The unfinished documentary

 

A tribute to Omar Amiralay

February, 10, 2011

(All direct quotes were taken from media statements and interviews with Omar Amiralay)

A few days ago, the dust of Damascus embraced the body of the great documentary filmmaker Omar Amiralay who passed away suddenly on February 5, aged 67. Amiralay directed 20 documentary films, all of which captured – through the eye of a committed artist and an independent-minded intellectual – the social and political changes in Syria over the past four decades.

Most of his work is banned in Syria and only available on social networking websites. ‬ As highly recognised his work might be in terms of professionalism and artistry, it does not fully represent the full spectrum of his character as an intellectual and political activist.

With his sudden departure, Amiralay left many unanswered questions in the hearts and minds of thousands of Syrians who looked up to him as a man who dared to be an open critic and sought guidance from him for their political, intellectual and artistic activities. Many activists saw in him a reliable partner for a number of events in recent years through which they took a stand on internal public affairs. Just days before his death he signed, along with a number of Syrian intellectuals, a statement praising the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.

A utopian and brave generation

Amiralay belonged to a generation of Syrians who believed in “changing the world around him with the power of ideas and imagination, not through the force of money or arms,” as he once said.

He belonged to a generation that was “utopian, brave […] despite the mistakes it made and its short-sightedness and terrible follies in politics and sociology”.

A generation charged with ideology that was betrayed by the realities of politics, culture and society.

“We may have been defeated regarding the ideas in which we believed. But as an individual, I was not defeated, nor was I defeated with regard to my work, which is not subject to temporary or transient conditions,” he said.

Perhaps these words summarise the experience of Amiralay, as part of a generation and as an individual. Or, in other words, as someone who started out as a leftist who believed too strongly in a holistic ideology and became an intellectual individual who made well-defined political and social choices.

The Arab trauma of 1967

Amiralay considered the Arab defeat in 1967 against Israel the trauma that brought to live “his consciousness of reality”. And yet he never made a single film about Palestine. He did not join the official path that makes the Arab-Israeli conflict a top priority.

Instead, he sided with the real battle for freedom and dignity in his country Syria.

The youth revolution of May 1968 in France was another important milestone for his politicisation. There lay the roots of his conviction that “to be able to exercise my right to free election one day in my country before I die is the simplest of rights”.

Amiralay dedicated the majority of his documentaries to the Syrian reality with special focus on the stark contrast between the totalitarian speech of the Baath party and the actual social, political, economic and cultural reality in the country.

In the documentary “Daily life in a Syrian village”, ironically produced by the General Institute for Cinema in Syria in 1974, we hear the voice of the secretary of the Baath Party division in the village of Moelh in the east Syrian province of Deir Ezzor, repeating the permanent Baath rhetoric: change the reality of society radically.

At the same time the camera moves around and shows a different picture: scenes of poverty, mud houses, ragged clothes, food barely enough to survive.

Artist as much as activist

In the 2003 movie “A Flood in Baath Country”, a child, when asked what the Baath party taught it, answers, trembling, “self-confidence”. We also hear the voice of a teacher telling his students about the significance of a story they are reading. “Even small pets understand the meaning of freedom, so what do you expect from the human being?” he says.

Amiralay, artist as much as activist, contributed to the democratic opposition movement in Syria, starting with the publication of the “Statement of 99”, a manifesto signed by 99 prominent intellectuals, artists and professionals in September 2000 calling for more political participation on all levels of Syrian society.

But the movie director who dreamed of changing reality did not live to see the decline of totalitarian Baathist rule in his country.

He did not live to witness the fall of the veil imposed on the truth by a police state.

The days during which he finally could, this time in his own region, watch a new youth revolution beginning to sweep tyranny away were his final days.

But who knows: perhaps just before his death Amiralay was dreaming of a new film. One about the growing protests in the Arab world and the role of young people, a film about how intellectuals in his country achieve their dreams of free access to the ballot box. A film in which, finally, all the words would match their images.