On 29 October, exactly one year and one day after the bombing of al-Bara in northern Syria, an audience gathered in the Ritzy Cinema to watch filmmaker Olly Lambert’s extraordinary footage of the attacks. The Bombing of al-Bara screening was hosted by the Frontline Club and DocHouse as part of a series of Between the Lines Follow-up Events and was followed by an in-depth Q&A with the director.
L: Director Olly Lambert answers audience questions | R: Director Olly Lambert before the screening
In order to fully appreciate this film, a brief background should be outlined. Lambert was commissioned by Channel 4 and PBS to produce his documentary Syria: Across the Lines. The film involved gaining access into both rebel and regime held territory, on either side of the valley in the Idlib province.
While filming inside a rebel leader’s house, a large bomb fell only 300 meters away. Lambert let his camera film the aftermath and chaos that ensued. Months later he added his voiceover to the raw footage and uploaded the film to Youtube where it has reached a widespread audience.
Lambert’s motivation from the onset was clear. He explained that by spending time with the local population, he hoped it would offer insights into the reality of life in the periphery of war. He stated:
“I am not interested in warfare, I am interested in how ordinary people react in finding suddenly a war around them.”
The film’s uncensored style, combined with Lambert‘s honest commentary, creates a harrowingly intimate insight into war journalism. The retrospective quality of his narration, coupled with the spontaneously shot footage balances the mediated with the unmediated, the conscious with the subconscious, to great effect. An audience member said of his narration style:
“There was something about having your voice there and the story there that made it bearable.”
At times the scenes could certainly be described as unbearable. Graphic images depicted a woman’s body ripped apart by the attack and a child screaming for his grandparents buried under the mass of rubble. Perhaps the eeriest of all were the fragments of normality that co-exist with the chaos as a woman pushes her pram and an onlooker casually lights his cigarette.
Director Olly Lambert and the Frontline Club’s Documentary Programmer, Wotienke Vermeer
In response to the risk Lambert took in going to Syria, one which almost cost him his life, he said, “honestly I didn’t expect to come that close.” In terms of coping with the destruction he saw, Lambert emphasised the need to hold it together but also an ability to let go:
“I was really glad to cry. . . . As a filmmaker you need to have not only a thick skin to be able to go in there and do it, but it’s also totally essential to have a really paper thin skin.”
The mainly male Syrians depicted are all too conscious of the power of media images in this war and were acutely aware of Lambert‘s role as witness to their suffering. Lambert found this dynamic to be somewhat burdensome. He reflected:
“It was an occupational hazard there, people always telling me to film stuff.”
A sense of helplessness featured in the footage which Lambert reaffirmed in one of his anecdotes. He recounted one man saying to him in the aftermath of the bomb: “Your government did this.” Lambert explained his reaction:
“My government, Western governments were doing nothing…I was ashamed of how abandoned these people were.”
The discussion on security training during the Q&A was a poignant one. Lambert explained that the safety process required by the broadcasters who commissioned the film took a long time:
“I had to prove that I had thought every single possible eventuality from what to do if the car breaks down…to what happens if I lose both my legs and my fixer is killed in every single location I might go to.”
He continued:
“It was a real pain in the arse. . . . But the moment we crossed into Syria for the first time I was so grateful to have done it and been forced to have done it because things did start to go wrong very quickly.”
One audience member asked if there would be more films coming out of Syria. This prompted Lambert to explain how dramatically things had degenerated over the last year for foreign journalists. He noted:
“Someone told me a few days ago that to try and make this film now would be suicide.”
With regards to speculation over Syria’s future he said:
“Radicalisation is the thing to watch . . . I don’t think the really hard-line groups are going to have any long term traction in Syria, but at the moment they are extremely powerful. Extremely powerful.”
Watched a YouTube video in the cinema:The Bombing of al-Bara by @ollylambert.1 of most powerful things Ive ever seen. http://t.co/wuq5Bl3vUP
— Ola Cichowlas (@olacicho) October 30, 2013
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On 28 October 2012, a government jet dropped a bomb on the village of al-Bara. Only 300 meters away, Olly Lambert was filming a meeting of rebel soldiers. While keeping his camera rolling, Lambert documented the shocking impact of the regime air strike on a civilian population.
As he was editing the highly acclaimed Syria: Across the Lines – a revealing report for Channel 4/PBS – he realised the footage shot that day in al-Bara offered a candid insight into the reality of documenting a war. Lambert decided to narrate the raw footage and publish it online, creating a rare, immersive and powerful portrait of the civil war. This footage went viral and reached a far greater number of people around the world than had tuned in to the original Channel 4/PBS piece.
Taking as his starting point the stark difference between the standard format piece of reportage he was commissioned to film and the 36 minutes of intimate personally narrated footage which became known as The Bombing of Al Bara, Lambert will discuss in depth the experience of filmmaking on the front line.
Directed by Olly Lambert
Duration: 36′
Year: 2012
Between the Lines was a three-day festival that took place at Rich Mix from 1 to 3 March. In a series of follow up events we continue to explore the challenges facing documentary makers, investigative journalists and citizen reporters in the new media landscape.
