Pardon my callousness, but I don’t focus on the names of Youtube accounts. But this week, I definitely noticed the name of the Youtube account responsible for uploading Samir Zikra movies: “samir zikra”. I have no idea whether it’s the director of Chronicles of the Coming Year (1985) uploading his entire filmography onto Youtube, if it’s the work of a fan or an impersonator. Either way, it’s a funny little mystery. Whoever it is, at least they’re putting his movies out there.
Google “Syrian films” and you’ll notice a theme in the top results: For Sama, The Return to Homs, Last Man in Aleppo etc. These documentaries focus on how ongoing civil war has impacted the people of Syria, and are important for that purpose. However, the country has its own history outside of non-fiction film — meagre when placed in comparison to neighbouring Egypt, but complete with its own auteurs, its own voices.
Following the Ba'athist coup d'état of 1963, the Syrian National Film Organisation (NFO) was founded, part of a re-imagined public sector dedicated to Arab socialist ideals. Directors studied at film schools in communist Eastern European countries, with Zikra based in Moscow. Like most burgeoning cinema scenes, Syria’s held a collective spirit: Mohamad Malas’ Dreams of the City (1984), the film that announced Syria on the world cinema stage, was written by Zikra (his roomie at film school). While there were successes in the auteur-driven stage of Syrian cinema, the films were by large underseen, undistributed, and lacking home video copies. The National Library in Damascus has survived the war but the films in their archives are mostly demagnetised or missing reels.
Perhaps this is why Zikra (or his digital impersonator) has put his filmography online in shoddy quality, as it’s likely all that’s available. Watching Chronicles on Youtube is going to be tough for many of you, but I find something beautiful about the well-worn quality of the video file: a digital conversion of a fuzzy videotape of a pock-marked 35mm print. Colour filters change several times, audio pops out of sync halfway through, and hardcoded English subtitles float into the air. Chronicles deserves better care than this, but seeing it in this condition makes the film feel like it’s been traded across a network of aficionados, like a sacred text.
Najah Safkouni plays Munir Wahba, a classical composer who has just returned from Moscow and effortlessly makes every woman swoon over him. (Ah, directors and their self-insert characters!) Having seen how the outside world operates, he sets out to incorporate Western musical leanings into traditional Arab compositions — if he can get the government’s funding bodies to consider classical music worth caring for. At the film’s opening, Munir is in his element as a conductor, enthralling his musicians and audience alike; as he shuffles from dignitary to dignitary, appointment to appointment, he can never recapture that level of control. At a particularly low point, he dons his tie and tails, blasts music on full blast and whirls his baton alongside, just to feel something.
This is very much a film critical of Syria in the 1980s: the government are out-of-touch, buffoonish and so politically tied with Arab socialism that they immediately denounce any new ideas. One character, introduced as being “‘devoted to the struggle”, endlessly spouts ideological jargon, turning any conversation into a monologue. The energy drags when he appears, which is kinda the point. The women in Munir’s life are tired of their social constraints, especially Haifa (artist and actress Hala al-Faisal), who talks about her abortion, disinterest in marriage and suicide attempts. The country’s intervention in the then-recent Lebanese civil war hangs heavy, with Munir sitting in a soldiers’ graveyard at one point with an expression that screams “how did we get here?”. Nobody can agree on the exact year Chronicles was released, with many historical texts oscillating between 1985 and 1986 — a result of the Syrian authorities quickly hiding Zikra’s film from public eyes.
When it staggered its way to Arab-centric film festivals a couple of years later, audiences were split. At its 1987 French premiere, some were moved by Munir's struggle to assimilate Moscow's lessons to his home country; others thought the film pretentious, lifting aesthetics from European arthouse masters. Chronicles is in no way allergic to Important Film clichés, with its state-of-the-nation messaging, angst-ridden tone and endless political and sexual theorizing — often, it feels like Zikra is working through his influences to find a voice. When he finds a voice of his own, magic happens: the film's best scene takes place in an old-fashioned piano bar, which transforms into a glitzy Italo-disco club for a moment, before reverting, then awkwardly transforming again. It's absurd, poignant and a little grumpy (Munir, Zikra's stand-in, looks very unimpressed by disco), a dreamlike show of Syria stuck between moving forward and embracing nostalgia.
And yes, Syria is known for a never-ending humanitarian crisis, to the extent where it feels like tumultuous modern history could overshadow its past. But in Zikra's film, even when heavily compressed and filled with VCR noise, the Syrian cities of the 1980s become a special effect. It's the courtyards, the all-denim outfits, the rolling hills, the architecture, the arid heat, the cafés, construction sites, spacious balconies, bare fields, historical amphitheatres, cobbled roads, nightclubs, piano bars and more, so much more. It’s alive.
ELSEWHERE ON YOUTUBE:
Fi Dem IV (dir. Zinzi Minott, 2021, UK)
Atist Zinzi Minott’s ongoing Fi Dem series is one of the best running series in the world today. Each annual entry is a glitch-filled, hypnotic mash-up of music, documentary footage, home video and block, retro-style CGI. The project is “a commitment to the Windrush generation, and a continued investigation of Blackness, diaspora and the heritage of her family” — heavy and important subject matter, yes, but Minott’s presentation is filled with insatiable energy. You won’t — nay can’t — nay, shall not be able to turn away. PLAY REALLY FUCKING LOUD.
What Happened In BELLY??!! (1998) PRIMM'S HOOD CINEMA
I haven’t put out a newsletter in a very long time, because 2021 was pretty damn hard on me. One of my favourite things to watch in relation to film was comedian Moses Primm’s very funny breakdowns of hood movies, a loosely-defined genre of cinema that focuses on the trials and tribulations of inner-city youth. The genre definition is loose enough for Primm to focus on films diverse as Ice Cube comedy classic Friday (1995), B2K dance vehicle You Got Served (2004) and light coming-of-age story The Wood (1999). Hype Williams’ Belly (1998) has undergone a critical re-evaluation over the past decade, thanks in no part to Williams’ iconic, Tumblr-core visual approach. It is a film that I wish I loved, and Primm’s breakdown of why it doesn’t work is one of the funniest experiences I’ve had with film criticism in years.
Echo I made a cat vocal and played the guitar [Vocal. Black cat_Guitar. Cat trouble] / Making space
The best indie rock moment of 2021 was this cat reverb-meowing over its owner’s electric guitar. Sorry, Low.
NEXT: The Eternal Breasts (dir. Kinuyo Tanaka, 1955, Japan)