Scene from Roshima.| Photo courtesy of DOXA.
Zeina Zahreddine has been working in the independent Lebanese film industry for more than 10 years. She’s managed different projects to bring new ideas and perspectives from the Arab World to audiences. She is focused particularly on the Arab Spring movement and tried to give voice internationally to that huge political and social change.
As a guest curator, Zahreddine will be presenting her essay Arab Spring/Arab Fall during the Doxa festival.
Vancouver’s reaction
Zahreddine moved to Vancouver two years ago. She had a very good reaction from the audience during the Vancouver International Women in Film Festival 2016 when she introduced the short movie The Girl Whose Shadow Reflects the Moon directed by Syrian refugee Jordan Walaa Al Alawi.
“The quality of the questions and the interest was an eye-opener,” Zahreddine explains.
“Vancouver, maybe more than any other city, is open and welcoming to others and has its own way of making you feel at home. I had a wonderful experience in DOXA 2015 during the screening of the documentaryFrom My Syrian Room by Hazem Elhamwi,” Zahreddine explains.
Considering these very good precedents, the opening of a dedicated film festival seems the natural next step, but Zahreddine doesn’t think that would be the path to take to help Arab films in North America.
“This might sound surprising but I am not an advocate for adding more festivals. A festival dedicated to Arab cinema is not a project I would pursue. I would rather invest my time in building relationships and friendships with already established festivals in North America around good films instead of becoming a competitor fighting over funding and audiences,” says Zahreddine.
Defeating stereotypes through dialogue
One of the obstacles Zahreddine constantly faces while promoting Arab films in North America is stereotyping. She says that finding films that challenge status-quos, social, and religious beliefs is her approach to the problem.
“The Arab identity is heavily stereotyped in Mass Media in North America and that’s why promoting noteworthy Arab films becomes more than an artistic endeavour. It becomes a need in order to open a fruitful dialogue right now,” she says.
After the Arab Spring turned the Arab World upside down, Zahreddine has noticed a change in the way Arab independent filmmakers think and shoot their movies.
“There is a growing independent cinema that is freeing itself from ideologies and bigger-than-life issues or events and showing a genuine interest in the individual and the story,” she says.
Work in Progress
Zahreddine is currently working on a new project, producing the new documentary from Hazem Elhamwi. The working title is Childhood Place.
“My new project is a journey into Sufi poetry that has survived in the oral tradition in Syria’s rural communities. Sufism transcended the relationship with the Creator from Judge and Punisher to Beloved. Diving into this paradigm will hopefully provide insight into what is happening right now in Syria and other areas in the world,” Zahreddine explains.
The idea behind Childhood of Place is that places, like human beings, carry memories that can influence future decisions and future events. Purging the bad memories from people and cities alike is the only way to come to peace with what happened in the past and build new hope.
“Places can be heavy with past wars, massacres and violence and unless we make peace with their history, places will dictate their future and violence will be perpetrated,” she says.
Dialogue between different cultures as an antidote to violence is central to Zahreddine’s works.
“An Arab quote that I like goes like this: ‘I am the enemy of what I don’t comprehend.’ So let’s make an effort to understand each other. Hopefully walls will collapse and hostility will end,” she says.
For more information, visit
www.doxafestival.ca.
