.

Having said that, even if Mas y Mas usually focuses strictly on cinema, we feel the current events reshaping our world, slowly moving and pushing its way into unknown territory, are too important to restrict to a single category. The intrinsic quality of being incomplete should especially now not be of hindrance to make a start. ‘The Visual’, as the predicted post-modern all encompassing monstrosity come to life, is exploding on an unprecedented scale. In this issue, you will find several contributions from people in the

network, reflecting on the images we get to digest concerning the topic.

Outsiders viewing the inside, insiders informing the outside, insiders viewing themselves, everyone looking at themselves and everyone else. This is the time to realise we are a different generation than the old West/East, the colonizer and the colonized. We all carry iPhones, are on Facebook and listen to the latest electro band. We (have to) start to understand the power of im-ages and how to read them; we can be more and more informed and critical and not take just any information for gospel. Although young, some events are nevertheless old enough to go into puberty, crystallising slowly into several roads to take after the initial bang: besides humanity, self governance and solidarity, also power, selfishness and economics start rearing their ugly heads again. Nothing is sacred.

Now slowly other parts of the world are waking up. Maybe, just a small maybe because lets not jinx it, we are also truly at the start of shrugging off our Thatcherian upbringings, our xenophobia, the false notion of chasing success and can start to look at each other again. We are all here. Yes, we too are the 99 percent, Nisimasians. Viva la revolucion!!

By Maartje Alders

credits.EDITORIAL STAFF Coordination andLayoutMario Kozina

Contributors to this issue: Maartje Alders, Mohamed Beshir, Miguel Fernandez Flores, Celluloid Liberation Front, Sara Ishaq, Janka Barkoczi

NISI MASA (European Office) 99 Rue du Faubourg Saint Denis75010, Paris, FranceTel/Fax: +33 (0)9 60 39 63 38+ 33 (0)6 32 61 70 26Email europe@nisimasa.com Website www.nisimasa.com

Mas y Mas is a monthly newsletter published by the association NISI MASA.

A scene from Tahrir, Liberation Square (2011) by Stefano Savona

Double Edged SwordRevolution and the cinema of Egypt

dossier3 Arab Spring

What Is Revolution?At the Abu Dhabi Film Festival the topic of revolution was tackled in many ways: the fight for racial equality in The Black Power Mixtape, the aftermath of the bombing in Nicaragua, the seismic movements in Tahrir Square, and the upcoming Al-Salami project about the crisis in Yemen. Miguel Fernan-dez Flores and Sara Ishaq from the Nisimazine team asked the directors to share their thoughts on the revolution.

Peter Toribiörnsson, Last Chapter -Goodbye NicaraguaI think the revolution is a complete upheaval of things. It's when you have a moment, preferably with a mass of which you are part, and you have the chance to create the new society. You have to do it methodically, maintain-ing respect for other people. And you have to establish democracy very, very fast. People must have the right to choose. And in that sense most of the revolutions have failed.

Göran Olsson, The Black Tower Mixtape 1967-1975To me revolution is not something that is scary, or evil, or violent. It's some-thing that has to happen when it happens. It's hard to think that the revo-lution was unnecessary. It's better to say that it wasn't carried out all the way. And that's a problem not of the revolution… In South Africa the

revolution wasn't carried out all the way. There should have been more revolution, maybe even more violence, better in the long-term.

Khadija Al-Salami, I Am Nujood, 10 Years Old and Divorced…it's not going to be easy. It's going to take years and years in order to es-tablish the right path and the right political government. But we shouldn't just keep waiting. We have to try to help and make change through im-ages, through discussions, through our feelings, through art and whatever we can do.

Amr Salama, Tahrir 2011Its the points of the people. That's when you start speaking, when you take off the mask… I don't see the revolution as an act of anger. I see revolution as a call for our basic rights. I don't see it as violence, or as killing, I see revo-lution as building something new, building a new system and giving hope.We still haven't seen that yet, but I'm sure it's coming soon.

Is it possible to conduct a conversation about Egypt nowadays without tack-ling the revolution? According to secluded Egyptian screenplay writer Mus-tafa Zikri, (t)he politician is being home-delivered now.

The surge of artwork and films that peaked right after the revolution, as an immediate reaction to it, was somehow expected from such a youth-driven struggle. Yet the overriding stance from critics and art curators in Egypt was not as excited, unsurprisingly because of the expected immaturity from such a hasty conception process. The other evident reason was the ambiguity of the situation. Undeniably, from January 25th until now, the revelations in-duced by the frantic pace of events have sustained a constant state of dis-tress, rendering the whole situation impossible to fully analyze at the mo-ment, especially since the revolution is nowhere near an end.

