Shot in the dark
A year of filming dangerously.
Two recent markers involving documentary filmmaking made the headlines in Pakistan this year. First, an Oscar short-listing for Saving Face, Pakistani filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy’s investigation into acid violence in Pakistan and second, Secret Pakistan, the BBC’s two-part documentary focusing on Pakistan’s alleged links with the Taliban in Afghanistan from producer-director Edward Watts. While one was cause for celebration, the other ruffled feathers.
It is no secret that Edward Watts’ Secret Pakistan landed the BBC in a bit of a soup in Pakistan. The NATO attack in Salala, which killed 24 Pakistani officers, dramatically changed the atmosphere in the country, and the Cable Operator’s Association decided to switch the channel off for promoting “anti-Pakistan propaganda.” Secret Pakistan, which was the purported reason for the ban, bases its hypothesis largely on the revelations of alleged Afghan Taliban, and certainly its findings are hardly new or surprising. The documentary aired well before the attacks and the BBC ‘ban’ but, in the larger scheme of things, the Cable Operators’ Association are probably pawns in a more complicated chess game.
I had contacted Watts much before the hullabaloo to be part of this piece, but as the voices in Pakistan became louder, he told me he “was not in a position to comment” on the film though he spoke about his work as a documentary filmmaker. Overlooked in the din is the fact that Secret Pakistan is just one of the two films made by the director in Pakistan this year. The other, Defenders of Karachi, broadcast as part of Channel Four’s “Unreported World Series”, focuses squarely on how tough it is for ambulance drivers and police officers to keep one of the world’s most tumultuous cities functioning on a daily basis.
Documentary filmmaking, especially if you choose to work in volatile parts of the world, or with politically contentious subjects, is an equally dangerous profession. Filmmakers who choose to cross unchartered territories court both opposition and occasional contempt. Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy speaks of the time she was filming a documentary on Saudi women and was refused a hotel room unless she got a certificate of morality from the police. And Egyptian director Amr Salama, who co-directed a documentary (Tahrir 2011: The Good, the Bad and the Politician) on the crucial 18 days of his country’s all too brief Arab Spring, speaks of the rising conservatism in his country and the “censorship of the people” being as restrictive as that of a dictator.
The idea for this feature, however, originated from a brief talk with Nick Broomfield, long-time documentary guru, whose film on the former Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, You Betcha, Sarah Palin chronicles his failed attempts to get the maverick tea-partier to sit down for an interview. I met Broomfield during the showing of his film at the 55th BFI London Film Festival, where he outlined the dangers of the evangelical revival in US politics. It was not, he pointed out, just about Sarah Palin, even if she did encompass all that was wrong with Republican politics.
Later during the Festival, I also spoke to Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega, filmmakers whose nuanced documentary Better This World, about two young American protestors subsequently jailed as “terrorists” through the testimony of an FBI informant, brings into sharp focus the vagaries of American life in a paranoia-ridden post 9/11 world. It is a world where the plight of home-grown dissenters sheds light on how many Muslims have been entrapped by FBI informants in the decade since the Twin Towers crumbled in New York City.
Questioning — as most of the filmmakers and journalists I spoke to agreed — is very much part of documentary filmmaking. The best filmmaking isn’t that eager to provide answers. But it always aims to ask the right questions, or as Kelly Duane de la Vega says: “to put it out there.” But asking uncomfortable questions compels societies to look at themselves a reason why investigative documentaries can prove unpopular in closed communities and countries that feel they have been placed under a magnifying glass. Journalist Adil Ray, whose recent investigation on sexual grooming of young white girls by British Pakistani men involves looking into an extremely dark mirror, is adamant that self-reflection is part of growing up. He feels that sweeping the dirt under the carpet is not an option.
Each one of the documentary filmmakers I spoke to had a story to tell. This time, their own. A look into why filmmakers and journalists put themselves on the line every day to tell you what you sometimes may not care to know
EDWARD WATTS
Producer/Director/Cinematographer (British)
Recent documentaries: Secret Pakistan (BBC), Defenders of Karachi (Channel Four)
To what extent are scripts pre-written for political documentaries? Do you have a perspective to start off with, and then you find the documentation and evidence for it or do you build it on the basis of what you learn during the filming?
I would say all sorts of documentaries are different. Lots of directors set out with a very clear script in mind about how they want to put a film together. That’s not how I work. In all the programs I’ve worked on, we are given a topic and are free to explore it. So it is very much based on what the interviewees tell us. The story is shaped as we go, on what we are told, what we discover. It’s an organic, evolutionary process. As you move forward, you begin to get an idea of what witnesses are saying. Then you narrow it down and get an idea of what your film is about.
So how is the way you work different from somebody who comes from a very specific and assertive perspective, like Michael Moore for instance?
Well, Michael Moore is the complete opposite. His films are argued pieces, where he has an argument and he finds the evidence to support it. Whereas the documentaries I do are based on telling stories. Most people look at Michael Moore and see it as his point of view. My documentaries are explorations. It’s not about putting our own words in front of the camera; it’s more about what people are telling us.
What was it like filming in Pakistan? What memories have you brought back with you?
I made two programs about Pakistan this year. The first one, Defenders of Karachi, was about an ambulance driver called Mohammed Salim working for Edhi and a very brave police officer, Nasrullah Khan. I really loved Pakistan; I found it a fascinating place and had a really warm welcome from the ordinary people there. And the bravery of people like Salim and Nasrullah was extraordinary to me. Against all the odds, they were doing amazing work. We were sleeping on the floor of the Edhi call centre and they were just so kind to me. They managed such a great sense of humour in trying circumstances. And then I met a lot of people with whom I had such open, frank and intelligent discussions. When anyone asks me about Pakistan, I always say how I was simply bowled over by the people. Those are the stories I like to tell, along with the tough investigative ones.
What was it about Pakistan that drew you in? How is it you were commissioned for two documentaries in a year? Were you linked to Pakistan in any way?
I have made a lot of programs in an international setting and that is my real passion, to make programs about global, international stories. I’ve worked in a lot of tricky areas on tricky subjects including Yemen and the Congo, the West Bank and the Middle East, so that’s really why they came to me I think. Not because of any particular Pakistan connection.
Do you think that part of the problem is that journalists and filmmakers are sort of parachuted into trouble zones and expected to report on countries they may not be that familiar with? That, as a result, they don’t always see the whole picture?
As soon as I’m given an assignment I read up as much as I can and talk to everyone I can. And every journalist that I know does the same thing. I think it’s a fair point to make but sometimes it’s an advantage to have someone who can see the story with fresh eyes. When journalists have been in a place for a long time they sometimes don’t see a way out. Bringing someone in from outside can bring fresh perspective and energy to achieving solutions.
For the average Pakistani, out of the two documentaries you have made on the country, Defenders of Karachi would be seen as a “pro-Pakistan” because it is primarily an observational documentary.
Defenders of Karachi also examined the very difficult situation that exists in Karachi, whether it’s just the chaotic traffic or the problems of policing. It’s very hard to keep a nuanced position in such emotive areas but the moment you start getting into pro and anti-Pakistan its simplifying things and encouraging a conflict based structure on the work that is being done. I don’t agree with that. I think in any functioning society there is space for criticism, there is space for investigation. I’ve been involved in programmes in Britain that are about Islamaphobia against the Muslims here and against British Pakistanis. These are documentaries that address the irrational prejudice that exists in certain parts of this country. But is that an anti-Britain documentary? No it isn’t. The point of any healthy society is to identify its problems, to see what its sicknesses are. It is a useful thing to be criticised.
While you were filming in Pakistan and Afghanistan did you feel your life was ever in danger? Did you feel fear at any point?
