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01/07/2008: "Art Fairs, Education and the best film I’ve seen in years…" by Valerie Grove
The first part of this post kind of relates to some of the points in Michael Corbin’s post last week. In terms of art fairs, the UAE is now home to the two newest kids on the block, namely Art Paris-Abu Dhabi (see 6th December post) and Art Dubai. Both of these fairs have their critics (including myself to a certain extent) but a number of interesting local developments have emerged as a result, particularly in Dubai.
The first fair in Dubai last year demonstrated its corporate social responsibility (CSR) credentials by making the Al Madad Foundation http://www.almadadfoundation.org/ a major partner. A longstanding affiliation between the fair organisers and the UK based charity was used to raise funds, highlight issues of deprivation and ultimately to launch a brand new programme based in Dubai called START. http://www.startworld.org/index.html
“ ….an initiative to use the international language of art to heal, educate and enrich the skills and opportunities of children and young adults in devastated areas of the world.”
Essentially it links arts education to social development and serves as one of the only comprehensible means of therapy for children traumatised by conflict. For this reason its initial focus is on the Middle East region, particularly Lebanon and Palestine. One programme is under way in Beirut and there are plans for a programme in the Nahr Al Bared refugee camp.
Local artists are trained to teach the programme so the potential long-term result is a much stronger connection between art and community and all the benefits that brings in terms of developing local creative expression and arts infrastructure. Given that one of creators of the programme was a huge art fair, there is the added advantage of a permanent link back into an international platform.
Interestingly START is also running projects in Dubai itself. The crazy thing about art and the UAE is that the new fairs generate massive publicity, there are galleries sprouting up everywhere and it seems everyone wants a piece of the action. At the same time, there is almost no arts education in the national public school system and local native artists are almost invisible suggesting a danger of exclusion from their own nation’s sudden creative boom!
However, an awareness of this dilemma is beginning to take shape and START is ahead of the game where it has already run a few workshops involving local artists teaching local children in Dubai. It has also run programmes for children with special needs and for the Dubai Autism Centre including exhibitions of their work in cafes and other public spaces.
So the indigenous arts infrastructure and development is a little behind the curve at the moment but I have no doubt that the UAE government will catch up soon and fast!
Incidentally, it seems more local attention has been paid to filmmaking and in the recent Dubai International Film Festival there were about 10 short Emirati films. I reviewed these on my own blog last month so I won’t repeat them here, however, I would like to share Surya because I cannot remember the last time I saw such an innovative and original piece of filmmaking.
Although shown as a documentary in the Dubai Film Festival, Surya completely defies categorisation. It is a movie in its own right, a kind of non-fiction as fiction. It is an international odyssey, a cultural anthropological study and a humanist’s dream.
Surya’s underlying concept is a children’s game where a story is created as each child adds their own part to it. The filmmakers applied this concept to an international journey in which they travelled as far as they could over land without the need for boats or planes. This epic trip began in Belgium, took nine months and ended in Vietnam taking in Slovakia, Turkey, Syria, Kurdistan, Iran, Pakistan, India, Nepal Tibet and China on the way.
The film opened with a storyteller in Belgium who started the story off. In each subsequent country the filmmakers found a well-known local storyteller and asked them to continue the tale. Each of them added their own part to it until the story was complete.
It was an amazing trip and an amazing story that unfolded as the camera moved through Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Each new part of the tale was told in the language of the storytellers and in very different styles depending on where they were. Many of the storytelling traditions were accompanied by music and in some cases the story itself was sung rather than told. Sometimes the settings were quite informal and the additions to the tale quite spontaneous. At other times the stories were given very much as normal performances to local audiences. This was a particular delight in the case of Syria, Iran and India where you felt like you had been transported to that location and were part of that audience.
As well as the narrative thread of the ongoing story there was fascinating footage of border areas and passing scenes, including extra songs and performances from people encountered en-route. The visual splendour of many locations in terms of landscape and colour, plus the palpable excitement of all those participating, added to the feeling that you too were part of something very special.
In the Q and A at the end the filmmakers said this project had been regarded as too risky to secure funding so they ended up making it largely at their own expense. Since production the response has been much better but at present the film is only showing in festivals, universities and small art house cinemas. It really should be put on general release. Not only because it's a fantastic film but also because it demonstrates that positive and innovative interpretations of what globalisation can be are still possible. It is also a welcome reminder of our common creativity and humanity, a fact not reflected in contemporary political and economic reality for some time.
SURYA
Belgium/2006/Dutch, French, Turkish, Arabic, Farsi, Hindi, Nepali, Chinese, Vietnamese & Roma dialogue with English subtitles/Colour/35mm/76 mins
Director: Laurent Van Lancker (Polymor Films) http://www.polymorfilms.be/
