Abu Haraz can no longer be found on the map. The changing of seasons and flow of the river used to mark the rhythm of life in this village, but the construction of a dam on the Nile changed that for good. The small North Sudanese village now wallows under 35 meters of water in the middle of an artificial lake, 180 kilometres long.

For seven years, filmmaker Maciej Drygas observed and documented daily life in Abu Haraz as its citizens protested against the construction of the dam and eventually got ready to be relocated to a place unknown to them. 

Their new village is a settlement raised in the middle of the desert. Drygas‘s observational film offers a sensitive and intimate testimony of a local reality, which also addresses bigger questions about the place of traditions in a modernising globalised world.

Directed by Maciej Drygas
Duration: 73′
Year: 2013

This screening is part of the 12th Polish Film Festival KINOTEKA

“The evening breeze
blows towards the bride
as she takes her leave
on her wedding day.”

(“New Bride, New Night” by Salma)

On Thursday 26 September, the Frontline Club and DocHouse screened the evocative documentary Salma. Hosted at Rich Mix, the film was the latest in the Between the Lines Follow-Up series.

Directed by Kim Longinotto, the film follows the poet and novelist Salma on her return to her home village where she was effectively imprisoned for 25 years. Editor Ollie Huddleston joined for the post-film Q&A.

Elizabeth Wood of DocHouse began with a discussion on the craft of editing:

“Fiction films are shot to a script, but really, with a film like this, and with all Kim’s films, a script is really written during the edit.”

“I think the best documentary films are like fiction films,” responded Huddleston:

“You’re building a story. . . . I look at this film now and I see it’s of course a film about Tamil Nadu and Muslim culture and Salma, but the important thing is always that it should connect to us. It’s a very universal story in some ways. The bonds, the knots, the ties, the families. Fear of breaking away and not being able to break away.”

Editor Ollie Huddleston. Photo: George Symonds

An audience member asked if the village had changed since the film was made.

“My experience of the village,” said Huddleston, “is what I see through that material. My understanding is that it hasn’t changed, no, not at all. And I think Malik – Salma’s husband – is quite unusual. As much as he was a very strong part of keeping her away and keeping her apart from society, he also helped her to break free, and that’s very unusual.”

“He must have grown too, in a way do you think?” followed Wood.

“Yeah, the weirdest thing was that Kim and Salma, when I finally met her, said he liked the film, that he was proud of the film. That is amazing for me,” said Huddleston. “Because he doesn’t come across brilliantly sometimes. Kim said he was a lovely guy and incredibly friendly and all the rest of it, but maybe he’s happy that the story is being told. He seems very proud of his wife so eventually maybe he’s coming around and maybe the village will change, one day.”

“But,” countered Wood, “do you think perhaps he’s the one who made his sons critical of her?”

“Yes, I do. Definitely he did. But he’s part of the village, isn’t he? I mean they all are. So the village tradition has meant that they’re all bound by the past and traditions that women are locked up and hidden away.”

Ollie Huddleston in conversation with Elizabeth Wood. Photo: George Symonds.

Huddleston then spoke of the difficulties faced during filming:

“Salma had to hide a lot. They thought she was making some kind of drama film and she was going to make money out of this film in some way. So I think there was a lot of antagonism in the village. But she’s an extraordinary, pragmatic, charismatic, thoughtful, incredibly eloquent person so I imagine she found a way to explain it to them, and to get the film made.”

Hands went up in the audience to ask about the inclusion of the Hindu wedding:

“We wanted to balance the film out. That it’s not just Muslim weddings. I mean, that girl is about 10 or 11. It happens quite a lot in the village so that was the reason. It’s quite shocking, and truthful.”

Is she, Salma, interested in the world of politics and making a difference that way?

“She started a women’s refuge in Chennai and yes, she’s very interested in changing the world, most definitely,” explained Huddleston. “Politics is one way of doing that but I think at the moment she’s writing. I couldn’t say whether she’d go back into politics again. Maybe.”

Huddleston then responded to how he approached representing the many complex characters:

“You try to make stories develop. . . . Throughout the film you’re probably thinking, ‘God, how could she [Salma’s mother] do that to her daughter?’ . . . In the end, she helps her publish her books, she smuggles them out – she’s more complicated than that. So to be really crude about it, there’s a kind of set up about who the mother is. You think she’s this person then, later on, you’ve changed your opinion of her. ‘Wow, she’s stood up, she went and got the books, she sent them to a publisher, she is on Salma’s side.’ There’re many references to the mother and the complexity of that relationship is huge and crucial to the film really. You’re trying to make it understandable and very real.”

