Critic preface
New Arab Cinema Time : dust and city moments

Is it Really Arab?! Is it really new ?! Many critics underplay the term “new” when it comes to cinema productions of a certain area or country, they also underplay the term “Arab cinema” itself. Some consider the term not scientific or even accurate, because it is not based on any production, cultural or environmental data, or common political and social data; it is merely a combination of diverse ideological ideas resulting from the era of ideas of unity, the same line, of dreams destroyed most by friends rather than enemies. I guess as always taken, the nearest and most specific labeling of any cinema is the one relating the produced film to its country’s cinematographic history, political and social identity, so there is : the Egyptian cinema, the Moroccan cinema and the Algerian cinema, and so on. However, even these descriptions are confusing and ambiguous in a context of new financing systems and evolving political mobility, for instance Moroccan or Algerian films are originally financed by French or European entities, the Lebanese films are mostly financed by UAE entities, and so on.
We can then conclude that the term is merely accepted not due to its production context, or directors nationalities, but due to the concerns included within the
experiences shown within the film, which means that it is labeled as Arab cinema because it involves concerns of Arab nature. So it may be called an Arab Cinema, not
due o the origin of its production, but it involves Arab concerns Therefore, we may find the Arab cinema term denotation satisfying , if we are willing to accept with opened minds and souls the common elements in the production or the attempts to renew the narration, time, characters, countries and places patterns forms.
Time and city
We have five films that may represent the real concept of the New Arab Cinema in its various forms of experience, within the beginnings of the twenty first century second decade. They are , the End / Al Nihaya, first long feature film by the Moroccan director, the oldest, and ending by the latest , “"El Wahrani" (native of Oran), by the Algerian director, Lyes Salem (2014), among others “Al Jumaa Al Akhira/last Friday ” by the Jordanian Yahia Al abdallah (2011),” Ossit Sawani (Blind Intersections) by the Lebanese director Lara Saba (2012) and “Sea Shadow/ Dhil al Bahr” by the Emirati director Nawaf Al-Janahi (2011)
The five experiences belong to directors nearly from the same generation and they are the first or second production of long feature films of their young creators, which means that they reflect their dreams, concerns and thoughts as a person and as part of an entire society /generation. In the five experiences, we find ourselves before some common elements representing the features of the visual and dramatic structure; we are concerned here in two aspects, which are time and city
Dust of times
The time represents a main element in drama narration and general visual context of any film. We are talking here about the dramatic time, and not the timeframe of scenes and shots, the main observation regarding the directors’ approach in terms of dramatic time in the said experiences is that quantitative presence of a few days versus the momentum of relations, numerous situations and characters. For instance, in “Al Nihaya”, the director starts as timeframe by the beginning of July, to the day king Hassan II of Morocco died, showing an apocalyptic mood similar to the countdown to Judgment Day , as if the details we are watching reflect a reality filled with ambiguity, anxiousness and mystery, as if they are signs of the Judgment Day (political and social wise) in relation to the death of King Hassan II In the film “Al Jumaa Al Akhira”, the story revolves around a father s waiting to go under the surgeon knife in a critical operation, and is living his last week which can
refer to the Holy Week. Friday here does not only refer to one day but to the whole life of this man who belongs to the deteriorating middle class that struggles in a country facing crises like its neighboring countries. We can see this same class for the first time on the big screen in “Dhil al Bahr”, a film leaving the big cities as Dubai and Abu Dhabi heading to Ras Al Khaimah , to the Freej communities, where lives the Gulf middle class away from the skyscrapers and luxurious cars, where people face economic and social crises similar to those of the same class in the non oil countries, and in a dense time context that we feel throughout the events of a few weeks.
However in “Ossit Sawani (Blind Intersections)” we are exposed to a fragmented temporal structure similar to the structure of the Mexican director, Inarritu, who influenced a whole generation of Arab directors, and we have seen such in more than a film experience in the last few years. The Mexican director approach in his films
depends on total fragmentation of temporal narration of the film events and the lives of its characters , as each is in his /her own world and time , though all living in the same city, all united by the end by an event that takes no more than a few seconds. However, you feel as if it encompasses all the moments of lives of the characters and their destinies in all one shot. Besides the time density aspect, the flash back element cannot be ignored as a temporal narrative and drama time pattern in the new cinematographic experiences. Though it is a traditional and standard element, it provides an open space to many experiences giving liberty to move back and forth in time, without being attached to the classical approach of recreating the past visually and dramatically. This is clear in El Wahrani" (native of Oran) movie by starting from a point in the present than leaping thirty years ahead. Attaining this high point as time frame, it starts by going through the memory lived events, till reaching the moment of climax in the lives of its three characters (the militant, the convert and the martyr), showing that the present is merely the produce of the past. One moment of surrender, transformation or corruption in the past leads to a consecutive never ending series of mistakes, withdrawals and faults. The consequences of such can influence a whole society, specifically the Algerian society after liberation and all other Arab societies, in which the national occupier took the place of the foreign
invader, where the opportunists and adventure seekers took advantage of the revolutions.
The city moments
The city represents a main element of the dramatic structure in the new Arab film experiences; it is clear in the five films that consist this year’s program, as the city is present as not only a place or the society that groups the characters but also as a temporal element. The present city in the scenes and shots is a denotation of the idea of now and here, which is a main intellectual element in the modern Arab cinema commerce. The relation between a film and a city can exceed the main title such as El Wahrani" (native of Oran), but the city can be a symbol of the country. The city in Ossit Sawani (Blind Intersections) is the present that regroups the film’s characters living in misery due to concerns and dreams that complete each other. While one of the characters is expecting her first child without whom her life would be incomplete, we can see another child feeling useless to his alcoholic mother involved in many relationships. In “Al Jumaa Al Akhira”, the city is there surrounding the father’s house which symbolizes his suffering, facing a stronger and wilder entity that is hard to face or overcome. He works as a taxi driver who goes throughout the city’s streets searching for money and he always loses his battle against the city as well as against his beautiful divorcée, which we can consider as the other side of the city with her arrogance, significantly beauty and pain expressing body.
In the end, the city gets out of the natural and realistic space into the mental image context that is a reflection of the real deformed society full of strange people shown in black and white. The end starts by the shot of a reversed tunnel in which the cars seem to run upside down, this long shot of the tunnel and the street lasts for a certain time, which makes us wonder if there is a problem with the film. However, we are before the main key for reading cinema material that the director gives us from the first shot. We are facing two main dramatic concepts, the first is the access to the under –world, where the events will happen and the second is the world reflection as if we are watching two worlds, the first is realistic and known and the second is just beneath it and shares the same ground. Thus, the characters and all the details seem upside down or a reflection in a mirror of the upper world. The city in the films “Al Jumaa Al Akhira” and in “Al Nihaya” is always silent, because it
represents a closed place of secrets or an impenetrable solid entity. However, in “Ossit Sawani (Blind Intersections)”, it is full of sounds and movements, in which it is easy to get lost, and their meeting in the end due to an accident , as if we only see each other after collision and calamity. In “Dhil al Bahr”, the city seems like a part of the characters’ reality, while seeking to get out of psychological and social crises. The city is the sea shadow on people. Though they like the sea as it symbolizes freedom and love, the city symbolizes the fences of traditions, the closed gates, the romantic disappointments and the strangers who represent a constant risk.

Ramy Abdelrazek