Yes, definitely. When the Taliban ambushed the patrol I was with, there was certainly fear. And the American base I was at was being constantly rocketed. I found that really nerve-racking because you never know when that rocket is just going to drop out of the sky right on your head. So yes, I did feel fear. A very brave colleague of mine, a guy called Tim Hetherington, died in Libya this year. He was the first person I knew who died doing this kind of work and so that was always in the back of my mind. Tim was interviewed about this and he said I choose to go to these places. It’s my choice to be there. I find that quite inspirational and that is the attitude I try to adopt. So the way I see it is if you’re scared don’t make a song and dance about it.
SHARMEEN OBAID CHINOY
Filmmaker and Journalist (Pakistan)
Recent films: Transgenders: Pakistan’s Open Secret, Saving Face (2011)
Awards/Nominations: International Emmy Award and AIB Award for Best current affairs documentary for Pakistan’s Taliban’s Generation, Short-listed for Best Documentary Oscar for Saving Face.
There are a lot of women reporters in Pakistan now, but there are some access points which may still prove difficult for female journalists and filmmakers covering a hard political beat. Has your gender been a hindrance or has it helped you get into places where you might not have if you were a man?
Honestly, my gender has always been my biggest asset. I am a very strong woman, and don’t have some of the fears of the average Pakistani woman working with men. I would say I approach things quite like a man and because of that doors have opened up for me. When I was doing a documentary on Afghan women, I would never have gotten that story if I had been a man. Because being a woman allows you unique access. You can talk to women in cultures where men are not allowed and you can also be welcomed as a quasi-male in all-male gatherings because they see you as an outsider. In many circumstances I have been welcomed by the Taliban or by men in Afghanistan while filming a documentary because they view me as somewhere in between a man and a woman. I shake their hand and look them in the eye and talk to them as if I am their equal and so they are forced to treat me as that. I think there have been times in my career where I would never have come out alive if I had been a man. In East Timur a boulder nearly killed me during a riot, but I was literally picked up and thrown to the side by this young man who saw me as a weak, vulnerable woman. It was his perspective but it got me out alive.
Right now you are one of the few filmmakers from Pakistan making films for international channels. The Ghairat Brigade constantly complains about the Western media taking over the discourse. What is it like to report on your own country for an audience which is primarily on the outside?
Look, I’ve always been very honest in my reporting. If the state is doing something wrong, as a reporter, it is my duty to expose that. Nationalism and patriotism don’t factor into that at all. The onus is on the state to make sure that things are as they ought to be. And I have a major issue with this whole idea of projecting Pakistan. You cannot project anything that is a lie. There are things that are very wrong with Pakistan and the only way forward is to not have an ostrich mentality, and to talk about those things. That is the only way to bring about change. And that is what my films are about.
Are you passing your skills on to the next generation of filmmakers?
I am teaching a documentary filmmaking class now and I have set up a production company which is making films and also giving people an opportunity to learn. You should see the number of people who apply. What I am doing is mentoring a few filmmakers at a time and sending them off to make their movies so they then mentor more people. Basically, I am hoping for a ripple effect.
I was talking about this to Ed Watts as well about how foreign journalists are parachuted into Pakistan and expected to catch up on years of history and cultural nuance in days. Do you think there are advantages to being an “insider” and being based in Pakistan? Does this give you more political perspective?
I think there are some major advantages in knowing the lay of the land, the language and the cultural nuances. And actually having the freedom to make a film over a long period of time because you are not parachuting in and out, you live here. Quality films are produced when people have access to their subject over a long period of time. Having said that, do you really want to be around when the film airs? If you’re doing the kind of stories I do, it’s dangerous. But then I am also sometimes the person who parachutes into other countries and makes a film and comes out. I found that in some countries it’s wonderful, and in other countries it has been a real struggle. That gives me perspective about filmmakers who come here to make films.
You’ve worked in a lot of countries from Saudi Arabia to the Philippines. Has language or culture been a barrier or are there certain codes that work for documentary filmmakers wherever they might be?
I think there are certain codes that work in most places. When you work for certain channels like Channel Four, PBS or CNN, they have such a good network already in place for you. They have fixers they work with regularly, they have familiar links. The name itself opens up doors in many countries. It doesn’t matter if they don’t know you as a filmmaker — they will know the channel. When I was in Afghanistan for instance — you know that Afghans don’t take well to Pakistanis — they were receptive to me because I was working for CNN.
Have there been times for you where you have felt real fear making documentaries, when you felt that you were risking your life?
In certain countries, yes. In Syria, we were tailed all the time by the intelligence agencies. We had to sneak out to film a very important sequence in a brothel where Iraqi girls were being sold. We literally had to stuff our beds and change three taxis to get there. When we were leaving, two guys started wondering who I was and had we been caught I would have spent a long time in a Syrian prison. Working in Saudi Arabia, for instance, where I was doing a film on women, they confiscated our tapes and threatened to throw me in jail. They asked me for a certificate of good morality before I could check into a hotel. It’s at times like that when you’ve been on a plane for eight hours, when the local police station doesn’t want to give you a character certificate and the hotel is implying that you’re a prostitute that you think this is really ridiculous. And then there are times when it’s just been downright dangerous, like in Syria or in certain Taliban interviews. That’s when you trust your gut instincts and get out of there. You learn to work with people that you really trust your life with. At some time or the other your life is going to be in the hands of that other person. And you have to trust that he or she is going to bring you out of that experience alive. The important thing is to choose people who won’t flip and won’t sell you out.
I saw that you tweeted about Secret Pakistan and said it should be translated into Urdu and made available to people to let them decide what to think of it. Is censorship ever valid or do you think we should treat viewers as adults who can make up their own minds?
If a chat show presenter on a news channel can say anything without substantiating it, then obviously there is selective censorship in this country. There must be, because he or she can get away with saying anything. But if there is a piece of work that someone in a position of power finds objectionable, that is censored and not put on air. Some things are kosher and some are absolutely not. Do I think the audience has a right to decide? Absolutely! We live in a democracy, apparently with a free media. If we do, then alternate voices and sources of information need to be on air. Let the people decide. Whether people are educated or not, it is their right to make up their own mind. Censoring such voices is not going to help Pakistan’s nascent democracy thrive. And if we still quell them, then what is the difference between a democracy and a military dictatorship?
NICK BROOMFIELD
Filmmaker and Journalist (British)
Recent documentaries: You Betcha, Sarah Palin (2011)
Awards: Best Director — San Sebastian Film Festival 2007, 2006 Bafta Special Award for contribution to the Documentary genre.
In some ways your documentary about Sarah Palin rests on her elusiveness for the way it builds its case. Do you think it turned out better in the end that she didn’t actually give you that interview?
My co-director Joan Churchill and I genuinely believed we would get her — especially in a teeny place like Wasilla where you bump into people in the market place all the time. We nearly stayed throughout Christmas in Alaska but we just felt so unwelcome at that stage that we didn’t think we had a right to stay. I just thought that if we were in this teeny little town, sooner or later there would be some event where she would be away from her minders and we would get her. But our relationship with her had deteriorated so much by this point that we didn’t feel there was any point. It would have been interesting to meet her and ask her about her actions and about other people in the film. It wasn’t a situation though. The best biographies are those where your subject’s nearest and dearest speak about her. In any case, I like that style because it’s more like a diary.
The film comes across as a cultural confrontation between a very British production team and a cussedly American and Republican Sarah Palin…
It was definitely a clash of cultures. I think the American political process has become so well-oiled and sophisticated, so controlled by management people now. Which is why I was particularly interested in seeing what she was like as a mayor, because there weren’t enough people around to dilute her. You could just see the chaos that happened when she was just unleashed on this little town. You could see how evangelical she was in her gay-bashing. I think she’s been very much protected by so many people around her.
