Signals: Power Cut Middle East   

Flashback to IFFR 2011: On the same day that the film festival in Rotterdam started, the first demonstrators made their way to Tahrir Square in Cairo and never left. Naturally, we had already seen the astounding events in Tunisia. On 17 December 2010, the 26-year-old Tunisian fruit seller Mohamed Bouazizi set fire to himself and this led to demonstrations and riots against the 23-year regime of dictator Ben Ali. In less than a month, the unheard-of happened: the dictator gave in and fled.

At the time, however, no one expected there would be such an immense knock-on effect. For the first time in decades, cracks – both large and small – appeared in regimes around the Arab world. That Hosni Mubarak would resign only a few weeks later in Egypt; that Saudi women would ignore the ban on female driving en masse; that the people of Syria would revolt; and that, after a prolonged struggle, freedom fighters in Libya would pose next to the lifeless body of Muammar Gaddafi – in early February 2011 all this was still unthinkable. Naturally, this edition of the film festival will pay attention to the Arab revolutions, whatever their outcome. As the IFFR has demonstrated for decades, filmmakers are the first to draw outside attention to the injustices in their countries – openly or concealed by metaphor.

Moreover, these contemporary revolutions are supported and fed by moving images. Thanks to the omnipresent cameras, such major historic events can now be, for the first time, experienced almost ‘live’ at street level. The moving image – the raw material for a film festival – plays an essential role. The filmmakers both record and participate in the protests. Egyptian artist Hala Elkoussy sent the following e-mail when she did not turn up for the première of her short film Mount of Forgetfulness. ‘I didn’t make it to the screening because I was busy making revolution.’ And there are many others like her.

Power Cut Middle East intends to understand these moving images by turning them inside out. Because what are we really looking at? Not just the moving images that spread the Arab revolutions to neighbouring countries or even farther afield over the past year. But also the images of what went on behind the news cameras: the video footage which filmmakers have been using to show the sentiments of Arab populations for quite some time.

Because one thing becomes abundantly clear from the films and installations that are part of Power Cut Middle East: this is not a sudden, Facebook or Twitter-powered revolution. The new social media played an important part as did, for that matter, the rapid dissemination of news images, but large groups of demonstrators did not use Facebook or Twitter. Moreover: revolutions don’t develop due to 140 character slogans.

There was a much longer run-up to these revolutions as well as a longer aftermath. Spring, even an Arab one, passes and true democratic change takes time. People’s dissatisfaction does not dissipate overnight. This is precisely the time at which a new, complex reality develops, which entails intense scrutiny of the new rulers.

Power Cut Middle East does not focus on the entire Arab world, but on two countries in particular: Syria and Egypt. Syria, because - in spite of continuous massive demonstrations - the regime is the only one in the Arab world to refuse to see that things have to change. Egypt, because the revolution seemed completed until violence erupted once more.

The English newspaper The Times named Tunisian fruit seller Mohamed Bouazizi the most influential person of 2011. The American weekly TIME opted to name not an individual, but ‘the demonstrator’ in general as its ‘Person of the Year 2011’.

Over the course of a single year, a desperate, brave individual became a movement, a fearless mass. Power Cut Middle East demonstrates - in images, films, artworks and in visual culture – that this mass had been coming to the boil for some time.

Peter van Hoof and Sacha Bronwasser

Signals: Power Cut Middle East is supported by Hivos.