Interview with Amreeka director Cherien Dabis--Beirut-- by N. Fadda.

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.

To Sleep...

Tell yourself the day is over
Soak in a hot tub
Read something relaxing
Read something boring
Get into bed and let your mind go blank
Source:Unknown

Persepolis

The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

My review

This is the greatest female heroine since Jane Eyre. She's ballsy and not afraid to say what's on her mind. If Salman Rushdie had written this book, he would have ended up in an ashtray.I'm not sure how Satrapi got away with it. Is it because she's a woman or because she's written a graphic novel?


View all my reviews.

On Charlotte Bronte

One of the writers I respect the most is Charlotte Bronte. I respect her honesty, her integrity, her wisdom, her ambition, her fortitude in the face of suffering and her passion for writing.
Few writers have put so much of themselves into their writing.Fewer still have braved the odds, death, sickness, loneliness and continued to write.
Even if one is not religious, one cannot but admire Charlotte Bronte's unshakeable faith in God. For, if anything sustained her in her many dark nights of the soul, it was her faith.
The sources of nourishment and support for lonely souls are many. To Charlotte I think what mattered most was the double nourishment of her sisters and writing. She was a driven young woman with hopes for herself and her sisters. Despite the diffidence expressed in her letters to her editors and to various publishing houses and her extreme self-consciousness, the mere fact that she thought herself publishable is proof of an unshakeable self-confidence and pride in her literary abilities and a certain amount of vanity.
Her writing to Southey suggest both the naivete and the daring of the secluded and a trust in her literary powers.
It is hard to imagine what Charlotte Bronte expected as an answer to her letter to Southey. She typically replies to his letter in which he discourages her to write with her characteristic urgency:"I cannot rest till I have answered your letter..."But it is clear and fortunate that she was self-confident enough as a writer in order to dismiss his reply for it was literature that she pursued as a vocation. One has to keep in mind that this happened in a century where it was uncommon for women to write.
Charlotte Bronte is a great witer for two reasons. The first is that her writing is divine. Compared to her Jane Austen seems to be writing equations. Example: "Have you no letter for me, Mr. Warner? Do you bring no message, no word of his welfare, no enquiry afrer mine? "My lady I have not so much as a syllable for you." Notice that she writes not word but syllable.The second reason Bronte is a great writer is that she wrote about something that touched her deeply--the subject of being an orphan and the subject of being in love. Anything else that Charlotte Bronte might have written about would have been merely good but not great.
In writing about a plain governess who was not attractive, she dared the conventions of the novel and created something quite unique and much more revolutionary than what what Flaubert did with his Emma Bovary--Turn an attractive but boring housewife into a heroine.
The difference between Flaubert and Charlotte Bronte is that Flaubert dreaded entering Emma Bovary's mind whereas Bronte enjoyed entering Jane Eyre's character to the hilt. That is why Emma is an uninspiring and forgettable character while Jane is alive and unforgettable. Emma Bovary is attractive but boring, Jane is plain but never boring.
Charlotte Bronte created one of the most vivid, most interesting heroines of any novel not least because she doesn't end up under the wheels of a train or commit suicide. Bronte is not interested in killing off her heroine as many male writers do.Her heroine is strong and resilient like herself.

Charlotte's reply to Southey's letter in which he
discourages her from writing

At the first perusal of you letter I felt only shame and regret that I had ever ventured to trouble you with my crude rhapsody;I felt a painful heat rise to my face when I thought of the quires of paper I had covered with what once gave me so much delight, but which now was only a source of confusion; but after I had thought a little, and read it again and again, the prospect seemed to clear. You do not forbid me to write; you do not say that what I write is utterly destitute of merit. You only warn me against the folly of neglecting real duties for the sake of imaginative pleasures; of writing for the love of fame; for the selfish excitement of emulation. You kindly allow me to write poetry for its own sake, provided I leave undone nothing which I ought to do, in order to pursue that single, absorbing,
exquisite gratification. I am afraid, sir, you think me very foolish. I know the
first letter I wrote to you was all senseless trash from beginning to end; but I
am not altogether the idle, dreaming being it would seem to denote.
My father is a clergyman of limited though competent income, and I am the eldest of his children. He expended quite as much in my education as he could afford in
justice to the rest. I thought it therefore my duty, when I left school, to
become a governess. In that capacity I find enough to occupy my thoughts all day
long, and my head and hands too, without having a moment's time for one dream of
the imagination. In the evenings, I confess, I do think, but I never trouble any
one else with my thoughts. I carefully avoid any appearance of preoccupation and
eccentricity, which might lead those I live amongst to suspect the nature of my
pursuits. Following my father's advice -- who from my childhood has counselled
me, just in the wise and friendly tone of your letter -- I have endeavoured not
only attentively to observe all the duties a woman ought to fulfil, but to feel
deeply interested in them. I don't always succeed, for sometimes when I'm
teaching or sewing I would rather be reading or writing; but I try to deny
myself; and my father's approbation amply rewarded me for the privation. Once
more allow me to thank you with sincere gratitude. I trust I shall never more
feel ambitious to see my name in print; if the wish should rise, I'll look at
Southey's letter, and suppress it. It is honour enough for me that I have
written to him, and received an answer. That letter is consecrated; no one shall
ever see it but papa and my brother and sisters. Again I thank you. This
incident, I suppose, will be renewed no more; if I live to be an old woman, I
shall remember it thirty years hence as a bright dream. The signature which you
suspected of being fictitious is my real name. Again, therefore, I must sign
myself
C. Bronte
P.S. -- Pray, sir, excuse me for writing to you a
second time; I could not help writing, partly to tell you how thankful I am for
your kindness, and partly to let you know that your advice shall not be wasted,
however sorrowfully and reluctantly it may at first be followed.
C.B

