Hisham al-Zouki: Syria's cinematic renaissance

I first met Hisham al-Zouki at a café in a Damascene mall; as we sat down to discuss the script for a short film he was working on. Sadly, because of military movements in the area we were filming in, the project was never concluded.

For the acclaimed Syrian film director, it all started in the late 1970s. His house was one of the few in the neighborhood to have a television and the adults would gather in the dozens in their living room every night to watch the news or the latest Egyptian movies.

"Entertainment was different back then. Absolutely everyone went to the cinema — if you didn’t you were a bit of an outsider. It was even a big part of the celebrations during Ramadan. In order to make the cinema and television experience available for everyone, there were also these military trucks that would carry big screens around the countryside and set them up in the villages."

Since then, the film industry in Syria has changed. In the early 1980s, the regime forbade the gathering of large groups of people in order to break the political opposition. This move hit the culture scene harder than anything else. Although the film industry continued as it always had in countries like Lebanon and Egypt, a part of the Syrian cultural soul was taken away. Damascus, which at one point had more than 50 cinemas, now have less than ten.

During his time at Damascus University, where he studied literature and drama studies, the regime imprisoned a number of politically active students — including al-Zouki. After his release he chose to emigrate to Norway and continue his education there. "I'm not a minority director as such. I’m a director from a minority," he says. "There’s a difference. Although many of my films focus on immigration issues, I look for them to be more than that. It’s open to interpretation, because I’m more interested in conveying the parts of the human existence that touch and inspire me, than making it complex and set in stone."

This is evident in his film The Wash: in one scene the twirling face of a washing machine shows a bloody US flag swirling inside. Al-Zouki tells me the idea came from the way a Christmas tree is decorated with flags in many countries — indeed, how an arranged set of colours and patterns can represent a whole nation of completely different individuals became a symbol for him. "For a short while, people stand united behind the same colours. So there’s an image that makes an impact, but it isn’t until later that the image takes on a human or political meaning in my mind."

Al-Zouki has always been good with pictures. From a young age he saw the connection between images and how films should work as a comfortable way to explore, and perhaps also expand the mind a bit, "I don’t necessarily mean that I have to focus on sad and tragic things to do this, but there are these situations with a different kind of beauty."

I wonder, then, how someone who grew up in the heat and dry air of the desert can find inspiration in the cold north. "It’s not easy," he confirms, haunted by the heat of the Syrian desert that will always be home. "Norway has beautiful nature, but the trees, the fjord and the snow? I can’t identify with that. There’s none of the inspiring chaos that you find in the Middle East, and the light in Damascus is something I’ll always return to. I write more, and Syria as a country with all it’s images and chaos translates extremely well onto the screen."

The drive for inspiration takes him back to Syria frequently. He also insists there’s a new generation of filmmakers emerging in the country, a movement that doesn’t care about official funding or the legalities of things. "They just want to make movies, so that’s what they’ll do. Just take what has happened in the past six months, there’s a potent energy in this generation which makes it able to do things well."

The Syrian film industry is poorly placed to make an entrance onto the international stage. Today, most of movies produced in the Middle East come from Egypt, where there is an established entertainment industry. But that doesn’t mean the future can’t be bright. "We can still be good if we’re small: just look at Scandinavia. Not many Scandinavian movies make it internationally, but that’s not what people want." And it doesn’t seem to be what Syrians want either — rather, he says, "they want films that they connect to, with themes they recognize." In an exceptional year, the industry produces about eight movies, funded both by the government and the private sector. "Many of them take on a Russian feel, we have many directors who are educated there. But the lack of directors have never been the problem, the way the industry is, it’s difficulties nowadays, it might just be a coincidence though."

The industry has taken a hit from the availability of satellite dishes that has increasingly become the route to entertainment in the Middle East. Especially during Ramadan, drama series take centre stage and draw people away from traditional entertainment such as film and theatre. Commonly referred to in the region as Mussalsal, these types of series pose a threat to the more established but less funded Syrian film industry, although both sectors are suffering due to the economic impact of recent unrest in the country. But, as al-Zouki points out, a television series will never be able to truly recreate the same magic that emerges from the dusky light of a movie theatre.

"Going to see a movie should be a ritual. Good films aren’t boring, you don’t check the time to see when it’s ending, you just enjoy it. Cinema Paradiso is like that, and The Godfather."