Chad Elias and Zaher Omareen

Syria’s Imperfect Cinema

Events on the ground in Syria have formed a backdrop for a new sensibility in the democratisation of digital documentary filmmaking. While some footage bears witness, others delve deeper into moral issues and make more cohesive aesthetic statements

No matter how fuzzy, distorted, or discoloured, no matter how lacking in documentary value the image may be, it proceeds, by virtue of its genesis, from the ontology of the model; it is the model. (André Bazin)

One of the most significant aspects of the wave of protests and uprisings that began in Syria in 2011 has been the use of the mobile phone camera as a tool for documentation, political activism and creative expression. With professional journalists and major news networks barred from entering the country, Syrian citizens have taken it upon themselves to record their own protests and the violent reactions they have provoked from members and supporters of the Assad regime. For the most part, the amateur footage uploaded by anonymous protesters has been notable for its seeming disregard for notions of ‘quality’, be they aesthetic or journalistic.

Made with limited technical means and very often under the threat of death, these grainy, pixelated and shaky handheld videos stand in marked contrast to the iconic images associated with the Egyptian revolution. That there are, of course, no CNN or Al Jazeera camera crews in Deraa, Homs or Kafranbel, nor any conventional heroes or plotlines that follow the entertainment media logic of ‘storybook justice’ in visual and narratological terms, attests to the authenticity of the filmed event or testimony.

Since the beginning of the Syrian uprising, it has been estimated that more than 300,000 videos have been uploaded onto YouTube and other open-access sites. During the first few months of protests, these were virtually the only images coming out of Syria. Shot from the perspective of those directly involved in the uprising, these videos provided an invaluable record of a society undergoing a historic upheaval. From our point of view, the importance of this archive lies not only in its documentary value or in the new audiovisual language to which it gives form – one that includes techniques of direct cinema and eyewitness reportage – but also in the intimate and defiantly human snapshots of ‘everyday’ life that make use of filmic devices.

While there are countless examples that defy classification or blur the boundaries between genres, the videos and films produced by Syrian protesters can be roughly divided into three main categories: spontaneous and semi-spontaneous videos (amateur filmmakers); semi-professional documentary movies (non-professional filmmakers); and made-for-television and cinema documentary films (professional filmmakers). These divisions are not clear-cut or absolute, and we can find several points of overlap and internal differentiation within and across the three categories. However, the videos and films in circulation point to the development of a mobile aesthetic or style that we believe is unique to the Syrian uprising.

Amateur mobile phone videos

Many such videos were shot spontaneously by protesters on mobile phones and concealed cameras during the first months of the civil uprising. The main purpose of the videos was to show other Syrians and the outside world what was happening in parts of the country to which the media had been denied access. These videos are not premeditated, but are often the result of a contingent set of circumstances. Following the onset of the armed insurgency, protesters started consciously filming scenes such as abductions, torture, shootings and the aftermath of the bombings of residential spaces. The videos were then distributed primarily as evidence of the human rights violations by the Syrian regime. Most often shot in one take, without rehearsals and with limited technical means, these clips disregard aesthetic considerations such as lighting, framing and picture quality.

Over time, digital video cameras provided by Syrian donors and international organisations (such as Avaaz) that support activists around the world replaced mobile phones, resulting in the production of better-quality images that were distributed to international news networks and satellite television stations. Cameraman-activists also played a very important role as part of Local Coordinating Committee activities. Some common features of these videos include shaky, pixelated images and ambient sound, filmmaker body language and space-time proofs (such as placards showing the time and location of a video).

Among the most astounding mobile phone videos distributed on the Internet are those showing the abduction or torture of citizens targeted by the regime. One particularly harrowing video uploaded on YouTube records a middle-aged man being forced into the back of a car by a mob of security forces in Aleppo. He’s shouting defiantly, even though he is hopelessly outnumbered. Some of the local Shabiha, those groups of armed men in civilian clothing who act as mercenaries for the regime, assist with the arrest; others look on. About halfway through the video, we hear people chanting: ‘Leave him! Leave him!’ However, it is impossible to match the sound to the images we are seeing below on the street. Here, the cameraman is strictly a witness to the abduction, as he or she does not allow his/her own emotions to have any impact on the video.

