This was demonstrated in the movie Al-Lail (“The Night,” 1992), directed by Mohamed Malas, and in the deconstruction of the relationship between political and familial authority in 1988’s Nujum al-Nahar (“Daytime Stars”), directed by Osama Mohammed. It was also seen in the approach to the hardships faced by marginalized Syrian communities as a result of the regime’s tyranny in the 1974 documentary film Daily Life in a Syrian Village, by the late Omar Amiralay and Saadallah Wannous.
Symbolism, and the use of allusion and metaphor to represent reality, are all at the heart of cinematic work and the structure of motion pictures. They were also, however, ways for Syrian filmmakers to bypass censorship and examine its consequences, in terms of distrust in the general project of the Ba’ath Party, which had come to power through a revolution that Syrians had hoped would bring a social revival and renaissance. This could be seen in Omar Amiralay’s 1970 film, An Attempt About the Euphrates Dam, which celebrated the building of the dam on the Euphrates as an achievement of the ruling Ba’ath Party.
The film won the short documentary award at the 1972 Damascus International Youth Film Festival. This encouraged the National Film Organization to produce Daily Life in a Syrian Village, which was later banned.
The authorities and their censors realized that filmmakers had a critical view of society and politics, providing an image conflicting with that desired by the Ba’ath Party. This led the latter to tighten its control over filmmakers. The organization witnessed divisions and disagreements between filmmakers and the administration, which adopted the stance of the authorities. As a result, directors such as al-Maleh, Malas, and Amiralay stopped working with the organization, though they did not stop making films, and continued with their forward-looking vision of the reality of life in Syria during the decades of Ba’athist rule.
In this context came films such as 2002’s Sunduq al-Dunya, in which Ossama Mohammed further deepened the deconstruction of the relationship between the structure and fragmentation of the family, and the submission to the authority of religious heritage in parallel with political power. As for the 2003 film, A Flood in Baath Country, Omar Amiralay exposed the fragility of the Party’s slogans. The dreams of a socialist, progressive society are thus shown in utter contradiction with a miserable, backward reality, with pictures of the supreme leader raised over this spiritual and social wreckage.
“In 1970, I was in favor of modernizing my country, Syria, at any cost. Even if the price was to dedicate my first film to praising one of the ruling Baath Party’s achievements, building the Euphrates Dam. Today, I blame myself for what I did.”
This is how Amiralay introduced his last film, A Flood in Baath Country, which, in reflecting his experience over the course of 33 years, also captured the experiences of his generation of Syrians under the Ba’ath Party’s rule.
Amiralay’s experience was a special case among his peers within the world of Syrian cinema, in terms of his commitment to the documentary form, and the shocking and candidly critical view of reality presented by his films, which highlighted marginalized and oppressed individuals and their dialectical relationship with power.
After the revolution
These films influenced a later wave of young filmmakers, who found themselves outside of the governmental organization and its working mechanisms, which were inconsistent with their ambitions. With the emergence of video technology and the possibilities it afforded them to produce films of an independent nature, in terms of production and thought, a new wave of filmmakers was formed in Syria at the start of the new millennium, establishing the concept of independent cinema.
However, the deluge of images that emerged from Syria after the outbreak of the revolution, and the nature of these images (which became a part of the conflict taking place in the country), would have given a new dimension to Robert Bresson’s statement. It would have taken it outside the technical framework and the material condition of the film-making process, towards urgent questions about the role and nature of the image in a time of political and social transformations, and how to approach these transformations by formulating a discourse that favors marginalized people during war, and towards forming an inclusive political awareness.
The Syrian film scene post-2011 brought about a radical change in the form of films that appeared after the revolution, in terms of images, and the topics addressed. Without doubt, this change was linked to the essence of the revolutionary movement, through the attempts by protesters and activists to broadcast live images from the streets, despite the difficulties and dangers that ultimately cost many of them their lives.
The beginning of this phase witnessed a particular pattern of videos coming out of the streets of rebellious cities and neighborhoods. Their purpose was limited to transmitting daily events and specifying the locations and slogans of demonstrations, in response to the silence and media lockdown imposed by the regime.
Many of the videos filmed on protesters’ camera-phones were basic and low-resolution, conveying only the event as experienced by the protester-videographer. What distinguished the images was their boldness and spontaneity, and their desperate attempts to affirm the cohesion of the masses in the streets, and the harmonious movements of their bodies, whether swaying in chants, dancing to the melodies of revolutionary anthems, or running away from shots fired by security forces.
It wasn’t long before the need arose to liberate these images from the power of the medium itself too, by combining video clips within stories describing the revolution and uprising in the streets, creating films and narratives aimed at conveying the events.
For its part, the National Film Organization continued to produce films—mostly feature films—that presented a narrative consistent with that of the authorities. Official media also retained its image through the use of professional cameras on tripods, which transmitted images from various Syrian provinces and cities claiming that the situation was stable and the regime was unshaken by the mere protests of a group of infiltrators and rioters.