On the other hand, international attention towards the Egyptian situation was a double edged sword when it came to films. There is an unprecedented demand for post-revolutionary fiction and documentaries in film festivals, the same festivals that had hardly any Egyptian films screened in the past decades. This clutter between consuming films as an informative product and treating them as pieces of art added more conflict to the situation.

Images and video footage played such an integral role in the Egyptian revo-lution; Khaled Said, the young man whose murder by police officers ignited

the demonstrations, was targeted originally because of a video he had on his mobile phone exposing a police officer’s involvement in a drug deal. Let alone the thousands of similar clips that surfaced before and during the revolution, commemorating similar crimes and the acts of resistance against them.

For an event as colossal as the Egyptian revolution, it’s inevitable to encoun-ter a level of abuse of the image, be it purposeful or accidental. Image ex-propriation is definitely fogging the truth about the situation, but that is not enough reason for us to shun all art emerging from it. Instead, maybe it’s time for us - critics and audience alike - to revolutionize our take on how we consume films and react to them.

By Mohamed Beshir

It's no wonder that the revolution whose spark was inflamed through modern means of communications quickly found its reflection in the world of moving images. International festivals went berserk about the documentaries from the revolutionary epicentre and the pre- and post-revolutionary cinema of Arab countries. However, the story has its darker side, which some of the articles presented here reflect on with great boldness, insight and lucidity.

introduction

From left to right: Peter Toribiörnsson, G

öran Olsson,

Khadija Al-Salam

i, Am

r Salama

June protests in solidarity with K

haled Said (by Jano Charbel)

Readily equipped with thirty years worth of brewing anger, infectious revolutionary zeal and an unwavering determination, a stam-pede of Egyptian youth flocked to the streets of Cairo on January 25th, 2011 to demand an end to widespread political corruption, police brutality, unemployment and poverty. Little did they foresee the ripple effect that their Facebook-instigated demonstrations would trigger across their nation, resulting in the rapid ousting of Mubarak - a once-perceived fixture on the presidential throne. Just as the popular chant of cooperation and solidarity Eed wahdah (All One Hand!) resonat-ed across Tahrir Square – the epicentre of this year’s Egyptian revolution - three young direc-tors embodied this principal in a collaborative effort to assemble the film Tahrir 2011 with three consecutive, yet independently made shorter films: The Good, The Bad and The Politi-cian. Fresh from the middle of the square and awash with the exhilaration of their recent vic-tory, Tamer Ezzat, Ayten Amin and Amr Sala-ma set out to document their respective films from a place of personal reflection, rather than one of political or societal analysis.

Tamer Ezzat’s The Good encapsulates the eigh-teen turbulent days of the Egyptian revolution through the retrospective stories of a group of youth. Coupled with archival footage of the events that took place in Tahrir square, young protagonists recount the highs and lows they experienced amidst an ocean of their compa-triots. This segment of the film is symbolic of the power of social unity in the face of adver-

sity – humanity at its best in a time of need, so to speak.

The Bad, directed by Ayten Amin, juxtaposes our newfound perspectives from within the square with the perspectives of those behind the firing line – the security officers. Amin reveals the tactical bullying and coercion in-flicted upon officers by the Mubarak regime, and also daringly sheds light on the motives, experiences and ethical challenges faced by four officers through candid testimonies. This segment of the film poignantly illustrates the tendency of society to tar everyone perceived as the ‘enemy’ with the same proverbial dehu-manizing brush.

Last but far from least, Amr Salama draws the film to an end on a lighter, satirical note with The Politician. This segment is a whimsical por-trayal of the ousted Hosni Mubarak’s thirty-year stint in power, leading us through the film with a playful guide on how to become a dictator in ten steps. Insightful interviews with political figures, who were either close allies of Mubarak or longstanding opponents, cleverly expose the absurdity of the man behind the once formidable reputation.

Although each chapter is different in style, mood and content, this impressive documen-tary ensemble is woven together seamlessly to form a poignant narrative continuum and an all-rounded account of Egypt’s 2011 revo-lution.

By Sara Ishaq

dossier 4

Tahrir 2011Three stories from the epicentre of the revolution

Al-Karnak A film that marked a generation of Egyptians

For our generation - Egyptians born in the 80s - Aly Badrakhan’s film Al-Karnak was an urban legend. You would hear stories about the political boldness, or the explicit scenes, but since its limited release in cinemas in 1975 the film was banned from being screened on televi-sion or displayed in video stores. The situation changed a few years ago when a censored version of the film started surfacing on satellite channels, coinciding with a new era of political strategy in Egypt that saw allowing of venting channels as a survival tactic.