In another mobile phone video, a man in an apartment gasps in terror as he watches two women being dragged kicking from the street by security forces. He is filming the whole thing on his cell phone, but he’s powerless to stop it from happening. Watching this video, we, too, are placed in the position of the paralysed witness. What will likely happen to these people? Will they be tortured, imprisoned, killed? We don’t know, and the video certainly doesn’t provide any immediate answers to these questions. The audiovisual language does, however, provide us with non-spoken information via the whispered voice of the cameraman, his frightened breathing and the shaky image – all of which, we might assume, reflect his fear (possibly of being arrested and executed for filming the scene).

One length of footage shot on a mobile phone carries the following description: ‘Filming al-Zahra Square to compare with old Homs.’ By simply zooming in and out from an apartment window, the cameraman sets up a jarring contrast between the scenes of ‘normal life’ (traffic, people on the street) in a neighbourhood that supports the regime juxtaposed with the terror experienced by anti-regime residents of the adjoining neighbourhoods. The ambient sound of shelling positions us within the space not as detached observers, but as embodied witnesses.

The film critic and curator Rasha Salti contends that the videos produced by insurgents are ‘at war’ with their regime counterparts: ‘The first speaks the language of emancipation (speaking, doing, and recording what the regime has prohibited), and the second speaks the language of fear (uninhibited administration of violence and the threat of social collapse and chaos).’1 There is no doubt some truth to this, but oppositions of this kind become problematic when we consider the ways in which amateur mobile phone videos made by members and supporters of the regime significantly depart from the highly controlled form and content of state media.

One example of numerous videos shot by pro-regime solders or Shabiha is a video captured by mobile phone during a battle. A young man is trapped in a building surrounded by insurgents, and quickly records what he thinks may be his last words. It’s a genuinely moving portrait of human frailty. Here again, the unscripted moment undermines the unflinching image that the regime uses to portray itself.

Semi-professional documentaries and short films

Some short films made by activists experiment with cinematic tropes and techniques. In these instances, semi-professional filmmakers try to document stories and testimonies that serve neither as material for news agencies nor as evidence of human rights violations. Rather, these videos use allegory, satire and humour to express a range of affective states or experiences that resist straightforward documentation. The distinguishing features of these films include editing (montage), zoom and different focal effects, voiceover and non-diegetic sound (i.e. sound that does not have its source visibly onscreen).

Centred on daily life, these films are built around interviews with subjects. The resulting narratives rely more on story structure than on event structure (the discourse). In some cases, the filmmakers develop an interplay between present and past, moving between high-definition footage and amateur videos shot at an earlier stage in the uprising. We could say these videos have a structure similar to media reports, but it is also essential that we recognise them as a platform for Syrian video-activists to improve their audiovisual skills. The activists were supported by several film collective initiatives such as Bidayyat, Kayani, Waw Alwasel and Ashar3, which provided funds and workshops for amateur filmmakers in Syria as well as the means to distribute their work.

One example of work in this category was produced by Bidayyat (‘Beginnings’ in Arabic). One of its short films, We Are Still Alive, offers an understated meditation on the reclamation of everyday life as an act of resistance. The video features interviews with vendors preparing and selling food on the streets of a newly liberated part of Aleppo. ‘Aren’t you afraid of the shelling?’ a man asks one of the vendors. ‘Yes,’ he replies, ‘but I rely on God’s will.’ At another stall, a merchant in his twenties explains that he sells sweets and small flashlights that are used to cope with the frequent power cuts in the city. The movement of the camera is slow and steady, which suggests a conscious move away from the haptic aesthetic of mobile phone videos shot by amateurs. Shot in high-definition video, We Are Still Alive employs cinematic effects such as zoom, dissolve and slow motion to create a visually appealing image of streetlife.