'Each shot has to count and each moment has to count' – editor Ollie Huddleston #documentary #Salma

— BerthaDocHouse (@BerthaDocHouse) September 26, 2013

To conclude, Huddleston commented on the circularity that the film depicts:

“It’s that idea that we’re constantly going in a circle. When she lies on the floor and says, ‘What can I do, I can’t leave the ones that love me, I’d be completely alone,’ isn’t that true of all families? It’s a circular thing. That seemed to be the most truthful point. She’s still yearning for her mother’s approval or love or closeness. Nothing has changed, in certain ways, even though she’s done extraordinary things.

“It’s because it’s a film about circles. Circles within families, within tradition, within religion, and trying to break free from those. That felt like the most honest end, the most truthful end. Nothing is simple.”

A collection of Salma’s poems and Longinotto’s reflections on creating the documentary is published by OR Books.

Upcoming films in the Between the Lines Follow-Up series can be found here.

Filmmaker Safinez Bousbia describes El Gusto as “the story of a group of musicians – Jews and Muslims – torn apart by history and brought together today by music”. In reality it took more than music alone to bring these musicians back together; rather the director’s own extraordinary efforts over a two year period to hunt down and reunite a group of friends separated for 50 years.

The story of El Gusto begins in the casbah of Algiers in 2003, with a chance encounter between a young architect holidaying in the country of her birth and an 83-year-old mirror vendor and former musician, who had lost his band members during the Algerian War of Independence. At that time, Bousbia had little inclination towards filmmaking – “At the beginning, I just proposed to help him find his friends.” It was only midway through the search for Mohamed Ferkioui’s friends, as the number of remarkable sub-stories began to increase, that the necessity to document their journey became apparent.

“Once I found the musicians, I heard they had amazing stories to tell. Then I thought it was worth a film. I didn’t think I’d be the one doing it, because I was an architect at the time! I did not have a clue as to how films were made.”

In many ways the story of Safinez Bousbia is almost as intriguing as those of her musicians.

Born in Algeria, raised in Switzerland and educated at Oxford and Dublin, her transition over the course of the project from architect to investigator, band manager, film producer and director, is an indication of her extraordinary versatility. Her journey is made all the more remarkable when considered alongside battles against near-bankruptcy and cancer. These threatened to derail not only her life but also the band, the film project and the livelihoods of the men whom she had reunited.

There is certainly gratitude among her musicians for the transformation in their lives. Ferkioui describes the moment he first met Bousbia as like a “beautiful angel” who had been “sent from God”. Rachid Berkani, the band’s 75-year-old lutist rejoices: “Look at us at our age – traveling, eating great meals, staying in three- and four-star hotels, getting paid.”

Bousbia’s motivation for creating El Gusto remains clear: “Whenever we talk about the Algerian War of Independence, it’s always versions told by either soldiers or victims. It’s never just by simple people, simple musicians, who maybe never gave a damn about the war. They just wanted to play music and have fun and be friends.”

“The War of Independence was literally something you couldn’t avoid. You could not talk about their lives without talking about that war. It was the thing that made their lives pause; the reason that their friendships were torn apart, their music stopped. Their life completely took another turn.

“Their lives were stuck in the past, their music was lost, they deserved to be reunited and have their stories told. I decided to go for it.”

On Tuesday 4 June, El Gusto will be screened at the Frontline Club followed by a Q&A with director Safinez Bousbia.

From the taboo of premarital sex to trouble in the conjugal bed; from sexed-up writing to censored movies; from debates over sexual education and abortion to the incendiary topic of unwed motherhood; from the booming business of sex work to the struggles of those who break the heterosexual mould, El Feki examines the complexity of sexual intolerance and liberty in the Arab world and how it is entwined in religion, tradition, politics and economics.

Shereen El Feki is a writer, broadcaster, and academic who started her professional life in medical science before going on to become an award-winning journalist with The Economist and a presenter with Al Jazeera English. She is the former vice-chair of the UN’s Global Commission on HIV and the Law, as well as a TED Global Fellow. She writes for a number of publications.