No, they don’t know it or them, says Orwa Nyrabia, one of the DOX BOX organisers, when I doubt him stating that the audience to the seminar of French academic Martin Barbier, ”Back to Basics”, had never heard about ”Nanook of the North” or its director Robert Flaherty.

DOXBOX has thus not only an actual role to play by presenting new films, it also wants to educate an audience and invite them to know about the history of documentary film.

Barbier served that purpose when he talked about sound and documentary and showed clips from all the classics, especially from a French point of view. Among others the wonderful Clouzot film about Picasso, which is available in all Fnac shops in France. And Alain Resnais and Chris Marker.

After the screening I asked a couple of young Syrians if they learned anything. One of them answered immediately: Yes, Nazis suck… She referred to the clip from Leni Riefenstahl ”Olympia” and to the last clip from Claude Lanzmann´s ”Shoah”!

In the afternoon one more look at ”3 Rooms of Melancholia” by Pirjo Honkasalo. I have seen it several times and yet it makes a big impression one more time. There are not many documentary filmmakers like Pirjo with such a humanistic commitment and such a courage to do a different and much more poignant narrative. She makes the rest of the documentariands look like pedestrians.

Read more at: www.millenniumfilm.fi/2004_melancholia.html

Full house for the film of Omar Amiralay from 1982, ”The Misfortune of Some”, produced for the French channel Antenne 2, during the Lebanese war. Amiralay is the Syrian documentary filmmaker, his films have been shown all over the world, he is the role model for the young Syrian filmmakers and now also active at the Arab Film Institute, the film school in Amman.

I am told that 5 of his films are banned in Syria and that he was not allowed by the authorities to introduce or discuss the film that I saw – even if he was there in the hall to support the organisers of the festival by his mere presence. Respect! The film is first of all a portrait of total turmoil, the French (sub)title being ”Un homme dans la tourmente”. This man is a charismatic and extremely funny round figure, who is a taxi driver and turns into a kind of undertaker during the film and the events it is covering.

We get to learn about his relationship to women and about many other common daily issues in the world. We see the bombed Beirut, and stylistical breaks to this main character, among other things there is a scene with a group of people (a big family?) that watch television. Underlined with a sound score that gives the absurdity of it all.

A discovery for me, and Arab neo-classic, would like another view with someone giving me some background of historical nature. … and then a revisit to Werner Herzog with ”Lessons of Darkness”, what a masterpiece. More about the festival, already now a success in terms of audience: www.dox-box.org

This is a small report from the first day of the new DOX BOX documentary festival in Damascus. At the opening yesterday there was full house in at the Al Kindi Film Theatre, where the DOX BOX team, headed by Diana El Jeiroudi and Orwa Nyrabia welcomed the flight-delayed foreign guests – and first of all a full house of an audience, that watched the classic “Light & Shadows” by Omar Amiralay, Mohammad Malas and Ossama Mohammad from 1994, followed by Pirjo Honkasalo´s “3 Rooms of Melancholia”, that will be subject to a masterclass, where the Finnish director will be accompanied by Danish editor Niels Pagh Andersen.

The atmosphere is all very generous and full of hospitality, the catalogue is fine, the organisers are nervous, it is as it should be for a first edition of a long awaited festival in a country where the tradition for documentaries is not really existant.

For the Danish readers – the Danish Institute in the soukh of Damascus is exactly so beautiful as the rumours had announced. The Institute supports the festival and we are several who think about projects that would qualify one to stay in the historical building so wonderfully kept with courtyards that are second to none when it comes to beauty.

The film programme starts in a while: Nicholas Philibert, two Arabic documentaries that I will write about, Herzog with his “Lessons of Darkness” and Remunda´s “Czech Dream”. Cross fingers for audience!