Presented by:
Supported by:
Salma
Thursday 26 September 2013, 8:00 PM Rich Mix London
Growing up in South India, Salma spent most of her childhood under house arrest. She poured out her anguish writing poetry which she sneaked out of the house. Against the odds she became one of the best known Tamil poets and her newfound fame helped her start on the path to freedom. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Kim Longinotto’s long-term editor Ollie Huddleston.
Which Way is the Front Line from Here – The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington + Q&A
Thursday 17 October 2013, 8.30 PM Lexi Cinema
Colleague and co-director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary Restrepo, Sebastian Junger, thoughtfully portrays Tim Hetherington’s life and work. At a time when greater numbers of journalists are losing their lives covering conflict, the film also addresses the high risks taken by war journalists. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with producer James Brabazon.
Shorts at the Frontline Club – Between the Lines Special – BOOK NOW
Friday 25 October 2013, 7:00 PM Frontline Club
Join us for an evening of short documentaries, showcasing films from different parts of the world, covering a wide range of topics. As part of Between the Lines the selection will focus on ‘filming the unfilmable’, followed by a discussion on how to document events that that are difficult to access.
The Bombing of al-Bara + Q&A – BOOK NOW
Tuesday 29 October 8.30 PM Ritzy Picture House
2012, a government jet dropped a large bomb on the village of al-Bara. Only 300 meters away, Olly Lambert was filming a meeting of rebel soldiers. While keeping his camera rolling, Lambert documented the shocking impact of regime air strikes on a civilian population. The result is a rare, immersive portrait of the reality of civil war.
No Fire Zone : The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka, chronicles the final 138 days of the 26 year Sri Lankan civil war, told by the people who lived through it. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Callum Macrae.
Presented by:
Supported by:
Lambert has worked in many violent and dangerous situations, but none comparable to what he filmed in Syria.
“It was very different, it’s certainly the most intense conflict that I’ve ever come across. I didn’t expect anything on the same scale as what played out when I was there. . . . There have been many reports of what is happening in Aleppo, but [we were] trying to look at this grinding conflict: where it might go, where it might end up, which is a very difficult subject to tackle.”
Initially the filmmaker began by looking at the Houla massacre – the murder of 108 people at the hands of pro-regime militias in late May 2012 which was widely cited in the international media as the tipping point in Syria’s conflict.
“We were going to take [the Houla massacre] as a focus, and often when tackling a very big subject . . . I try to find the smallest window with the biggest view. And Houla might have presented that – one afternoon that might have prefigured how Syria was going.”
But Lambert’s focus was shifted to other massacres in nearby Tremseh and al-Qubeir, villages only 30 or 40 miles apart, the line between which formed a sectarian frontline between Alawite and Shia and Sunni communities. Patrick Johnson, a young researcher at the International Crisis group, pointed him to this area of the Gharb valley, south of Jisr ash-Shughur, through which runs the Orontes river – and which is now wrought by crossfire and bloodshed.
For five weeks, Lambert worked in this fertile Syrian valley, focusing on a microcosm of the Syrian conflict and being reminded of another documentary set within another warring enclave, Dan Reed’s The Valley. The 2000 Bafta-nominated eyewitness documentary, filmed during the guerilla war in Kosovo, before Nato’s intervention.
“I don’t know exactly know who gave us the tick and who gave us the okay within the regime. We made a variety of different applications . . . We were quite explicit that I wanted to go to az-Zazir and that I wanted to see how people were living in az-Zazir and how minorities were living in az-Zazir and someone somewhere signed that off and a visa was granted.”
Lambert and his fixer were escorted by two regime officials. Despite worries about the affect their presence would have on people’s ability to talk, but it proved to be a godsend.
“The anxiety was just thick in the air in this village. I don’t think they had ever been filmed before, and I stayed there for a week, and our security officials were able to say to the Alawites, ‘These guys are absolutely fine, you can talk to them.’ That then unleashed a torrent of their fears and anxieties and beliefs that they really hadn’t had a chance to share with any kind of media.”
Lambert gave these communities a voice, and also gave some redress to paranoia at work within Western news sources.
“There’s a real obsession in Western media about foreign fighters, jihadists, al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra. When I came out of the rebel side – I hadn’t had any internet for weeks – and when I first looked at the news, I could believe that every article I read was about [this] and it just didn’t connect because I did not meet a single foreign fighter. . . . It’s just not on the agenda. It’s a distraction form the wider issue.”
That wider issue is, of course, the unending, punishing destruction of the fighting. An audience member asked about the apparent survival of infrastructure, to which Lambert replied:
“There is electricity, food is getting in – somehow they’re surviving. It’s terrible in a way because it makes it go on longer and longer and longer. It’s not forcing any kind of outcome.”
But there are people who are now desperate to go back to a Syria as it was, and that plays entirely into the regime’s hands.
“There’s this phrase that is often repeated: This is their freedom. When there’s any kind of conflict or car bomb or any kind of explosion or fight: This is their freedom. It’s the regime’s way of saying you’re better off under us.”
Syria – Across the Lines will be broadcast on Channel 4 on April 17 at 10pm.
There will also be a special screening at the RSA on April 16.
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