Life and Work
Amiralay studied in Paris at La Fémis, before returning to Syria in 1970. He thus had a different artistic formation from the majority of Syrian film-makers, who studied in the Soviet Union or in Eastern Europe.
His films include a trilogy of documentaries concerning the Tabqa Dam on the Euphrates. The first, Film Essay on the Euphrates Dam (1970), is a tribute to Syria's greatest development project, but the second and third take a more critical approach. Everyday Life in a Syrian Village (1974) shows the dam's ambiguous impact on the lives of ordinary people in a nearby village, and portrays their relationship with the authorities, seen as distant and disconnected from them. Amiralay revisited the region in 2003 with A Flood in Baath Country, which contains trenchant political criticism (it had the working title Fifteen reasons why I hate the Baath Party). Due to the films strong indictment of the regime, the film was removed from the Carthage Film Festival. In act of solidarity with Amiralay, Arab filmmakers Yousry Nasrallah, Annemarie Jacir, Nizar Hassan, Joana and Khalil Joreige, and Danielle Arbid subsequently pulled their films out of Competition to protest the festival's actions. As a result, A Flood in Baath Country was re-programmed and screened to enthusiastic crowds.
Another notable film was There Are So Many Things Still to Say, based on interviews with the Syrian playwright Saadallah Wannous recorded while the latter was dying of cancer. The film juxtaposes Wannous' remarks with scenes from Syria's wars against Israel and the Palestinian First Intifada, as the playwright recounts, with some regret for the lost opportunities that resulted, how the Palestinian struggle became a central part of intellectual life for an entire generation.
His other films include a portrait of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri, The Man with the Golden Soles, and one of French academic and student of Middle Eastern society Michel Seurat, murdered in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War, On a Day of Ordinary Violence, My Friend Michel Seurat....
Read more about this topic: Omar Amiralay
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or work:
“The deadly monotony of Christian country life where there are no beggars to feed, no drunkards to credit, which are among the moral duties of Christians in cities, leads as naturally to the outvent of what Methodists call “revivals” as did the backslidings of the people in those days.”
—Corra May Harris (1869–1935)
“It was always the work that was the gyroscope in my life. I don’t know who could have lived with me. As an architect you’re absolutely devoured. A woman’s cast in a lot of roles and a man isn’t. I couldn’t be an architect and be a wife and mother.”
—Eleanore Kendall Pettersen (b. 1916)