The unofficial ban was not the first link between the film and the political leadership. The film’s writer/producer Mamdouh El Leithy neutralized the political leadership by seemingly glorifying the then current Saddat regime. It was the golden way to allow for the fierce political cri-tique of the previous Nasser era.

The film portrays a revolution that went wrong. It follows three university colleagues who believe themselves to be the sons of the revolution and attempt to act as such. Their genuine activism triggers the frantic secret police unit, leading to rounds of groundless detention where they are exposed to physical and psychological torture.

Al-Karnak was based on the novella by the Egyptian No-bel Prize Winner Naguib Mahfouz. Rereading them both in today's Egyptian context reveals a timeless relevance. Mahfouz turns a current sociopolitical event into a pool for denser metaphors of generational interaction and human struggle that transcendent the locality of time and place. In comparison, the film version misses core the values of its literary predecessor, but succeeds in be-ing the first Egyptian political film to exposes the brutal-ity of the Nasserite police state so bluntly.

By Mohamed Beshir

NOTE: This is a shortened version of the text published in Nisimazine Abu Dhabu # 5

Arab Spring

dossier5

DOES ART IMITATE lIFE, OR IS IT ThE OThER WAY ROuND? ThIS 2000 YEAR OlD quESTION GETS AN EVEN MORE PRO-VOcATIVE SPIN WhEN PlAcED IN ThE cONTExT OF cuRRENT POlITIcAl AFFAIRS AND ThE WAY ThE MEDIA REPRESENTS ThEM. AS ThE DISTINcTION BETWEEN FAcT AND FIcTION BEcOMES MORE BluRRED, ITS POlITIcAl cONSEquENcES BEcOME GRAVER. WhAT IF WE AlREADY lIVE IN A DOcu-FIcTION?

Representation is a denial of participation.Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi in The Green Book

The humanitarian terrorism that finally brought ‘freedom’ to the Liby-an people is nothing but the stern reminder of the willingness to bring the Arab rebellions to an end by asserting western control, confiscating their impetus and spontaneity (Tariq Ali).

We have been sold a remarkable docu-fiction on Libya to keep us quiet while NATO bombed down a whole country in the name of democracy supporting a National Transitional Council headed by Gaddafi’s for-mer Minister of Justice. Would we have trusted a revolt against Hitler led by his Minister of Justice?

Opportunistic editing has turned history into pure fiction; self-delud-ed audiences can swallow in close succession contradictory images as if in front of a Disney production. To have the colourful Bedouin first camping and then being metaphorically lynched in the same Élysée Palace is the plausible flight of fancy of a fantapolitical movie. That movie though is called reality, and is made of facts not scripts, geo-graphical places not sets, weapons not props. Unlike the fabrications of propaganda, reality nowadays does not need to be hidden or ma-nipulated anymore for it is indistinguishable from fiction and it is in fact perceived as such.

Far from being a theoretical whim, the blurring of reality with fiction, of which the invasion of Libya is a prime example, finds empirical evi-dence in our trusted liberal media. The British broadcaster ITV admit-ted, after having been caught, using footage from a video game for

its current affairs show Exposures. During the first episode exposing the links between the IRA and Gaddafi, the dramatic sequence when Irish freedom fighters are shooting down a helicopter with weapons provided by the Libyan leader…was taken from the computer game Arma 2. (source: The Guardian, 28/09/11)

After having done business in Gaddafi’s tent, prurient UK should per-haps devise something more authentic to restore its image…

Relieved western rulers now shake hands with Gaddafi’s (former) henchmen in exchange for that oil they have been longing for so long, while we watch silently. None dared question the legitimacy of this illegal invasion; we were too excited by the imminent fall of an evil dictator who for 42 years, among his many other crimes, refused to give in to our plans of global domination. Compared to the crimes against humanity that the US, the UK and France (the main agents be-hind the ‘liberation’ of Libya as well as Gaddafi’s long term business partners…) have committed, covered, advocated, financed or justi-fied, those committed by the eccentric colonel are nothing but the innocuous mischief of a choirboy.

What is shocking here is not the imperial manoeuvring aimed at the control of one of the world’s richest oil depots, but the total absence of a critical response to yet another colonial war that is likely to condemn the Libyan people to an Iraq-like aftermath. How are we to assess the role of cinema in the Arab Spring if we are unable to shake the spell of mass-mediated reality? Right in the middle of a global uprising the axes of falsification managed to stage the usual horror while having their audiences believe they were in front of a happy ending adven-ture. The level of visual inflation has downgraded common sense and logical reasoning to unprofitable assets in the economy of historical understanding. While busy cashing in a new dawn of freedom and de-mocracy we are being robbed of the most basic means of perception.