Professional documentaries

This category, which emerged tentatively at the beginning of the revolution (e.g. Wa’er and Hama ’82) and became more overt later, includes movies produced and directed by professional filmmakers. It includes some short films, but is mostly made up of thirty- to fifty-minute documentaries that are broadcast on Arab television networks and shown at film festivals. Here the focus is not only on everyday life or individual experiences and emotions, but rather on events of larger political significance. Less concerned with cinematic expression, these documentaries weave narrative and ideologically driven snapshots from various parts of the Syrian uprising.

Questions of quality

The videos made by everyday Syrians provide an extraordinarily direct insight into the lived experience of the uprising. Yet as we have noted earlier, the social and political significance of this category of media production does not consist only in its documentary value.

The amateur videos that Syrian citizens have uploaded constitute a new audiovisual language that is tied to the technological and aesthetic properties of the mobile phone. This is true even when, later, most of the activists, cameramen and filmmakers used or owned their own handycam or professional camera.

One of the most immediately notable characteristics of all the images generated by these devices is their low resolution. The contemporary hierarchy of images, Hito Steyerl reminds us, ‘is not only based on sharpness, but also and primarily on resolution’.2

To speak of low-resolution images is, therefore, implicitly to engage in a value judgment that ultimately privileges ‘high-definition’ visual quality naturalised in technologically advanced societies. The global proliferation of mobile phone video technology over the last decade has given rise to an image economy that increasingly serves to undermine the value, both economic and political, that is accorded to broadcast television and professional film and video production. In the developing countries of the Arab world, the mobile phone video is not only a means to challenge the technocratic image regime of authoritarian states; its use also calls into existence a new political subjectivity that is rooted in practices of embodied affectivity.

As the artist Thomas Hirschhorn points out, the un-verifiability of the mobile phone image ‘reflects today’s unclearness’.3 For obvious reasons, most of the videos circulated online remain anonymous. Furthermore, these files are uploaded onto the Internet and distributed through social media networks composed of disparate and conflicting interpretive communities. As with much of the digital sphere, discussion around the images shot by mobile phones is often characterised by suspicion, dissensus and evidentiary uncertainty. There is ultimately no way to ground these videos to an original intention or source. In fact, the very lack of a source leads us to question what form a politics of images would take in a digital media landscape that incessantly undermines the truth-value assigned to even the most seemingly unambiguous messages and events.

Rabih Mroué’s The Pixelated Revolution is a multimedia art performance that also doubles as an ‘unacademic lecture’, and invites us to see the low-resolution videos uploaded by Syrian protesters not as technically flawed or artistically deficient images but as polyvalent representations that are a product of the extraordinary conditions under which they were made. Here, the focus becomes those astonishing videos in which the person operating the camera inadvertently films his own shooting. While the video outlives the event, we cannot be sure if the person recording it is alive or dead.

Mroué sees these as a kind of degree-zero of documentary filmmaking. In this analysis, the degraded amateur digital image functions as a counter to the clear, professional images authorised by official institutions and other regulated systems of image production and transmission. In this regard, Mroué draws a fascinating comparison between the regime’s use of tripods to construct the illusion of a stable and unshakable political order and the fleeting or trembling images that are captured in protester mobile phone videos.4

The amateur videos made by citizens in the first six months of the uprising respond to an urgent need: to record events as they are happening. In most cases, there is little time to react, and much less space to explore questions of technique, audience address or formal experimentation. Yet in the hands of Syrian protesters, the mobile phone has given rise to an authentic and original language of audiovisual expression. The films produced and disseminated by collectives such as Abounaddara, Bidayyat and DO X BOX signal a crucial shift from extemporaneous documentation to a more reflective mode of filmmaking.

However, this second phase does not simply break from the first, but rather revises the adherence to direct and immediate documentation. What links both of these tendencies is a common commitment to filmmaking as a non-specialised and popular activity. Writing in Cuba in the late 1960s, Juan García Espinosa famously argued for an ‘imperfect cinema’, which he saw as a revolutionary alternative to the false lucidity attained by ‘technically and artistically masterful’ modes of film production.5 The imperfect cinema advocated by Espinosa is popular yet not consumerist, experimental but not elitist and politically committed without becoming dogmatic. Espinosa could not have foreseen the development of mobile phone video technology, but his argument resonates with the civic potential of new media in Syria today.

