Dialogue with Maria Al Zaher, dissertation project, College of Fine Art and Design, UAE, 2013

2013
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MZ – I am doing my dissertation about experimental cinema in the Arab world, and I’ve done a quick search about the topic to make sure that there are enough resources (since no one have gone far into this topic). Your film was one of those Arabic experimental cinema. Last semester I made a research about the avant-garde experimental cinema during the 1920s and 1930s, and now planning to move into the Arab world. I would like to document your personal experience and analysis.

KH – I would suggest then that you have a look at some of my works on Vimeo; I suggest:

  • 2009 – The A77a Project: on Presidents and Super Heroes 
  • 2008 – The Third Vision: Around 1pm
  • 2007 – Visions of a Contaminated Memory: 
  • 2006 – Revolution
  • 2011 – The Video Diaries

MZ – I’d like to give a brief about my thesis. I claim that Egyptian cinema, influenced the beginnings of Lebanese experimental cinema until the breakout of civil war. Through my proposed thesis, I wanted to expand the knowledge about the Arab experimental cinema to settle the unresolved legacy of the Lebanese wars and examine all the influences that had an impact on the rise of the avant-garde video. I’ve read all the previously done researches, and found that film and videos by Lebanese filmmakers and artists have been seen as documentaries of visual anthropology. I’d like to categorize your work under the sub section titled: Legacies of the war generation. I need to provide a critical analysis about your work (revolution 2006) 

KH – Brilliant thesis, and this drives me to propose to you some film titles: 

A must is “Al Mumia (The Day of Counting the Years)” by Chadi Abdel Salam, 1969 production, Golden Bear Berlin film festival, released in cinemas in Cairo in 1975 for three days then withdrawn because of box office failure. A Master’s thesis about this phenomenal work is Hossam Elwan’s (film producer and Fulbright Fellow). I think this film is a video art, as the filmmaker was a painter and stage designer, and he painted a frame for every sequence of the film PRIOR to finalizing his script and dialogue…. a unique process in filmmaking. The film though has no direct link to the war genre…. But it overlaps the disciplines and defies genres.

 

Other films that I think defy genres are: El Hob Fee EL Ghassala (Filmmaker Said Hamed), Ice Cream Fee Gleem (filmmaker Khairi Beshara), and El Ankaboot (Filmmaker Salah Abo Seif based on a novel by Mostafa Mahmood).

 

Then there are the genres that were Lebanese/Egyptian and shot partly in Kuwait between 1969 and 1972… two films by the same filmmaker who wrote the script and participated in filming…. Both films were esoteric, shot by 8mm/16mm and 35mm in parts and mixed, and both were shot by hand held camera in parts, and at many tomes of the shooting: with one camera, a practice reminiscent of video practice today…. And both films had nudity, perhaps two of four films that ever had nudity in Arab film of that time: Ze’ab la Ta’kol Al Lahm (filmmaker something Khoury) and Sayedat Al Akmar Al Sawda (same filmmaker)

Again, there is no war genre, but there is certain video art.

 

What I personally consider War Genre (though others may disagree) is: Al Asfoor (Youssef Chahine) and Oghneya Ala Al Mamar (Ali Abdel Khalek).

 

MZ – Regarding the film category, does it affect how your film was presented as an experimental film?

KH – At all. In fact this film/video was presented in museums as video art, exist in the collection of four museums as video art, was shown in Rotterdam Film Festival in 2012 as experimental film, and was presented at the Mercusol Biennale in 2011 as cross-genre…. The most important for me is to do the work; how it is presented does not matter as long as it is presented in a decent manner. I do know and understand that each presentation depends on the specificity of the audience, and curators and myself agree on how the work is represented according to the new different audience. In fact, it is more natural that my work is described as experimental film, as I script and script and script, modify and modify, and work with actors many times, and sometimes with directors of photography, musicians and editors. Other times of course, like in the case of the 2013 55th Venice Biennale, I shot the work, edited, did the sound design and assembled all myself. Plus, as a filmmaker and film consumer, many times I hate video art as a discipline, as a lot of the production around is torture☺

 

MZ – What was your inspiration? 

KH – I can tell about the exact moment that I decided to touch the medium of film. It was in Paris in 1993: I saw two films made by the same filmmaker, the great Claude Lelouche, those are “Itiniraire d’un enfant Gate” (1988) and “La Belle Histoire” (1992)…I saw both films in the span of three days, and I felt elated as o have discovered a language capable of representing me…. It took me seven to eight years to do my first film/video Visions of a Cheeseburger Memory (2001), a work of video collage and shots from my studio with me acting with a plastic gun, and cut around action scenes from famous/notorious Hollywood déjà vu action scenes of demolition and destruction. Idlers Logic (2003, Francophonie prizewinner Dakar Biennale 2004, 24 minutes) was a truly scripted and acted (3 actors) experimental film, shot in 24 hours, addressing the question of what it is to be Arab in a post September 11 world.

I can confidently tell you that my inspiration is micro and macro politics, and my almost exclusive approach is irony.

 

MZ – did you try to relate to any of the western experimental films?

KH – Indeed I am. I am in love with irony, and a combination/formula of accessibility and esotericism in the plot. As a consumer I like if the filmmaker who can work a very simple plot AND provides both a witty and visually aesthetic solutions. A filmmaker who would make me –as a film consumer—and every other audience that filmmaking is easy and pleasurable, despite the fact that filmmaking is not easy. Apart from Claude Lelouche who was/is my initial hero, I am always inspired by filmmakers like Tom Tykwer; one particular film is Run Lola Run. I like Bernardo Bertolucci; one particular film is of course Last Tango in Paris. I like Quentin Tarantino’s diptych Kill Bill, and literally EVERYTHING of Krzysztof Kieślowski, whom I think is the perfect filmmaker of all time, in particular the Red, Blue, White Trilogy, and the brilliant La Double Vie de Veronique which I think is a parallel comparable to Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run, and both are brilliant experimental films that would blow the mind of every video artist.

 

Please feel free to categorize my work wherever you see it fits, I trust your judgment as a scholar, and I like your thesis. Please have a look at Lelouche’s 1988 Itiniraire d’un Enfant Gate, as it inspires and feeds into several elements in my work, including memory, nostalgia, personal history, successes and failures in any one’s life, and ironic solutions to micro narrative problems.