Middle East filmmakers get to grips with Arab Spring

By Andrew McCathie Feb 13, 2012, 12:02 GMT

Berlin - The blurry and jerky mobile phone and video camera footage emerging from Syria of the violent government crackdown on protesters represents the latest stage in a cinema revolution in the Middle East sparked by the Arab Spring.

A year after the start of uprisings that toppled leaders across the Middle East, the Berlin Film Festival has sought to chronicle those dramatic days in a collection of films by those who witnessed the events.

'We went onto the balcony and filmed,' says a young Egyptian journalist in the movie Althawra... Khabar, in which a group of reporters recount the chaotic and often-dangerous 18 days leading to the downfall of President Hosny Mubarak after 30 years in power.

Once under tight government control, filmmakers from nations such as Egypt and Tunisia are suddenly enjoying a new sense of freedom in the wake of the popular uprisings brought that brought down authoritarian rulers.

'There is now no fear,' said Alaa Karkouti, a Syrian-born film analyst from the Cairo-based film promotions group Mad Solutions. 'They can say what they want.'

Karkouti believes that the films that have emerged since the fall of leaders like Tunisia's Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali have shown talent in people once repressed.

'No-one ever believed that these things could happen,' said Karkouti. 'But once you achieve something like that you open up a talent that many never realized they had.'

From its opening film, Farewell My Queen, which looked at the French Revolution through the eyes of Marie Antoinette's courtiers, the Berlinale has sought to conjure up the sense of ordinary people rising up to take control.

'Any revolution, particularly this one is (aimed at) an abuse of power and an abuse of money and that is still going on these days,' said German-born actress Diane Kruger, who plays Marie Antoinette in the film by French director Benoit Jacquot.

'It still resonates today,' she told a press conference in Berlin.

In British film director Sean McAllister's The Reluctant Revolutionary, also screened at the festival, a Yemeni tour operator joins the revolution against the president after a friend is shot dead.

Despite Egypt's long-held position as the powerhouse of Arab-language cinema the world's top international film festivals have never looked too kindly on the movies pumped out by the nation, which was dominated by dramas, comedies and action films.

But last year even the world's leading film festival in Cannes acknowledged the scale of the events that resulted in the ousting of Mubarak by making Egypt the guest country.

A problem for filmmakers is that the region is still attempting to come to grips with the sense of change that has been unleashed and to work out what really happened during the Arab Spring that was triggered by Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution.

'The revolution is not over,' said Maher Diab a Lebanese-born film analyst who is based in Cairo.

However, cinema does not appear to be a priority for many in the region, where unemployment is high and the political restructuring is needed.

Box office takings have suffered since the revolution. One reason is that the industry's commercial structures in some nations are still stuck in what is now a bygone era.

In addition, several of the region's top movie stars have found themselves on the wrong side of the revolutions, facing criticism for siding with authorities.

In his documentary In the Shadow of a Man, Egyptian director Hanan Abdalla explores the lives of four women who are struggling to understand what has happened in their country.

Buoyed by about the changes, one of the women in the film proclaims: 'But those were the old days, now we are free.' Another is less convinced: 'It's still the traditions that rule,' she says.

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