Though Palin has chosen not to run for the Republican nomination, do you feel that the kind of thinking she represents and the requisite evangelical credentials are still very much part and parcel of the Republican candidacy?
That is what I found was the scariest thing about Sarah Palin. It’s really what she represents. Maybe she’s not running for President, thank goodness, but there are others who are equally terrifying or even worse than her. I hate to think what effect that will have on the American political system. For the first time in 2012, the evangelicals will have more power than they ever did before.
People like Sarah Palin believe they are called by God to be politically active which also makes them strangely unaccountable in a democratic way and uninterested in the democratic debates which take place. Democracy is a fairly pragmatic idea, but if you serve a higher leader and not the electorate you’re not interested in that sort of debate. A country as pluralist as America with so many different nationalities and backgrounds thrives on keeping church and state separate but Sarah Palin don’t see that. It’s gotten scarier since people with deep pockets like Murdoch and the Koch brothers have gotten into the game. It’s become a crazy package of beliefs that people are buying into. Unfortunately, I think, the Republican Party has allowed itself to be taken over by these people.
You seem to understand why men are caught up in the Sarah Palin fantasy and have referred to her “fetishistic attraction”. Did you find yourself perversely drawn to her?
I don’t find Sarah Palin attractive; she’s too cutesie pootsie for me. But she started this kinky outfit thing — you know, tight leather and pointy boots even when she’s talking to these evangelical women. I think she’s enhanced various parts of her body, had a lot of surgery. There’s this slightly slutty side to her, a certain dominatrix quality. She is both mean and sexually alluring. Basically, I think she’s forbidden fruit and at the same time she’s encouraging. I never had any sexual fantasies about her but my editor did and I used to tease him. She interfered with my sleep but not in that way. I kept thinking, there must be some other way through to her, some way to get her to talk to us. So I suppose she interfered with my sexual fantasies rather than contribute to them. I would say, British public school boys and evangelical types would find her attractive. The journalist Christopher Hitchens thought Maggie Thatcher was such a sexual icon. It’s not too different from the allure that Sarah Palin has.
Did you know that there was a huge scandal in Pakistan when President Asif Zardari met Sarah Palin and started complimenting her on camera?
How absolutely incredible! How fascinating that she would have that kind of reach.
AMR SALAMA
Producer/Director (Egyptian)
Recent films: Tahrir 2011: The good, the bad and the politician, Asma (2011)
Awards: Winner, CICT Unesco Award, Venice Film Festival, Best Documentary Film, Oslo Film Festival
Right now, because of the Arab Spring or as some say, Arab winter, there is a lot of interest in all things Egyptian. Do you feel that by travelling around the world showing your film you’re putting Egypt’s cinema in the spotlight at a very crucial time?
Wow, that’s a big responsibility. You shouldn’t have told me! Actually I have been flying to film festivals non-stop and it’s been really hectic for me, so I hope I stay on the ground for some time after I go back to Egypt. But yes, it’s a big responsibility when you’re dealing with a documentary and with a topic like that you have to be politically correct. It’s been a short a period of time and everyone is still sensitive about the revolution. So we have got a lot of good criticism and some bad criticism. Actually it’s amazing to be travelling with the film. The Egyptian audience already knows all the events by heart; to a foreign audience it’s still surprising and new.
Generally you find that documentary makers tend to wait for some time before they make a documentary so that the picture becomes clearer. Bur Tahrir 2011: The Good, the Bad and the Politician is so very current. Do you think sometimes it’s important to distance yourself to give a more accurate version of events?
The approach has its own pros and cons. One pro is you get fresh answers to your questions. If you ask the same questions now people will have changed their answers in hindsight. But their answers from that time are more credible because they were spontaneous. Right after the revolution everyone talked bravely. Now we analyse everything. We decided very early on in the documentary to take just those 18 days as our reference point. For the first and second part of the film that’s what we did. Naturally for the part about Hosni Mubarak I had to go back a bit further. But the day Mubarak stepped down was the day the film stops too. We decided we wanted the immediacy of events as they happened.
Why did you split the documentary into three parts?
We decided to give the subject a three-dimensional treatment. At first, the producer called me to direct the entire documentary. I thought about it and suggested we do the film in three parts: the good, the bad and the politician and offer it to different directors. There are some really good documentary directors in Egypt so we felt this would be a good way to work. Everyone just rushed to do the people or “good” part, but we also thought it would be new to talk to the police, to get their side of it. We wanted to talk to them and portray them as human beings too. I took the politician segment because I wanted to do something funny, I wanted to use satire. I always found politics in Egypt so surreal that it doesn’t make any sense. That’s the big joke. So it was easy for me to make that choice. When we screened the film in Venice everyone looked at the Mubarak part and said “Oh that is so Berlusconi!” And that happens wherever we go. See, that’s politics. It’s the same everywhere.
What would be the one idea from Tahrir 2011 that you would hope viewers in the Middle East would take home after watching the film?
I think it’s a lesson to us that we should never put another dictator on a pedestal. We should never worship anyone again or put him above the law. We would be successful if we can show people that a dictator doesn’t become a dictator entirely by himself. He attains that power because people allow him to do that. So if there’s one thing I want people to take away from the film, it’s that we should never create another dictator in the future.
How did the idea for Asma, your feature film on an HIV positive woman come about?
It all started with me doing a documentary in 2005 about people living with HIV in Egypt. That’s when I decided to make it as a feature, because people in Egypt don’t really watch documentaries. There isn’t any market for them; they never get released in cinemas. Actually Tahrir 2011 might be the first documentary to be commercially distributed in Egypt. That’s why I decided to make it into a full length feature film. I met with many people living with HIV and brought all the actors from Asma to talk to them. I would read the testimonies of people from all over the world who were HIV positive. Some of those pages had daily diaries from people who would write every day about the secrets and the stigma of having the disease. I spent six years — that’s one-fifth of my life researching people with HIV. So I have spent a lot of time focusing on this.
How do you think Asma will be received in Egypt?
We finished the film right before the revolution. Actually, it would have had a greater impact before because it is about silence and how as Egyptians we were afraid to ask for our rights. But in a way it will always be relevant because, even though we have had a revolution, we still have this fear of facing society.
Interestingly, at the screen talk for the film you mentioned that you think Egyptian filmmakers will face even greater censorship now. Why is that? How do you propose to challenge that?
It’s a struggle. We will have to fight for our rights as filmmakers.
The bigger problem we may have now is not just the censor
ship from the government, but also what may become the censorship of the people. Egyptian society is facing a conservative trend. And as people become more conservative, they will start censoring themselves and boycotting movies when these movies say something they don’t like. What I am hoping is that my films will become known through word of mouth; that they will be a viral success. I just want one person to go and watch it and tell his friends. That’s how it will start. It will be a struggle as I said, but we are ready for it.
KATIE GALLOWAY AND KELLY DUANE DE LA VEGA
Producer/Director (American)
Recent films: Better this World (2011)
Awards/Nominations: Best Documentary, San Francisco International Film Festival and Sarasota Film Festival. Nominated for Gotham and IDA Awards for Best Documentary and Best Documentary Feature.
Better this World, while essentially a story about how two young American men are confronting terrorism charges at home, also seems to come across as a wider comment on how civil liberties have been disregarded in the war against terror.
