Cheriene Dabis looks more like an actress than a director. She's got jet black hair that frames milky white skin and dark eyes. Think of a Palestinian Gong Li. She's also quite tall.
Dabis chooses her words with great precision.The way she shifts from Palestinian Arabic to American English is disconcerting. She speaks the two languages perfectly. Listening to her switch from one language to another is as fascinating as watching someone juggle ten bottles. And she does switch from one language to the other often, not wanting to let go of either one. It's her way of proclaiming her identity,identity being one of the main themes of her film debut Amreeka.
I met Dabis at Sofil, Achrafieh where her movie was being screened for the International Lebanese Film Festival (she won the prize for Best Director). She had a busy schedule. She wanted to field questions from an audience after a second screening of her movie. Then, she had an interview with a journalist from Al Nahar newspaper. Then it was off to a TV interview. "Let's play it by ear," she told me when I showed up at 6 p.m. and I stuck around hoping I'd have a chance to speak to her. She had an entourage--her sister, a press agent and a couple of other women-- who seemed to gravitate towards her at specific intervals.
When Dabis was done with the interview for Al-Nahar, she told me:"Let's get out of here.It's so noisy." We ended up sitting on the stairs in the dark on the first floor. Hardly a glamorous spot. But Dabis is far from being the glamorous type.Practical and outspoken, she's an interesting mixture of American casualness and Arab pride.
The interview
N. F. :
Some of the funniest scenes in your movie are about food.The grandmother gives her daughter some cucumbers when the latter leaves for the States.There's also a scene wher Matt (an American) and Mouna (the main character) bond over falafel. What's the importance of food in your movie?
Cheriene Dabis:
Oh food is so important there. I mean it's so important in general. And it was a way to illustrate love. Mouna's mother gives her cucumbers as a gesture of love and Mouna makes her co-worker falafel as a gesture of kindness and love and I think it's one way in our culture that we show affection and it's one way that we bond and it's it was a way to show the melding of two cultures--the way that Mouna makes a falafel burger.We see that she's being influenced by her new culture but yet she's holding on to her old one as well. She's making something that is exactly a mix of those things.
N.F.:
Your movie is about prejudice against Arabs and it's one of the few times that we see Americans from an Arab perspective in a movie. How did you manage to show the States from an Arab perspective?
Cheriene Dabis:
That's my perspective in many ways . I have a unique circumstance because Ive never felt Arab enough for the Arabs and Ive never felt American enough for the Americans. I feel lost in between those worlds.But what's really great about that perspective is that I can look at the Arabs through an American perspective and I can look at the Akmericans through an Arab perspective and this gives me distance enough that I can tell a story, that I can really choose a perspective and tell it in a way that i wouldn't be able to if i was just immersed in one of both, completely.And I think that's why i was able to manage it is that I feel like a bridge between the east and the west in so many ways. I always felt that my experience as an Arab in a small town during the first gulf war and the discrimination that i experienced and that my family experience, it was my responsibility to broker an understanding betweeen the US and the Arab world.
N.F. :Which town did you grow up in?
Cheriene Dabis:I grew up in a tiny town in NortWestern Ohio called Salina.It's about an hour north of Dayton.
N.F.: Was the U.S. audience responsive to the movie?
Cheriene Dabis: They have been incredibly responsive. People very often tell me it's not just my story, it's their story. So many immigrants in the U.S. relate to the film. People really appreciate the familiarity of the story but yet the specifity of the cultural references, specifity of the Arab cultural references and the american cultural references and I think that they also appreciate the humor and the intimacy and the warmth. And there's a lot of warmth in the way that the film is being received by audiences all over the world and I get Americans saying to me "I felt like i just spent an hour with your family" or "Anyone who comes from a family can relate to this movie." Another of my favorites is "Anyone who's ever felt they don't belong for whatever reason can relate to this film."
N. F. What's the first thing thet you'd like to eat when you come to the Middle east?
Cheriene Dabis:Khiar(cucumbers) (laughs) Because you can't find them like faous (small, slender cucumbers). Explain faous to an American.Teen (figs) Bass alaklat( But the dishes ah) Al Tabbouleh. I miss tabbouleh. You can't get it the way that you get it here. Koubbeh, especially when I come to Lebanon.
N.F.: One last question. Did you always know you wanted to be a film director and who were some of the directors or movies that influenced you the most?
Cherine Dabis: Well, I didn't really know what a director did until I went to film school.So I didn't always know i wanted to be a director. But I was making home movies when I was in the 8th grade, and I was the one who was filming everything and I was the one who was telling all my friends where to stand and what to do.So I was naturally a director at the age of 12 but I didn't know. I was just bossy. I had an idea of what I wanted from that age. I knew I wanted to tell a story and I just illustrated where everyone needed to be and what they had to say and how they had to move. Back then, it was a certain sense of bossiness but it was a certain also a certain sense of knowing what I wanted and that's what I think you need to have in order to be a director.
Francois Truffaut's 400 Blows is a very influential movie for me, especially in the making if this movie . And Mike Leigh is a big influential director for me especially with regard for this movie. And Cassavetes. And I looove ....In the Mood for love Wong Kar-wai is one of my favorite directors.Es Tu Mama Tambien I love 1940's classic Hollywood films like Sunset Boulevard and those funny movies that I can watch again and again like The Apartment. There's a movie called Arthur. I love that movie.It just cracks me up. When I'm depressed, I just want to put that movie in and watch it.