.

Tribute to Kurt Cobain

Always on someone's mind

Kurt Cobain as Neil Young said in his song Sleeps With Angels "is always on someone's mind." Patti Smith in "About a Boy" sings: From a chaos, rich and sweet/From the deep and dismal streets/Tore another kind of peace/Tore the great emptiness."

My favorite scene involving Cobain is nothing anyone has said about him or has written about him. It's a short scene from a documentary entitled Teen Spirit: A Tribute to Kurt Cobain where a French journalist interviews Kurt in an accent so French it sounds like a parody of a French accent:

I: EEn Teen Speerit you seem to complain about the apatee of your generation. Is that right?

Kurt: Whatever you want to make out of it. It's your crossword puzzle.

I: And you share this lack of engagement? Being Apathetic?

Kurt: What being apathetic?

I: Yes.

Kurt: Yes.

I: Why?

Kurt: (in a mocking tone): Why?

Pause

Kurt: Because we sleep too much.

14 years after he shot himself, Cobain's music is still as vibrant as ever. In a recent documentary entitled Classic Albums: Smells Like Teen Spirit, Chris Novoselic says that Kurt always used to tell him it was the music that mattered. But he wrote better lyrics than most contemporary American poets writing today. Kurt combined Sylvia Plath darkness with Beatelesque melody to produce some of the greatest songs of the century.

My two little nieces

These are my two little nieces Mira and Emily. In this picture they are posing for the camera.Any minute Emily, wearing visible diapers will bite Mira.Mira is going to be a doctor and Emily is going to be an engineer. And they're not even Jewish.

There will be Blood

Daniel-Day Lewis' 9 1/2

Daniel-Day Lewis is actor of the century. His choice of movies, personal commitment to his roles and the intensity with which he exists on the screen is unsurpassed by any male actor of his generation.Last night, there were only 4 people watching the movie there will be Blood. Myself, my friend Ghia and two other die-hards. Watching it was like watching Fellini's 9 1/2. For one thing it's very long (3 hours approx.) then it's slow but Lewis as usual brings an intensity to his role that makes him like the greek gods--alternately vengeful and tender. He plays the role of a self-made man that is an anomaly--a man living in turn of the century puritanical America who doesn't believe in God.

Grade: A+

Actor Credits There Will Be Blood (2007) Daniel Plainview The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005) Jack Slavin Gangs of New York (2002) William Cutting/ "Bill The Butcher" The Boxer (1997) Danny Flynn The Crucible (1996) John Proctor In the Name of the Father (1993) Gerald Conlon The Age of Innocence (1993) Newland Archer The Last of the Mohicans (1992) Nathaniel Poe/ Hawkeye Eversmile, New Jersey (1989) Fergus O'Connell My Left Foot (1989) Christy Brown Nanou (1988) Max Stars & Bars (1988) Henderson Dores The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) Tomas My Beautiful Laundrette (1986) Johnny A Room With A View (1986) Cecil Vyse The Insurance Man (1985) Mr Kafka The Bounty (1984) Fryer Gandhi (1982) Colin How Many Miles to Babylon? (1982) Sunday, Bloody Sunday (1971)
2002 Best Actor Gangs of New York (2002) Nominated 1993
Best Actor In the Name of the Father (1993) Nominated 1989
Best Actor My Left Foot (1989) Win