Katie Galloway: I think there’s a trade-off when you tell a story that you’re close to. Ultimately, we knew we were going to be part of a bigger cultural conversation. We knew this film was coming out at the time of the 9/11 tenth anniversary and so in that sense it did become a piece of a bigger story. And a piece that people were really able to engage with because real stories draw you in a way just stats can’t. So I think we got a different kind of audience to come into the debate about civil liberties versus national security, and about where resources have gone since 9/11 and if those were the best investments. And in the foreground of that was a story about human beings going through their human drama of friendship and betrayal. Looking at what it means to become a man and what it means to become politicised.
Did you have opinions going into the film about whether the two men were entrapped by an FBI Informant, and how did you feel about it as the filming progressed?
Kelly Duane de la Vega: When we started it David (one of the two accused) was on the eve of his trial, so much of what transpired in the film we were learning as it happened. We didn’t have opinions going in but observing their choices and their loyalty affected us. Because while it is a political film it is also a film about friendship; that’s what makes it universal.
KG: We left it to the audience to some degree to decide how they felt about it. I think those decisions depend on who you are and what your political beliefs, are going in. We are reluctant to say to an audience at large how to think or what to believe.
KDDLV: I think it’s more important for us to put it out there and allow them to come to their own conclusions.
Still, the silent authorial voice at the back seems to be saying that people’s civil liberties are being trampled on at a particular time in America’s political history, in a context which is very much part of post 9/11 paranoia.
KG: I think that’s fair.
KDDLV: Another way to put it is that we are bringing to light what is seen as perfectly okay under the criminal justice system in America. Most Americans don’t know how far the FBI or an informant can go. Most people would never imagine this scenario.
For the average American living in the mid-west the definition of a terrorist as a person who is not “us” but “them” is essentially someone from the Middle East, someone who has a beard and prays to Allah. What is challenging about this film is that the two men are home-grown “terrorists”.
KDDLV: This type of use of informants is very prevalent in the Muslim community in the United States. And I think that is important. Is the person in the mid-west going to see those two boys from George Bush’s hometown as someone closer to his own son? Is that going to be more alarming and upsetting and will that allow him to have compassion for everyone else in that situation?
KG: Incidentally, one of the two boys who were accused of terrorism was radicalised because of Bush’s Shock and awe campaign and the Iraq war and that is what he was protesting.
After 9/11 situation there was a lot of hunting down of young Muslim men in the USA. There were many Muslim students who were questioned and accused of all kinds of involvement in terrorist thinking when they hadn’t done anything.
KG: This is where we started. This is why we were interested in making this movie. Because we had noticed all these cases where someone after a lengthy investigation, often involving an informant, was then charged with domestic terrorism. They were often young, they were mostly Muslims, but there were also many environmental activists. And then there would be a counter accusation by the defendant of entrapment or misconduct by a government informant. So when we saw this case and it was going to trial and, we thought here is a great opportunity to follow a case like this closely. It was still a good story but it was a more important story for me personally as I knew this was a cultural phenomenon post 9/11. So we were asking, what is really going on here? And to look at all the other cases like this all over the country and ask ourselves, does any of this really make sense?
ADIL RAY
Radio and TV Journalist (British Pakistani)
Recent films/Radio documentaries: The Private life of British Pakistanis, Exposed: Groomed for sex (2011)
How did the idea for a documentary on British Pakistani men sexually grooming young girls come about?
Towards the end of last year, there were quite a few articles coming out about sexual grooming cases where British Pakistani men were the main culprits. Let me explain what this means. Sexual exploitation happens in all communities in the UK, the biggest of course being internet grooming, there is also child trafficking and sex slavery. The majority of convictions are white males. What we are talking about here is a way of sexual exploitation that includes two or more men grooming more than one girl for sex. The crime is still rape and abduction. There is a pattern of Pakistani men being involved in such cases. In fact 80% of all sexual grooming case convictions are British Pakistani men. I figured maybe there is something here to look into and went to the BBC with the idea. Naturally, it was a very sensitive issue and they weren’t sure. So we thought of making it as a very personal documentary with a British Pakistani journalist looking into the whole thing. I went into it with no pre-conceptions. I thought if it’s proved wrong, if it comes out during our investigation that there really wasn’t anything there then fine, but that didn’t really turn out to be the case.
How has the British Pakistani community reacted to this issue and also to your documentary? I just googled it and found the British Nationalist Party (BNP) have a report on it on their website and are using it to stereotype British Pakistani men.
If you go up north and speak to the imams and to the people in the mosques, they have realised there is a problem. There are people in community politics that have been dealing with it and talking about it for a number of years now. There is nothing wrong with confronting a situation and talking about it. I think it makes you stronger as a community when you do. Of course there will be people in the BNP or the media who will take advantage of this. I was always very aware of that. My father used to tell me that when he first came to this country, people used to call him “Paki” and he would cross the road and carry on. I’m a firm believer that sometimes you have to take a hit to deal with issues. We can’t say that we won’t deal with the problem just because it will make us look bad. Of course it is a minority but it affects so many of us. It can break up families and we can have a really terrible situation in the future if we don’t learn from it.
Did your being a British Pakistani affect how you responded to the situation and did it affect how people, especially some of the victims, responded to you?
I have got to say that I was quite taken aback with how dignified the victim and the families we spoke to were. You might expect the victim to have built up a real hatred for British Pakistani men because she had been raped by them repeatedly. I would have accepted that. But the girl I spoke to was not like that at all. I have always felt British and also Pakistani so I certainly felt personally affected by the stories that came out. Of course, the victims were primarily white girls, because we live in white Britain. But we heard about wives and mothers not being able to leave the house because they were shamed by what their husbands and sons had done. And I really felt for the British Pakistani community as a whole. We have had a really tough time since 9/11. Suddenly we were seen as suicide bombers. People didn’t really even know where Pakistan was before then. And I wasn’t even sure that British Pakistanis would want to hear about cases of sexual grooming. So I wondered how it was possible to get the British Pakistani community to react positively rather than negatively. I didn’t want it taken as a personal attack and, thankfully, most people have not.
All the documentary filmmakers I spoke to emphasised how important it was to take a hard look at oneself, and how all societies should learn to take criticism. How essential is this?
Of course, you should always self-reflect. You should take a look at yourself and figure out where you are. We must do that as individuals and as a community. Pakistani immigrants are a young community in this country. We have been in Britain for only about 25-30 years so naturally there will be integration issues. But I dare say in 10-15 years we may be having this conversation about Eastern European communities or the Somali community too. We are already hearing little murmurings to that effect. It is natural that a community as large as the British Pakistani is going to have some culture clashes and in very extreme circumstances these may become sordid or criminal and that is what one is seeing here.
Do you think this documentary would have been very different if it was made by someone who was not a British Pakistani, a white woman for example?
Yes, it would. I’m not saying for a moment that a white or black journalist, male or female, could not do this. Anyone could do this story. But it would not have the inside perspective that I could bring to the table. But also more importantly, in the post 9/11 and 7/7 climate of Islamophobia, I think the Pakistani community quite rightly are nervous about anything that goes out. Part of the battle is to reassure them that a critical look at something is not necessarily an attack on them. I think it is important to make the Pakistani community feel they can participate and be a part of the documentary. Twitter is a great example of how people can interact. The Imam we spoke to initially didn’t want to have any part in the documentary but a month into it he called up and said he felt he should be talking to us. A few people tweeted me and said, why are you doing this, and I didn’t argue with them because I know how it feels when you first hear about it. You don’t really want to believe it. But when you start to digest it you think we must talk about it. The worst thing is to sweep it under the carpet.
Do you think in some ways this documentary is not just about the crime but also about British Pakistani attitudes towards sex?
In a broader sense, a documentary such as this cannot be just about the crime. It has to suggest a broader look at British Pakistani attitudes about sex. It is about segregation and separation. Some of those lads thought they weren’t doing anything wrong and that it’s perfectly culturally acceptable to think that white girls or young girls on the street wanted to have sex. We are constantly told what to do but not allowed to have discussions about sexuality. And that’s where the problems really begin.