The Audience Award for Best Film on the Arab spring should go to this spectacular blockbuster that goes under the name of pluralist infor-mation which we all buy, believe and morally support thus sponsor-ing the killing of innocent people in the name of a phantasmagorical democracy.

By celluloid liberation Front

Arab Spring

The Showman Is Dead

Shot from A

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Vultures Ready to Punce on Libya by C

arlos

news NIsIMAzINe TALLINNANNOuNcEMENT

NISI MASA Estonia is organizing organizes a Nisimazine workshop that will be held from November 26th to December 1st during the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. 12 Nisimasians from Estonia, Finland and Lithuania will have an opportunity to cover the most important festival of the Baltic re-gion, and will publish their articles daily on the Nisimazine website.

Tallinn Black Nights FF:www.2011.poff.ee/eng

esP ON THe eNCOUNTeRs

To celebrate becoming an Observer Member of NISI MASA, Encounters International Film Festival in Bristol is organizing a reading of some of the screenplays from European Short Pitch 2011. The scripts will be read by young Bristol based actors, and later that day (No-vember 16th) the event will be accompa-nied with the screening of some of ESP's most popular films.

More info available on: w w w.bristolencounters.slated.com/2011/films/europeanshortfilmpitchscriptreading0_bristolencounters2011_bristolencounters2011

eL CIeLO DeL OJO PROjEcT lAuNchING

El Cielo del ojo (The Eye of the Skye) project has been officially launched. On 14th and 15th of October the representatives of each of the 5 participating countries (Austria, Finland, France, Italy and Spain) met in Madrid to dis-cuss their ideas, and to set the basis for its realization. El Cielo del ojo is a cross-cultural audiovizual project with the aim to produce a collective short film with the sky as a subject. The result will be done in a form of cadavre ex-quis: a travelling box with shooting and sound equipment will be sent from country to coun-try, and each group will continue the story based on the last shot of the group who had it before them. The final result will be screened horizontally, with an audience lying on the ground.

Check the official Cinestestias' site for updates on the project:

www.cinestesias.org

NIsIMAzINe BRATIsLAvAANNOuNcEMENT

From November 28th to Decem-ber 5th Nisimazine will cover the One Wold/Jeden Svet Documentary Film Festival in Bratislava (Slovakia). 10 participants from France, Germany and Slovakia will form an editorial team. This year the festival explores the relationship between social networks and the revolutionary actions around the globe.

Jeden Svet FF: www.jedensvet.sk/

eDITING WORKsHOPFEST FILM LAB, a NISI MASA organization from Portugal, is organizing a two day editing workshop. 25 participants will have a chance to attend the lectures by Alex Rodriguez, an editor for films like Y tu mamá también (2001) and Children of Men (2006), for wich he re-ceived an Oscar nomination. The workshop will take place on November 5th and 6th in Porto.

For more information visit: www.filmlab.fest.pt

seMINAR ON COMeDIesMunich Film Society, a NISI MASA member from Germany, is organizing a two day semi-nar devoted to the art and craft of cinematic comedies called Comedy in Theory and Prac-tice. During November 26th and 27th its participants will get to know the funda-mentals of humour’s theory and practice. Guided by Christian Eisert, an astablished co-median and a comedy coach, the participants will master the basic knowledge of oneliners, gags and sketches, and even get some useful tips on how to find their way in the German comedy industry. The workshop will be held in German.

More info: www.filmseminare.de/comedy

RANDOM FILM FesTIvAL 2012cAll FOR PARTIcIPANTS

The International Random Film Festival is now open for submissions. IRFF started part-nership with Euphoria Borealis, a NISI MASA member from Finland, that will manage the upcoming edition of the festival. IRFF cel-ebrates randomness both in life and in film, so the selection will be done randomly. Dead-line for submissions is the 20th of janu-ary 2012, and you can find out more how to apply on the following link:

www.randomfilmfest.com/submit

"CC" CAFé LIBRARY

7Arte, a NISI MASA member from Albania, opened a café-library called „CC“ or - Cre-ative Corner. It is set in the centre of the town of Mitrovica and is thought of as a meeting place for young and creative peo-ple to express their ideas and perform their talents. Through various workshops, film screenings, discussions, lectures and exhi-bitions, „CC“ is thought of as an oasis for reflection and action, to make the positive social changes on both local and national level.

