Kasim Abid with film crew
Filmmaking requires perseverance, zeal, sometimes even a pathological commitment to see a project through. Now imagine making movies in Baghdad.
Kidnappings, killings, suicide bombings and blackouts haven't deterred a number of intrepid aspiring directors from pursuing their passion, whether Oday Rasheed and Mohamed Al-Daradji, the first two people to make feature films in the wake of the U.S. invasion in 2003 (respectively, Over Exposure and Ahlaam) or the roughly 80 young Iraqis who have gone through Baghdad's Independent Film and Television College since it was launched by two Iraqi exiles in 2004.
Based in London, Kasim Abid and Maysoon Pachachi had taught filmmaking courses to Palestinians in Ramallah and decided to bring that experience to bear in their homeland. "We thought, 'What can we do to help?'" says Pachachi. "We're not doctors, we're not engineers, we're just filmmakers."
And, as in Ramallah, there wasn't much of an infrastructure to build from. For years, "If a camera broke down, you couldn't find spare parts for it," says Pachachi. "There was no film stock, there were no film labs, no digital equipment, so people who had studied at Baghdad's Academy of Fine Arts and had done a four-year course in cinema had never touched or even seen a camera. So our focus was completely practical."
Abid and Pachachi set up shop in Baghdad's southeastern district of Al-Wahda, sandwiched between the Tigris River to the West and the Mahdi-Army controlled area of New Baghdad to the East. They set up their first three-month course with around 20 students, but the class lasted up to a year, because students often couldn't get into the school. "Either there's a curfew, or there's skirmishes, or a bomb has gone off and the roads are closed," says Pachachi.
Filmmaking equipment — such as digital videotape stock or lights — can be found in local markets these days. ("The quality is variable," admits Pachachi). But more to the point, "the market where they sell that stuff has been bombed," she warns.
For safety, Abid and Pachachi teach their camera exercises on the roof of the building "amid the satellite dishes," she says. "We're fighting all the time between kicking our students out the door to investigate the world, and on the other hand, being very fearful of their safety. We tell them, 'You have to think of stories that are contained within one location or a place that you're familiar with or that's not dangerous.'"
Even then, it's not always safe. After the February 2006 bombings of the Al-Askrai Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Shi'a Islam, escalating sectarian violence spread to Al-Wahda, which "was a quiet mixed area," says Pachachi. In May '06, 13 Iraqis were killed when a bomb exploded in a nearby restaurant; two months later, six bodies were found, all showing signs of torture, according to reports.
Closer to the school, three people were kidnapped from the building where Abid and Pachachi rent offices; bomb blasts shattered nearly every pane of glass in the building; the father of a school graduate, standing across the street, was killed by a random mortar attack; Abid's own brother was killed by militia. And then there's Emad Ali's story.
One of the school's first students, Ali faced a series of heartbreaking setbacks: A mortar attack near his house killed his wife and father, while he spent two weeks in the hospital. Then, after videotaping footage for his short documentary A Candle for the Shabandar Café, an unsentimental elegy for Baghdad's most famous intellectual's café, which was destroyed in a suicide bombing, Ali was attacked by two armed men. After trying to escape, he was shot in the leg and the chest. He survived. His leg, nearly amputated, can be saved with an advanced medical procedure that isn't available in Baghdad.
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