Published in The Express Tribune, December Sunday Magazine, 18th, 2011.
It is no secret that Edward Watts’ Secret Pakistan landed the BBC in a bit of a soup in Pakistan. The NATO attack in Salala, which killed 24 Pakistani officers, dramatically changed the atmosphere in the country, and the Cable Operator’s Association decided to switch the channel off for promoting “anti-Pakistan propaganda.” Secret Pakistan, which was the purported reason for the ban, bases its hypothesis largely on the revelations of alleged Afghan Taliban, and certainly its findings are hardly new or surprising. The documentary aired well before the attacks and the BBC ‘ban’ but, in the larger scheme of things, the Cable Operators’ Association are probably pawns in a more complicated chess game.
I had contacted Watts much before the hullabaloo to be part of this piece, but as the voices in Pakistan became louder, he told me he “was not in a position to comment” on the film though he spoke about his work as a documentary filmmaker. Overlooked in the din is the fact that Secret Pakistan is just one of the two films made by the director in Pakistan this year. The other, Defenders of Karachi, broadcast as part of Channel Four’s “Unreported World Series”, focuses squarely on how tough it is for ambulance drivers and police officers to keep one of the world’s most tumultuous cities functioning on a daily basis.
Documentary filmmaking, especially if you choose to work in volatile parts of the world, or with politically contentious subjects, is an equally dangerous profession. Filmmakers who choose to cross unchartered territories court both opposition and occasional contempt. Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy speaks of the time she was filming a documentary on Saudi women and was refused a hotel room unless she got a certificate of morality from the police. And Egyptian director Amr Salama, who co-directed a documentary (Tahrir 2011: The Good, the Bad and the Politician) on the crucial 18 days of his country’s all too brief Arab Spring, speaks of the rising conservatism in his country and the “censorship of the people” being as restrictive as that of a dictator.
The idea for this feature, however, originated from a brief talk with Nick Broomfield, long-time documentary guru, whose film on the former Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, You Betcha, Sarah Palin chronicles his failed attempts to get the maverick tea-partier to sit down for an interview. I met Broomfield during the showing of his film at the 55th BFI London Film Festival, where he outlined the dangers of the evangelical revival in US politics. It was not, he pointed out, just about Sarah Palin, even if she did encompass all that was wrong with Republican politics.
Later during the Festival, I also spoke to Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega, filmmakers whose nuanced documentary Better This World, about two young American protestors subsequently jailed as “terrorists” through the testimony of an FBI informant, brings into sharp focus the vagaries of American life in a paranoia-ridden post 9/11 world. It is a world where the plight of home-grown dissenters sheds light on how many Muslims have been entrapped by FBI informants in the decade since the Twin Towers crumbled in New York City.
Questioning — as most of the filmmakers and journalists I spoke to agreed — is very much part of documentary filmmaking. The best filmmaking isn’t that eager to provide answers. But it always aims to ask the right questions, or as Kelly Duane de la Vega says: “to put it out there.” But asking uncomfortable questions compels societies to look at themselves a reason why investigative documentaries can prove unpopular in closed communities and countries that feel they have been placed under a magnifying glass. Journalist Adil Ray, whose recent investigation on sexual grooming of young white girls by British Pakistani men involves looking into an extremely dark mirror, is adamant that self-reflection is part of growing up. He feels that sweeping the dirt under the carpet is not an option.
Each one of the documentary filmmakers I spoke to had a story to tell. This time, their own. A look into why filmmakers and journalists put themselves on the line every day to tell you what you sometimes may not care to know
EDWARD WATTS
Producer/Director/Cinematographer (British)
Recent documentaries: Secret Pakistan (BBC), Defenders of Karachi (Channel Four)
To what extent are scripts pre-written for political documentaries? Do you have a perspective to start off with, and then you find the documentation and evidence for it or do you build it on the basis of what you learn during the filming?
I would say all sorts of documentaries are different. Lots of directors set out with a very clear script in mind about how they want to put a film together. That’s not how I work. In all the programs I’ve worked on, we are given a topic and are free to explore it. So it is very much based on what the interviewees tell us. The story is shaped as we go, on what we are told, what we discover. It’s an organic, evolutionary process. As you move forward, you begin to get an idea of what witnesses are saying. Then you narrow it down and get an idea of what your film is about.
So how is the way you work different from somebody who comes from a very specific and assertive perspective, like Michael Moore for instance?
Well, Michael Moore is the complete opposite. His films are argued pieces, where he has an argument and he finds the evidence to support it. Whereas the documentaries I do are based on telling stories. Most people look at Michael Moore and see it as his point of view. My documentaries are explorations. It’s not about putting our own words in front of the camera; it’s more about what people are telling us.
What was it like filming in Pakistan? What memories have you brought back with you?
I made two programs about Pakistan this year. The first one, Defenders of Karachi, was about an ambulance driver called Mohammed Salim working for Edhi and a very brave police officer, Nasrullah Khan. I really loved Pakistan; I found it a fascinating place and had a really warm welcome from the ordinary people there. And the bravery of people like Salim and Nasrullah was extraordinary to me. Against all the odds, they were doing amazing work. We were sleeping on the floor of the Edhi call centre and they were just so kind to me. They managed such a great sense of humour in trying circumstances. And then I met a lot of people with whom I had such open, frank and intelligent discussions. When anyone asks me about Pakistan, I always say how I was simply bowled over by the people. Those are the stories I like to tell, along with the tough investigative ones.
What was it about Pakistan that drew you in? How is it you were commissioned for two documentaries in a year? Were you linked to Pakistan in any way?
I have made a lot of programs in an international setting and that is my real passion, to make programs about global, international stories. I’ve worked in a lot of tricky areas on tricky subjects including Yemen and the Congo, the West Bank and the Middle East, so that’s really why they came to me I think. Not because of any particular Pakistan connection.
Do you think that part of the problem is that journalists and filmmakers are sort of parachuted into trouble zones and expected to report on countries they may not be that familiar with? That, as a result, they don’t always see the whole picture?
As soon as I’m given an assignment I read up as much as I can and talk to everyone I can. And every journalist that I know does the same thing. I think it’s a fair point to make but sometimes it’s an advantage to have someone who can see the story with fresh eyes. When journalists have been in a place for a long time they sometimes don’t see a way out. Bringing someone in from outside can bring fresh perspective and energy to achieving solutions.
For the average Pakistani, out of the two documentaries you have made on the country, Defenders of Karachi would be seen as a “pro-Pakistan” because it is primarily an observational documentary.
Defenders of Karachi also examined the very difficult situation that exists in Karachi, whether it’s just the chaotic traffic or the problems of policing. It’s very hard to keep a nuanced position in such emotive areas but the moment you start getting into pro and anti-Pakistan its simplifying things and encouraging a conflict based structure on the work that is being done. I don’t agree with that. I think in any functioning society there is space for criticism, there is space for investigation. I’ve been involved in programmes in Britain that are about Islamaphobia against the Muslims here and against British Pakistanis. These are documentaries that address the irrational prejudice that exists in certain parts of this country. But is that an anti-Britain documentary? No it isn’t. The point of any healthy society is to identify its problems, to see what its sicknesses are. It is a useful thing to be criticised.
While you were filming in Pakistan and Afghanistan did you feel your life was ever in danger? Did you feel fear at any point?