"CC' Café Library Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/CC-Caf%C3%A9-Library/185725388171235

THe WeDDING TAPe AWARDeD IN ABU DHABI

Arben Zharku, producer of The Wedding Tape (Kaseta e Dasmes), was awarded the Best Pro-ducer Prize in the International Short Film Competition at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. The Wedding Tape was directed by the most recent winner of the NISI MASA script competition – Ariel Shaban from Kosovo, and it tells a story of a man who fakes a marriage in order to get the papers to leave the country.

IsTANBUL exPRess sCReeNINGs

Two films made during the Istanbul Express were selected to compete at the Helsinki Short Film Festival (November 8th-12th). One of them is Vappu Tuomisto's We Are Not Living in A Fucking Hospital, a documentary short that focuses on the graffiti artists across Europe and their views on urban spaces. The other is Say Hello in Slovio, by May Abdalla, a docu-mentary about a man who dedicated his life to the invention of Slovio, a new language with which he hoped to unite all Slav people.

Also, the selection of 10 Istanbul Express films will be screened at the Lens Politica, Film and Media Art Film Festival (November 16th-20th).

More info:Helsinki Short Film Festival: www.hlef.fi/?lan=fi&sec=221%E2%8A%82=233

Lens Politica: www.lenspolitica.net/index.php/en/home.html

agenda

8-12 november Screening of IE

on Helsinki Short FF

5/6 november Editing workshop in Porto (by FEST FILM LAB)

Closing Submissions for kino5's Batesian (see Mas y Mas October)

7 november

16 november ESP at Encounters FF

16-20 NovemberScreening of IE on Lens Politica, Film and Media Art FF

26/27 novemberComedy in Theory and Practice in Munich (by Munich Film Society)

26 november – 1 december Nisimazine Tallinn

28 november – 5 december Nisimazine Bratislava

9spotlight

INVENTING REAlITY

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 lead-ers emerge from the desert. Modern shop-ping 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 cin-ematic 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 f inally triumphed. Magic as in Méliès turned the pre-industrial desert into a concrete oasis of property develop-ment, where man does not need to travel to space anymore for the absence of historical

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gravity delivers the ultimate bliss. Opu-lence becomes essential and uncondi-tioned air undesirable in this timeless pil-grimage to the holy land of consumerism.

As the Debord-ian mantra goes, the spec-tacle is capital/oil accumulated to the point it becomes images. Art, as in ARTif icial, is the cultural matrix of the city: what better place to host a f ilm festival than Abu Dha-bi? When only the blinding lights of f iction are left illuminating a manufactured envi-ronment, perhaps cinema can undertake the surreal task of inventing reality.

By celluloid liberation Front

ONcE uPON A TIME...

Once upon a time there was a festival. There was a festival over seven deserts, somewhere between the biggest shopping mall and the second biggest mosque of the world (the mall must be the biggest for certain, but nobody vouched for the mosque), somewhere there, where two sleepy camels were sitting on the dancefloor of the after-screening parties. Abu Dhabi FF 2011 was all about the symbioses of traditional and modern and after we have ar-rived to the Emirates by the luxury flying car-pet of Qatar Airways, we found the best of the thousand and one nights.

I was happy to be there, and I was lucky to know the other participants, since the workshop was

run by a hard working and excellent team that didn’t go without critical thinking. I learned a lot from you, guys. I learned about the missing cinema industry in Palestine and the existing in Egypt, about the usage of the words “film” and “movie” in different texts, and, of course, about working for strict deadlines. We lost our ways many times in the huge Marina shopping mall where the cinemas were, and by the time we found the exit and the festival cars took us back to the hotel, we were already late for our articles' deadline. Next time the editors should calculate the deadlines having in mind the long way it takes to return from the cinemas.

It was the first time in my life that I shared my room with a Yemenese-Scottish yogi and hu-man rights activist, I listened to three lectures

on the same day on the different perspectives of an film journalism, and I heard the news about the killing an Arab dictator, when I was in a circle of Arab people.

Around halfway during the workshop, team tutor Jay Weissberg from Variety gave us a lec-ture on the basic journalism jargon, so please don’t be surprised if you see ’horse opera’ for ’western film’, ’hardtop’ for ’indoor movie the-ater’,’ helmer’ for ’director’ or ’flop’ for ’failure at the box office’ in our next articles. After all, remembering Jay’s farewell words, I can tell you: Nisimazine Abu Dhabi is a great chance to participate if you want to be a real critic...oh, I mean ’crix’.

By janka Barkoczi

Nisimazine Abu Dhabi is one of the most popular projects of NISI MASA, and its second edition de-livered all that the exotic location and interesting film selection promised. Recent political up-heavals in Arab countries shed a new light on the event and made the Nisimasians think of the fes-tival from another perspective. We present you some of their thought-provoking reflections on the festival.

Photo by Filippo Zambon