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November 03, 2005,
7:58 a.m.
Hollywood on the Tigris
Saddam can’t strangle (or worse) filmmakers anymore.
Saddam Hussein's saga was more of a crime-family B-movie, but he fancied himself more of a blockbuster action star. During his reign, the megalomaniac dictator ordered the production of semi-biographical The Long Days, a propaganda epic intended to buoy his mythical hero image. Cast in the unenviable role as the dictator was Saddam's cousin and look-alike, Saddam Kamel. It was Kamel who would marry Hussein's daughter Rina, eventually turn on the regime and defect, and then be lured back to Iraq under the guise of forgiveness only to be brutally murdered in 1996.
Even before Saddam was bumping off his cast, his Baathist regime had succeeded in stealing the soul of Iraq's cinema by replacing entertainment with socialist and nationalist propaganda. His maniacal rule let the movie industry and movie houses fall into ruin; his fear of Western influence led him to ban satellite dishes — even as he enjoyed a palace DVD copy of Pulp Fiction.
But as good traditionally triumphs over evil onscreen, the Iraqi film industry is slowly coming back to life, surpassing observers' expectations, and giving a nation back its creative voice while helping heal its wounds.
"It's like the country has been in a locked jail cell for 30 years," said Iraqi filmmaker Oday Rasheed, who began shooting his feature Underexposed on expired celluloid just a few weeks after the fall of Baghdad. "We're still blinking from the light of the sun." Iraqi cinema is indeed coming into the spotlight, its filmmakers liberated from government censorship and a regime that exercised a blatant disregard for their craft.
For the first time, Iraq has entered a movie for nomination consideration in the best foreign-film category at the Academy Awards. Requiem of Snow, a Kurdish film from young director Jamil Rostami, will compete against 57 other countries in hopes of being invited to the 78th annual Oscar ceremony in March. Requiem, Rostami's first feature film, is a drama about Kurds praying for rain while stricken by drought.
And in another milestone, the glitterati at May's Cannes Film Festival saw Iraq's first entry ever. Hiner Saleem's Kilometre Zero was one of 21 films bucking for the Palme d'Or. Described in the Cannes program as "a tribute to Iraqi Kurdistan and a people who were oppressed under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein," Saleem expounded on the film at the Cannes press conference: "I took my brother's experiences as a starting point. He was drafted into the Iraqi army against his will, when he was on his way to the corner bakery in his pajamas. He was captured and transported by truck to an area near the Iranian border . . . On the basis of this idea, I developed my screenplay."
Another Kurdish director, Jano Rosebiani, is intent on making sure that Iraqi Arab filmmakers have just as much of a crack at the silver screen. Rosebiani's projects have included detailing the torturous process of unearthing the murdered from Iraq's mass graves and telling the horror of the Halabja genocide. His production company, Evini Films, presented the 1st National Short Film Festival in Federal Iraq in September, which was the culmination of a two-week moviemaking workshop that brought together 20 Kurdish and 20 Arab filmmakers. Their mission: to make short films about the terrorism tearing into the new Iraq.
In the first week, the film students learned and were assisted in screenwriting, casting, directing, and editing. The second week was post-production. "Some were asked to shoot additional scenes, or some to re-shoot their entire film," Rosebiani told me. "The end product was 40 short films that ranged from poor to superbly dynamic pieces." And when all was said and done, the festival went off without a hitch in its three-day run, drawing more than 2,000 film fans and earning solid coverage from local media, including daily roundtable discussions on satellite Zagros TV.
"Our purpose for the workshop and the festival was twofold," Rosebiani added. "In addition to our arts empowerment mission, we are constantly searching for fresh raw talent among the youth to recruit and hire for our own productions. I think we had a few winners who will be working on our own productions of TV series and movies of the week for our newly established arts and entertainment television channel, Avesta TV."