Yes, definitely. When the Taliban ambushed the patrol I was with, there was certainly fear. And the American base I was at was being constantly rocketed. I found that really nerve-racking because you never know when that rocket is just going to drop out of the sky right on your head. So yes, I did feel fear. A very brave colleague of mine, a guy called Tim Hetherington, died in Libya this year. He was the first person I knew who died doing this kind of work and so that was always in the back of my mind. Tim was interviewed about this and he said I choose to go to these places. It’s my choice to be there. I find that quite inspirational and that is the attitude I try to adopt. So the way I see it is if you’re scared don’t make a song and dance about it.
SHARMEEN OBAID CHINOY
Filmmaker and Journalist (Pakistan)
Recent films: Transgenders: Pakistan’s Open Secret, Saving Face (2011)
Awards/Nominations: International Emmy Award and AIB Award for Best current affairs documentary for Pakistan’s Taliban’s Generation, Short-listed for Best Documentary Oscar for Saving Face.
There are a lot of women reporters in Pakistan now, but there are some access points which may still prove difficult for female journalists and filmmakers covering a hard political beat. Has your gender been a hindrance or has it helped you get into places where you might not have if you were a man?
Honestly, my gender has always been my biggest asset. I am a very strong woman, and don’t have some of the fears of the average Pakistani woman working with men. I would say I approach things quite like a man and because of that doors have opened up for me. When I was doing a documentary on Afghan women, I would never have gotten that story if I had been a man. Because being a woman allows you unique access. You can talk to women in cultures where men are not allowed and you can also be welcomed as a quasi-male in all-male gatherings because they see you as an outsider. In many circumstances I have been welcomed by the Taliban or by men in Afghanistan while filming a documentary because they view me as somewhere in between a man and a woman. I shake their hand and look them in the eye and talk to them as if I am their equal and so they are forced to treat me as that. I think there have been times in my career where I would never have come out alive if I had been a man. In East Timur a boulder nearly killed me during a riot, but I was literally picked up and thrown to the side by this young man who saw me as a weak, vulnerable woman. It was his perspective but it got me out alive.
Right now you are one of the few filmmakers from Pakistan making films for international channels. The Ghairat Brigade constantly complains about the Western media taking over the discourse. What is it like to report on your own country for an audience which is primarily on the outside?
Look, I’ve always been very honest in my reporting. If the state is doing something wrong, as a reporter, it is my duty to expose that. Nationalism and patriotism don’t factor into that at all. The onus is on the state to make sure that things are as they ought to be. And I have a major issue with this whole idea of projecting Pakistan. You cannot project anything that is a lie. There are things that are very wrong with Pakistan and the only way forward is to not have an ostrich mentality, and to talk about those things. That is the only way to bring about change. And that is what my films are about.
Are you passing your skills on to the next generation of filmmakers?
I am teaching a documentary filmmaking class now and I have set up a production company which is making films and also giving people an opportunity to learn. You should see the number of people who apply. What I am doing is mentoring a few filmmakers at a time and sending them off to make their movies so they then mentor more people. Basically, I am hoping for a ripple effect.
I was talking about this to Ed Watts as well about how foreign journalists are parachuted into Pakistan and expected to catch up on years of history and cultural nuance in days. Do you think there are advantages to being an “insider” and being based in Pakistan? Does this give you more political perspective?
I think there are some major advantages in knowing the lay of the land, the language and the cultural nuances. And actually having the freedom to make a film over a long period of time because you are not parachuting in and out, you live here. Quality films are produced when people have access to their subject over a long period of time. Having said that, do you really want to be around when the film airs? If you’re doing the kind of stories I do, it’s dangerous. But then I am also sometimes the person who parachutes into other countries and makes a film and comes out. I found that in some countries it’s wonderful, and in other countries it has been a real struggle. That gives me perspective about filmmakers who come here to make films.
You’ve worked in a lot of countries from Saudi Arabia to the Philippines. Has language or culture been a barrier or are there certain codes that work for documentary filmmakers wherever they might be?
I think there are certain codes that work in most places. When you work for certain channels like Channel Four, PBS or CNN, they have such a good network already in place for you. They have fixers they work with regularly, they have familiar links. The name itself opens up doors in many countries. It doesn’t matter if they don’t know you as a filmmaker — they will know the channel. When I was in Afghanistan for instance — you know that Afghans don’t take well to Pakistanis — they were receptive to me because I was working for CNN.
Have there been times for you where you have felt real fear making documentaries, when you felt that you were risking your life?
In certain countries, yes. In Syria, we were tailed all the time by the intelligence agencies. We had to sneak out to film a very important sequence in a brothel where Iraqi girls were being sold. We literally had to stuff our beds and change three taxis to get there. When we were leaving, two guys started wondering who I was and had we been caught I would have spent a long time in a Syrian prison. Working in Saudi Arabia, for instance, where I was doing a film on women, they confiscated our tapes and threatened to throw me in jail. They asked me for a certificate of good morality before I could check into a hotel. It’s at times like that when you’ve been on a plane for eight hours, when the local police station doesn’t want to give you a character certificate and the hotel is implying that you’re a prostitute that you think this is really ridiculous. And then there are times when it’s just been downright dangerous, like in Syria or in certain Taliban interviews. That’s when you trust your gut instincts and get out of there. You learn to work with people that you really trust your life with. At some time or the other your life is going to be in the hands of that other person. And you have to trust that he or she is going to bring you out of that experience alive. The important thing is to choose people who won’t flip and won’t sell you out.
I saw that you tweeted about Secret Pakistan and said it should be translated into Urdu and made available to people to let them decide what to think of it. Is censorship ever valid or do you think we should treat viewers as adults who can make up their own minds?
If a chat show presenter on a news channel can say anything without substantiating it, then obviously there is selective censorship in this country. There must be, because he or she can get away with saying anything. But if there is a piece of work that someone in a position of power finds objectionable, that is censored and not put on air. Some things are kosher and some are absolutely not. Do I think the audience has a right to decide? Absolutely! We live in a democracy, apparently with a free media. If we do, then alternate voices and sources of information need to be on air. Let the people decide. Whether people are educated or not, it is their right to make up their own mind. Censoring such voices is not going to help Pakistan’s nascent democracy thrive. And if we still quell them, then what is the difference between a democracy and a military dictatorship?
NICK BROOMFIELD
Filmmaker and Journalist (British)
Recent documentaries: You Betcha, Sarah Palin (2011)
Awards: Best Director — San Sebastian Film Festival 2007, 2006 Bafta Special Award for contribution to the Documentary genre.
In some ways your documentary about Sarah Palin rests on her elusiveness for the way it builds its case. Do you think it turned out better in the end that she didn’t actually give you that interview?
My co-director Joan Churchill and I genuinely believed we would get her — especially in a teeny place like Wasilla where you bump into people in the market place all the time. We nearly stayed throughout Christmas in Alaska but we just felt so unwelcome at that stage that we didn’t think we had a right to stay. I just thought that if we were in this teeny little town, sooner or later there would be some event where she would be away from her minders and we would get her. But our relationship with her had deteriorated so much by this point that we didn’t feel there was any point. It would have been interesting to meet her and ask her about her actions and about other people in the film. It wasn’t a situation though. The best biographies are those where your subject’s nearest and dearest speak about her. In any case, I like that style because it’s more like a diary.
The film comes across as a cultural confrontation between a very British production team and a cussedly American and Republican Sarah Palin…
It was definitely a clash of cultures. I think the American political process has become so well-oiled and sophisticated, so controlled by management people now. Which is why I was particularly interested in seeing what she was like as a mayor, because there weren’t enough people around to dilute her. You could just see the chaos that happened when she was just unleashed on this little town. You could see how evangelical she was in her gay-bashing. I think she’s been very much protected by so many people around her.
Though Palin has chosen not to run for the Republican nomination, do you feel that the kind of thinking she represents and the requisite evangelical credentials are still very much part and parcel of the Republican candidacy?
