For more on the documentary:
dreamswithoutsleep.com
Interview with Al-Awadi:
http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/nea/text/0911film.htm
Posted on 02/04/2003 1:02:05 PM PST by Shermy
KUWAIT CITY, Kuwait - After making a deeply pro-American documentary about Sept. 11, an Arab Muslim filmmaker is turning his camera to a feature set against the background of a possible war with Iraq.
For Walid Al-Awadi, filming the buildup of U.S. troops in his native Kuwait brings back memories of picking up a home-video camera and recording his countrymen hiding in basements while Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s army looted their nation for seven months in 1990-91.
But this time, at 35, Al-Awadi is a professional filmmaker with a recent success to his name: a Sept. 11 documentary, "Dreams Without Sleep."
On Sept. 11, 2001, Al-Awadi was in New York, where he studied film in the 1990s and spends much of the year. Hearing that the World Trade Center had been struck by aircraft, he grabbed his camera and went out in the streets.
"I had to be crazy," he says. "Otherwise, a Muslim filmmaker wouldn't take a camera and go under the Twin Towers and start shooting, when there was so much suspicion against Muslims."
His film was built around disaster footage and interviews with five Americans touched by the towers' collapse, from a firefighter who barely escaped and who sang "Danny Boy" at his comrades' funerals, to a Lebanese-American whose three nephews worked in the same office and were killed.
More than the anatomy of a tragedy, the film is a tribute to the American Dream. Those interviewed had personal or family histories of escaping oppression — including the Iron Curtain, and slavery's legacy in the United States — and found the freedom in New York to pursue new lives.
The documentary screened out of competition at last year's Cannes Film Festival (news - web sites), and in several U.S. cities for the anniversary of Sept. 11.
"There was a lady who came up to me," Al-Awadi recalls about a screening in New York. "She said, `I'm 70 years old. I'm Jewish and a New Yorker. You're a Muslim and an Arab. Come here, I want to give you a hug.'"
A 1989 graduate of Kuwait University in civil engineering, Al-Awadi had a comfortable life — a Mercedes and a big house, a close family and old friends — until Iraq invaded in 1990 and occupied Kuwait for seven months before being expelled by a U.S.-led coalition.
Al-Awadi helped produce an underground newsletter during those months. His home-video attempts to document the occupation ultimately led him to pursue a career in film, studying in New York and Los Angeles.
Now, he's back home. At the sand-blown U.S. military camps in the Kuwaiti desert, little distinguishes Al-Awadi in grubby jeans and boots from the TV news crews that are shooting footage of troops killing time, awaiting any orders to invade northward into Iraq.
But back in Kuwait City, Al-Awadi swaps his Cannes cap for a traditional Arab headscarf and zips in a sports car to meetings to nail down sponsors for his new project, a feature film with documentary elements about refugees from an Arab dictatorship.
The looming war is a backdrop and would provide the action. But even if conflict is avoided, Al-Awadi says the story-line would be similar.
The working title is "Birds of Paradise" — paradise being the elusive home country under dictatorial rule.
"I don't want to talk about politics in this film," Al-Awadi said. "I want to talk about humans. It's about living in a refugee camp for 15 years and how home is so close, but you can't go back there."
A crew has been assembled in London, and he hopes to start filming by the end of February.
Like many Kuwaitis who survived the Iraqi occupation, Al-Awadi detests Saddam Hussein and feels that the Arab world — especially ordinary Iraqis — can only benefit from his ouster.
Iraqis will react like prisoners being set free, he believes.
"If there's going to be a war, let's get it over with," Al-Awadi said. "It's going to be very interesting. We're going to see a historic change in the region."
For more on the documentary:
dreamswithoutsleep.com
Interview with Al-Awadi:
http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/nea/text/0911film.htm
Iraqis will react like prisoners being set free, he believes.
"If there's going to be a war, let's get it over with," Al-Awadi said. "It's going to be very interesting. We're going to see a historic change in the region."
It's a pleasure to bump this one.
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