Avesta TV — set to go on air in January and billing itself as the first independent, private-sector TV station in the country and the first dedicated to arts and entertainment — will be perfectly at home in a nation that has eagerly embraced the entertainment of which they'd been deprived for decades. No sooner was Saddam out than satellite dishes were in, beaming into homes and businesses everything from American movies and sitcoms to regional twists on American Idol and Saturday Night Live sketch comedy.
Iraq's film industry sprang to life in the early 1940s, spinning romantic pastoral tales often punctuated with singing and dancing. After King Faisal was deposed in 1958, the movie industry was quickly nationalized. After Saddam came to power in 1968, the government's grip on film became even stronger. Movies were used to convey the Baathists' socialist agenda — tackling topics such as class war and collective farming — and nationalist political aims, such as opposition to the Camp David accord.
In reading various articles on the death of Iraqi cinema, one notices that the Left seems eager to blame its demise on U.N. sanctions inhibiting importation of filmmaking equipment. But the truth is that the only "cinema" that would have been captured on that celluloid and seen the light of day from the Gulf War to Saddam's ouster would have been propagandist drivel masquerading as art shaped by a Baathist regime, not the voices of filmmakers. "The cinema-going culture had already disappeared before the embargo," says Rosebiani. Among the reasons, he notes, were that "under Saddam's Baath regime, events that required gathering of people were discouraged and often impossible; people were also afraid to sit in a dark public places as there were assassinations and disappearances; Western films were banned and Arabic (Egyptian) films didn't have the commercial appeal."
Afghanistan has shown how cinema can be cathartic to a population still reeling from the expulsion of an oppressive regime. Siddiq Barmak used to run the nation's film office from 1992-96, but was fired when the Taliban took control and fled to Pakistan in 1998. He returned home in 2002, ready to tell a story. Barmak cast his film Osama with everyday Afghans: he discovered his lead actress, Marina Golbahari, begging for change on a Kabul street; the women who played Golbahari's mother and grandmother came from a refugee camp; Taliban foot soldiers in the film were real Taliban who had decided to go straight. The film, about a girl who must disguise as a boy to feed her family in the Taliban era, gives us a window into the heartbreaking despair of a nation thrust into the dark ages by a cruel, repressive regime. The stark streets of Kabul and the impassioned performances of the amateur cast give us an inkling of how important it was for this country to tell its story.
In 2004, Barmak picked up the Golden Globe for best foreign-language film. But this award-winning foray back into film for the war-torn nation was hardly the end of the story. Today numerous production companies have opened their doors in Kabul, and cinemas are open in the capital and several other provinces. September 2003 brought the Kabul Cinema Street Festival, which showed short documentary films from Afghan filmmakers. The previous year, an annual summer film caravan began bringing educational and feature fare to outlying provinces. The country even has an independent film union now.
Hawler-based Rosebiani reports that movie multiplexes are being included in the building boom in the northern part of Iraq. "Within a year these cinemas will be operational," he said. "The rest of Iraq is still dealing with terrorists and insurgents." Iraqi cinema will also have to deal with Islamic fundamentalists; some clerics have been in a tizzy about content available on satellite TV. "Every single film was checked by Saddam's officials, and in most cases, confiscated," Rasheed has said of trying to make movies under the Baath regime. "Although that's over now, we're being confronted with another form of censorship — pressure from fundamentalist Islamic groups."
Every culture and its sensitivities presents certain challenges to its cinematic community. But just as Iraqis finally have freedom in their entertainment choices, Iraqi filmmakers' ability to dive into their craft is yet another fruit of liberation. Money is probably a bigger obstacle than those clerics — something with which filmmakers everywhere can empathize — but tougher to come by in a country trying to rebuild. Thankfully, the cheaper digital technology that has liberated indie filmmakers here in the U.S. can ease the burden. And the voices of Iraq's cinematic storytellers are proving to be priceless.
"I built my entire memory in this place," Rasheed once said. "If we asked Quentin Tarantino to make a film about Baghdad, he would not do as good a job as me. And if I wanted to make a film about L.A., I would not make as good a film as him."
— Bridget Johnson is a columnist at the Los Angeles Daily News. She blogs at GOP Vixen.