DOX BOX 2013: Citizen with a Movie Camera

Redefining documentary cinema

Founded in 2007 by filmmakers/producers Orwa Nyrabia and Diana Jeroudi, DO X BOX began life as the first non-profit and public documentary film festival in Syria. The main mission of the festival was to expose Syrian audiences to an international programme of creative documentaries made by independent filmmakers. Prior to the uprising, the festival had established itself as one of the most important creative platforms for contemporary filmmaking in the Arab world, with an impressive annual programme of lectures, symposia and workshops for Syrian filmmakers led by renowned figures such as D. A. Pennebaker, Kim Longinotto and Patricio Guzmán. With a focused unrestricted to Damascus, DO X BOX also organised screenings in regional locations such as Tartous and Homs. In 2012, DO X BOX announced that the festival ‘will not be held as usual around Syria, in a continuous protest against the ongoing massacre of the Syrian people’. The following year, it put together a selection of videos shot by amateur/activist filmmakers. Titled Citizen with a Movie Camera (in reference to filmmaker Dziga Vertov’s masterpiece Man with a Movie Camera), the programme reached more than thirty-five cities around the world. More than simply providing an alternative to the mainstream media’s image of Syria, this project has served to raise important questions about the relation between politics and aesthetics, documentary and fiction, action and image. As such, DO X BOX reflects the critical thinking that is at the essence of Syria’s cultural revolution.

Syrian Collective Filmmakers Abounaddara

Emergency Cinema

Abounaddara is a documentary filmmaking collective based in Syria. Founded in Damascus in 2010, it has served primarily as a digital platform for short films documenting the stories and experiences of ordinary Syrians. On 15 April 2011, one month after the first mass protests, Abounaddara published a manifesto titled Que Faire? (What Is to Be Done?) on its Facebook page, opening up the question of how artists and filmmakers might respond to a previously unimaginable revolt. As a group of largely self-taught filmmakers, Abounaddara is indicative of the new collectives that have emerged in the Syrian revolutionary cultural sphere. Committed to fostering what it calls ‘emergency cinema’, the company sees its films as part of an experimental documentary tradition that examines the human and subjective dimensions of the uprising. Indeed, for Abounaddara, experimental video production offers a radical alternative to the stereotypical and reductive image of Syrian society that is constructed by television. At the same time, the use of filmic tropes and techniques allows for a level of critical reflection that revises, or in some cases counters, the earlier emphasis placed on brute or immediate documentation. Indeed, the emphasis on film aesthetics consciously blurs the boundaries separating documentary and fiction works against the instrumentalised practice of news and information-gathering is exemplified in some forms of citizen-journalism. This cinematic turn also comes from a need to tell stories and relate experiences that are not directly related to the politics of the uprising. As Abounaddara explains in a recent interview with the political scientist Cécile Boëx, their programme of short weekly films was not about putting forward an ‘alternative truth’ but providing a platform for personal narratives and allegorical gestures ‘that would involve the audience in a human way’.6 Interestingly, Abounaddara sees its fellow Syrians as its primary audience, insisting that it must also speak to those segments of the population that have maintained their support for the regime.

1 Rasha Salti, ‘Shall We Dance?’, Cinema Journal, vol. 52, no. 1 (Fall 2012), p. 169.

2 Hito Steyerl, ‘In Defense of the Poor Image,’ e-flux, no. 10 (November 2009): n. p.; see www.e-flux.com/journal/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/

3 Thomas Hirschhorn, ‘Why Is It Important – Today – to Show and Look at Images of Destroyed Human Bodies?’, LA Triennale, Le Journal de La Triennale (2012): n. p.

4 Rabih Mroué, Ziad Nawfal and Carol Martin, ‘The Pixelated Revolution’, TDR: The Drama Review, vol. 56, no. 3 (Fall 2012).

5 Julio García Espinosa, ‘For an Imperfect Cinema,’ Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, no. 20 (1979), p. 24.

6 Cécile Boëx and Susannah Doyle, ‘Emergency Cinema: An Interview with Syrian Collective Abounaddar’, www.booksandideas.net/Emergency-Cinema.html