Camera vs. Murder: Syrian Revolution Shapes New Wave of Documentary Films

Update: Syrian activist and filmmaker Bassel Shhadeh was killed on May 28, 2012. One of his major works was Saturday Morning Gift, a short film based on an interview with a Lebanese child who survived the 2006 war in Lebanon.
The internet is not short of video clips documenting the Syrian revolution. These videos have become an effective tool for fighting the complete information blackout imposed by the regime. For television and other media, they have provided a major source of evidence of the regime’s crimes, especially the stories of torture that the security forces have inflicted on unarmed Syrians.

Activists have used every available means – from mobile phones to small cameras – to record the film footage and challenge this oppressive regime. For its part, the regime regards what they are doing as more dangerous than armed resistance, and pursues, arrests and tortures them. But this has not deterred these rebels, who see their principal task as being to confront the Syrian regime by showing the world the brutality and tyranny it has perpetrated with its arrests, raids, bombardments and torture.
The official Syrian media have tried to present a different picture of events – one that fits with the government’s conspiracy theory.
This in turn has driven several filmmakers to make documentaries about areas where security was worst, despite the ferocity of the crackdown. These films told the story of areas in distress, of the people who were part of the revolutionary movement, and of the torments they endured. Some of these films may not have measured up to the standards of professional filmmaking, but they nonetheless they paved the way for more flexible rules for making documentaries, rules that reflect the current difficult circumstances and the lack of adequate equipment.
One of these movies is Nasheed Al-Baqa’ – Al- Waar   (The Canticle of Survival – Al-Waar), filmed secretly in the area of Al-Waar near Homs during Ramadan in 2011. The film features testimonies from several residents, including the goalkeeper of the Syrian national youth football team, Abdel Baset al-Sarout. Sarout led several anti-regime demonstrations and wrote revolutionary songs that were picked up protesters everywhere in Syria.
Tahreeb Thalatha wa ‘ishreen Daqiqa (Smuggling 23 Minutes) was filmed by an activist in the city of Hama. He went into the city with his camera despite the danger from snipers, and made the film just before the regime’s “shabbiha” militia arrived.
In the past few months, newer documentary films have adhered more to professional standards. The makers of these films realised that what they were creating was more than just raw news footage to be used by television stations; they were producing historical documents.
One good example is Dawwar Ash-Shams – Al-Rastan (Sunflowers – Al-Rastan), filmed by a female film director who defied the siege and the heavy bombardment that targeted the town of Rastan near Homs. It tells the stories of activists who were targeted by security forces, and of the use of torture against the sick in the prisons as well as hospitals. The story also features the testimonies of soldiers who had defected from the regular forces. One of them was a lieutenant who defected the day before he was killed. The film shows his funeral as well as an evening demonstration in honour of him and his family and in support for the besieged city of Hama.
Since day one, the Syrian revolution has caught the attention of foreign journalists and filmmakers, many of whom entered the country in secret in order to support the people in a revolution for freedom and dignity, and to carry the voice of activists to the outside world.
Despite the dangers they faced, including the risk of being killed, these filmmakers made a number of documentaries that were widely circulated in the western media, and were used by human rights organisations to document the crimes of the Syrian regime.
An example of these films is French journalist Sofia Amara’s Syria: Inside the Repression, which she made in the first month of the revolution. Amara moved from province to province s to tell the stories of people in cities under siege. In Homs, she filmed demonstrations and the preparations that preceded them, and met with officers in Rastan who launched the Free Syrian Army. After that, she went to Hama to document the regime’s brutal bombmardment of civilians, and also met families of the victims of the 1982 crackdown, who were buried in public parks.
This film and many others became part of the revolutionary movement as they filled television screens and social media websites.
This experience has altered the concept of documentary cinema. Syrian directors are now coming up with new methods to keep pace with the people’s struggle against a repressive regime that has ruled them for 40 years. It is a fresh start for filmmakers as they rid themselves of the terror that kept their camera lenses close for so long, and left documentary films to disappear inside the offices of government censors.