That is what I found was the scariest thing about Sarah Palin. It’s really what she represents. Maybe she’s not running for President, thank goodness, but there are others who are equally terrifying or even worse than her. I hate to think what effect that will have on the American political system. For the first time in 2012, the evangelicals will have more power than they ever did before.
People like Sarah Palin believe they are called by God to be politically active which also makes them strangely unaccountable in a democratic way and uninterested in the democratic debates which take place. Democracy is a fairly pragmatic idea, but if you serve a higher leader and not the electorate you’re not interested in that sort of debate. A country as pluralist as America with so many different nationalities and backgrounds thrives on keeping church and state separate but Sarah Palin don’t see that. It’s gotten scarier since people with deep pockets like Murdoch and the Koch brothers have gotten into the game. It’s become a crazy package of beliefs that people are buying into. Unfortunately, I think, the Republican Party has allowed itself to be taken over by these people.
You seem to understand why men are caught up in the Sarah Palin fantasy and have referred to her “fetishistic attraction”. Did you find yourself perversely drawn to her?
I don’t find Sarah Palin attractive; she’s too cutesie pootsie for me. But she started this kinky outfit thing — you know, tight leather and pointy boots even when she’s talking to these evangelical women. I think she’s enhanced various parts of her body, had a lot of surgery. There’s this slightly slutty side to her, a certain dominatrix quality. She is both mean and sexually alluring. Basically, I think she’s forbidden fruit and at the same time she’s encouraging. I never had any sexual fantasies about her but my editor did and I used to tease him. She interfered with my sleep but not in that way. I kept thinking, there must be some other way through to her, some way to get her to talk to us. So I suppose she interfered with my sexual fantasies rather than contribute to them. I would say, British public school boys and evangelical types would find her attractive. The journalist Christopher Hitchens thought Maggie Thatcher was such a sexual icon. It’s not too different from the allure that Sarah Palin has.
Did you know that there was a huge scandal in Pakistan when President Asif Zardari met Sarah Palin and started complimenting her on camera?
How absolutely incredible! How fascinating that she would have that kind of reach.
AMR SALAMA
Producer/Director (Egyptian)
Recent films: Tahrir 2011: The good, the bad and the politician, Asma (2011)
Awards: Winner, CICT Unesco Award, Venice Film Festival, Best Documentary Film, Oslo Film Festival
Right now, because of the Arab Spring or as some say, Arab winter, there is a lot of interest in all things Egyptian. Do you feel that by travelling around the world showing your film you’re putting Egypt’s cinema in the spotlight at a very crucial time?
Wow, that’s a big responsibility. You shouldn’t have told me! Actually I have been flying to film festivals non-stop and it’s been really hectic for me, so I hope I stay on the ground for some time after I go back to Egypt. But yes, it’s a big responsibility when you’re dealing with a documentary and with a topic like that you have to be politically correct. It’s been a short a period of time and everyone is still sensitive about the revolution. So we have got a lot of good criticism and some bad criticism. Actually it’s amazing to be travelling with the film. The Egyptian audience already knows all the events by heart; to a foreign audience it’s still surprising and new.
Generally you find that documentary makers tend to wait for some time before they make a documentary so that the picture becomes clearer. Bur Tahrir 2011: The Good, the Bad and the Politician is so very current. Do you think sometimes it’s important to distance yourself to give a more accurate version of events?
The approach has its own pros and cons. One pro is you get fresh answers to your questions. If you ask the same questions now people will have changed their answers in hindsight. But their answers from that time are more credible because they were spontaneous. Right after the revolution everyone talked bravely. Now we analyse everything. We decided very early on in the documentary to take just those 18 days as our reference point. For the first and second part of the film that’s what we did. Naturally for the part about Hosni Mubarak I had to go back a bit further. But the day Mubarak stepped down was the day the film stops too. We decided we wanted the immediacy of events as they happened.
Why did you split the documentary into three parts?
We decided to give the subject a three-dimensional treatment. At first, the producer called me to direct the entire documentary. I thought about it and suggested we do the film in three parts: the good, the bad and the politician and offer it to different directors. There are some really good documentary directors in Egypt so we felt this would be a good way to work. Everyone just rushed to do the people or “good” part, but we also thought it would be new to talk to the police, to get their side of it. We wanted to talk to them and portray them as human beings too. I took the politician segment because I wanted to do something funny, I wanted to use satire. I always found politics in Egypt so surreal that it doesn’t make any sense. That’s the big joke. So it was easy for me to make that choice. When we screened the film in Venice everyone looked at the Mubarak part and said “Oh that is so Berlusconi!” And that happens wherever we go. See, that’s politics. It’s the same everywhere.
What would be the one idea from Tahrir 2011 that you would hope viewers in the Middle East would take home after watching the film?
I think it’s a lesson to us that we should never put another dictator on a pedestal. We should never worship anyone again or put him above the law. We would be successful if we can show people that a dictator doesn’t become a dictator entirely by himself. He attains that power because people allow him to do that. So if there’s one thing I want people to take away from the film, it’s that we should never create another dictator in the future.
How did the idea for Asma, your feature film on an HIV positive woman come about?
It all started with me doing a documentary in 2005 about people living with HIV in Egypt. That’s when I decided to make it as a feature, because people in Egypt don’t really watch documentaries. There isn’t any market for them; they never get released in cinemas. Actually Tahrir 2011 might be the first documentary to be commercially distributed in Egypt. That’s why I decided to make it into a full length feature film. I met with many people living with HIV and brought all the actors from Asma to talk to them. I would read the testimonies of people from all over the world who were HIV positive. Some of those pages had daily diaries from people who would write every day about the secrets and the stigma of having the disease. I spent six years — that’s one-fifth of my life researching people with HIV. So I have spent a lot of time focusing on this.
How do you think Asma will be received in Egypt?
We finished the film right before the revolution. Actually, it would have had a greater impact before because it is about silence and how as Egyptians we were afraid to ask for our rights. But in a way it will always be relevant because, even though we have had a revolution, we still have this fear of facing society.
Interestingly, at the screen talk for the film you mentioned that you think Egyptian filmmakers will face even greater censorship now. Why is that? How do you propose to challenge that?
It’s a struggle. We will have to fight for our rights as filmmakers.
The bigger problem we may have now is not just the censor
ship from the government, but also what may become the censorship of the people. Egyptian society is facing a conservative trend. And as people become more conservative, they will start censoring themselves and boycotting movies when these movies say something they don’t like. What I am hoping is that my films will become known through word of mouth; that they will be a viral success. I just want one person to go and watch it and tell his friends. That’s how it will start. It will be a struggle as I said, but we are ready for it.
KATIE GALLOWAY AND KELLY DUANE DE LA VEGA
Producer/Director (American)
Recent films: Better this World (2011)
Awards/Nominations: Best Documentary, San Francisco International Film Festival and Sarasota Film Festival. Nominated for Gotham and IDA Awards for Best Documentary and Best Documentary Feature.
Better this World, while essentially a story about how two young American men are confronting terrorism charges at home, also seems to come across as a wider comment on how civil liberties have been disregarded in the war against terror.
Katie Galloway: I think there’s a trade-off when you tell a story that you’re close to. Ultimately, we knew we were going to be part of a bigger cultural conversation. We knew this film was coming out at the time of the 9/11 tenth anniversary and so in that sense it did become a piece of a bigger story. And a piece that people were really able to engage with because real stories draw you in a way just stats can’t. So I think we got a different kind of audience to come into the debate about civil liberties versus national security, and about where resources have gone since 9/11 and if those were the best investments. And in the foreground of that was a story about human beings going through their human drama of friendship and betrayal. Looking at what it means to become a man and what it means to become politicised.
