The act of filming takes on special meaning during times of war, Charif Kiwan, Syrian filmmaker and co-founder of the Abounaddara Collective, said on Monday.
The collective’s films, titled "Syria: A History of Snapshots in the Making," were presented on Monday night. The screening was followed by a question-and-answer session with Kiwan.
The collective is a group of anonymous, volunteer Syrian filmmakers, and the term "abounaddara" is a nickname for a man with glasses. Each week, the group releases a short video on the Internet depicting the ongoing revolution in Syria from the perspective of everyday individuals. The group began operating about a year or two before the civil war but could not publish anything due to censorship.
“Many people in Syria’s names are connected with their job, so we wanted to put the filmmaker inside society," Kiwan said. "Abounaddara is the man with the camera. ...When we go to film somebody in Syria, people are so generous with us. They are lovely in our films. They protect us and they consider us their defenders.”
The only individuals who are hesitant to speak with Abounaddara are those who are pro-regime because they are afraid, he said, adding that the collective’s goal wasn’t to advocate for a specific ideological agenda.
"We are not polemical. We are radical, but we respect diversity and the complexity of the society,” he explained. “The crime is still unfolding, so we have to give you fragments and leave the story unfinished. The idea is to give you an idea of the history in the making.”
Kiwan added that the filmmakers are kept deliberately anonymous in order to present a more candid view of daily life amid a war.
Scenes in the film include hopeful and disillusioned revolutionaries, women challenging traditional societal roles, a young boy speaking of his brother’s beheaded friend, events celebrating Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and individuals and graffiti condemning him.
“We hate heroes. We are dealing with a revolution and also with a crime against humanity," Kiwan said. "We have to be humble. We have to represent our society and we don’t have the right to embody our revolution in one place or through one character. The idea is to show that we have a society that is struggling against the state, so we have to show you many characters, women and men."
Abounaddara purposefully does not show much of the violence of the revolution.
"We don’t ask for your pity. We are struggling, we are trying to change our society and we don’t have to ask pity," Kiwan said. "If you want to speak about love, you don’t have to show sexual penetration. It’s exactly the same with war and revolution. We consider that we don’t have the right to show those images. We have to respect the image of the Syrian people."
He added that the entire operation depends on individual filmmakers, who have their own cameras and computers and donate their time and money to make the project possible.
"Our idea was to use the internet to tell the stories we wanted to tell," he said.
Kiwan added that the collective is still releasing a video every week and is able to film nearly everywhere in Syria except for the coast.
The screening and question-and-answer session took place in the East Pyne Building Auditorium and were sponsored by the Transregional Institute.
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