Did you have opinions going into the film about whether the two men were entrapped by an FBI Informant, and how did you feel about it as the filming progressed?
Kelly Duane de la Vega: When we started it David (one of the two accused) was on the eve of his trial, so much of what transpired in the film we were learning as it happened. We didn’t have opinions going in but observing their choices and their loyalty affected us. Because while it is a political film it is also a film about friendship; that’s what makes it universal.
KG: We left it to the audience to some degree to decide how they felt about it. I think those decisions depend on who you are and what your political beliefs, are going in. We are reluctant to say to an audience at large how to think or what to believe.
KDDLV: I think it’s more important for us to put it out there and allow them to come to their own conclusions.
Still, the silent authorial voice at the back seems to be saying that people’s civil liberties are being trampled on at a particular time in America’s political history, in a context which is very much part of post 9/11 paranoia.
KG: I think that’s fair.
KDDLV: Another way to put it is that we are bringing to light what is seen as perfectly okay under the criminal justice system in America. Most Americans don’t know how far the FBI or an informant can go. Most people would never imagine this scenario.
For the average American living in the mid-west the definition of a terrorist as a person who is not “us” but “them” is essentially someone from the Middle East, someone who has a beard and prays to Allah. What is challenging about this film is that the two men are home-grown “terrorists”.
KDDLV: This type of use of informants is very prevalent in the Muslim community in the United States. And I think that is important. Is the person in the mid-west going to see those two boys from George Bush’s hometown as someone closer to his own son? Is that going to be more alarming and upsetting and will that allow him to have compassion for everyone else in that situation?
KG: Incidentally, one of the two boys who were accused of terrorism was radicalised because of Bush’s Shock and awe campaign and the Iraq war and that is what he was protesting.
After 9/11 situation there was a lot of hunting down of young Muslim men in the USA. There were many Muslim students who were questioned and accused of all kinds of involvement in terrorist thinking when they hadn’t done anything.
KG: This is where we started. This is why we were interested in making this movie. Because we had noticed all these cases where someone after a lengthy investigation, often involving an informant, was then charged with domestic terrorism. They were often young, they were mostly Muslims, but there were also many environmental activists. And then there would be a counter accusation by the defendant of entrapment or misconduct by a government informant. So when we saw this case and it was going to trial and, we thought here is a great opportunity to follow a case like this closely. It was still a good story but it was a more important story for me personally as I knew this was a cultural phenomenon post 9/11. So we were asking, what is really going on here? And to look at all the other cases like this all over the country and ask ourselves, does any of this really make sense?
ADIL RAY
Radio and TV Journalist (British Pakistani)
Recent films/Radio documentaries: The Private life of British Pakistanis, Exposed: Groomed for sex (2011)
How did the idea for a documentary on British Pakistani men sexually grooming young girls come about?
Towards the end of last year, there were quite a few articles coming out about sexual grooming cases where British Pakistani men were the main culprits. Let me explain what this means. Sexual exploitation happens in all communities in the UK, the biggest of course being internet grooming, there is also child trafficking and sex slavery. The majority of convictions are white males. What we are talking about here is a way of sexual exploitation that includes two or more men grooming more than one girl for sex. The crime is still rape and abduction. There is a pattern of Pakistani men being involved in such cases. In fact 80% of all sexual grooming case convictions are British Pakistani men. I figured maybe there is something here to look into and went to the BBC with the idea. Naturally, it was a very sensitive issue and they weren’t sure. So we thought of making it as a very personal documentary with a British Pakistani journalist looking into the whole thing. I went into it with no pre-conceptions. I thought if it’s proved wrong, if it comes out during our investigation that there really wasn’t anything there then fine, but that didn’t really turn out to be the case.
How has the British Pakistani community reacted to this issue and also to your documentary? I just googled it and found the British Nationalist Party (BNP) have a report on it on their website and are using it to stereotype British Pakistani men.
If you go up north and speak to the imams and to the people in the mosques, they have realised there is a problem. There are people in community politics that have been dealing with it and talking about it for a number of years now. There is nothing wrong with confronting a situation and talking about it. I think it makes you stronger as a community when you do. Of course there will be people in the BNP or the media who will take advantage of this. I was always very aware of that. My father used to tell me that when he first came to this country, people used to call him “Paki” and he would cross the road and carry on. I’m a firm believer that sometimes you have to take a hit to deal with issues. We can’t say that we won’t deal with the problem just because it will make us look bad. Of course it is a minority but it affects so many of us. It can break up families and we can have a really terrible situation in the future if we don’t learn from it.
Did your being a British Pakistani affect how you responded to the situation and did it affect how people, especially some of the victims, responded to you?
I have got to say that I was quite taken aback with how dignified the victim and the families we spoke to were. You might expect the victim to have built up a real hatred for British Pakistani men because she had been raped by them repeatedly. I would have accepted that. But the girl I spoke to was not like that at all. I have always felt British and also Pakistani so I certainly felt personally affected by the stories that came out. Of course, the victims were primarily white girls, because we live in white Britain. But we heard about wives and mothers not being able to leave the house because they were shamed by what their husbands and sons had done. And I really felt for the British Pakistani community as a whole. We have had a really tough time since 9/11. Suddenly we were seen as suicide bombers. People didn’t really even know where Pakistan was before then. And I wasn’t even sure that British Pakistanis would want to hear about cases of sexual grooming. So I wondered how it was possible to get the British Pakistani community to react positively rather than negatively. I didn’t want it taken as a personal attack and, thankfully, most people have not.
All the documentary filmmakers I spoke to emphasised how important it was to take a hard look at oneself, and how all societies should learn to take criticism. How essential is this?
Of course, you should always self-reflect. You should take a look at yourself and figure out where you are. We must do that as individuals and as a community. Pakistani immigrants are a young community in this country. We have been in Britain for only about 25-30 years so naturally there will be integration issues. But I dare say in 10-15 years we may be having this conversation about Eastern European communities or the Somali community too. We are already hearing little murmurings to that effect. It is natural that a community as large as the British Pakistani is going to have some culture clashes and in very extreme circumstances these may become sordid or criminal and that is what one is seeing here.
Do you think this documentary would have been very different if it was made by someone who was not a British Pakistani, a white woman for example?
Yes, it would. I’m not saying for a moment that a white or black journalist, male or female, could not do this. Anyone could do this story. But it would not have the inside perspective that I could bring to the table. But also more importantly, in the post 9/11 and 7/7 climate of Islamophobia, I think the Pakistani community quite rightly are nervous about anything that goes out. Part of the battle is to reassure them that a critical look at something is not necessarily an attack on them. I think it is important to make the Pakistani community feel they can participate and be a part of the documentary. Twitter is a great example of how people can interact. The Imam we spoke to initially didn’t want to have any part in the documentary but a month into it he called up and said he felt he should be talking to us. A few people tweeted me and said, why are you doing this, and I didn’t argue with them because I know how it feels when you first hear about it. You don’t really want to believe it. But when you start to digest it you think we must talk about it. The worst thing is to sweep it under the carpet.
Do you think in some ways this documentary is not just about the crime but also about British Pakistani attitudes towards sex?
In a broader sense, a documentary such as this cannot be just about the crime. It has to suggest a broader look at British Pakistani attitudes about sex. It is about segregation and separation. Some of those lads thought they weren’t doing anything wrong and that it’s perfectly culturally acceptable to think that white girls or young girls on the street wanted to have sex. We are constantly told what to do but not allowed to have discussions about sexuality. And that’s where the problems really begin.
Published in The Express Tribune, December Sunday Magazine, 18th, 2011.