-Can you tell a bit about the background for the project?
For 1500 years Islam worked to blow down Arabia’s history by confiscating it .
The Kaaba in Mecca was not build by or for Muslims: Mecca was the capital of the whole region , the economical and cultural centre of a part of the peninsula. Kaaba was a temple for 360 gods, and Hubal was the most important. Every year, pilgrims visited Mecca, walking naked around the Kaaba (where Hubal was positioned on the roof) and they choose the best poem of the year before writing it with gold at the Kaaba’s wall.
On G-day, when Mohamed’s army entered Mecca, they destroyed all gods and decided that Kaaba was to be “Allah’s house”. History is written by the winners and Hubal became taboo… Why taboo ? Because his heritage went to Allah. For those reasons I wanted to make a film about Hubal, to break that taboo, to speak about what is politically incorrect .
- Is the way you worked on this film similar to your previous work?
Not at all. With
Ça Sera Beau, I wanted to make ‘revolution’: action / reaction.
July Trip I wanted to be an anti-film: history / filmmakers engagement. In
A Film Far Beyond A God, I wanted to kill gods, both ancient and recent ones: past / present.
I’m not saying that I succeeded in making a revolution, an anti-film or in killing Gods. That’s why I will make other films to succeed in what I haven’t yet accomplished.
- In what way do other filmmakers inspire you?
Until a few years ago, I had no knowledge of the cinema. I was fascinated by commercial Hollywood movies. I learned about cinema from three different sources: the street where I belong, Eisenstein who made Ivan le Terrible, and Nicole Brenez from whom I heard about J.L. Godard.
Before 2004 I’d never heard of Chris Marker, Jean Vigo, Casavettes, Pasolini, Kramer, Ferrara, Harun Faroki, Santiago Alvarez, Van Peebles or Fassbinder …
Since then I am “less bad”, and I believe in engaging cinema that should change the world, and (re)write History .
- Can you say something about the techniques you used? The choice between film and video, the relation between image and sound?
I banned video but to be fair, I think video is a different genre. I’m not comfortable with that medium. In 2009 more people are converting to Video. I am 30 years old and my camera is 60. It still makes images as great as the first day she recorded her first image. Video is a commercial tool, every few months the industry throws a new model us and turns us into slaves; new cables, new batteries, new tapes. When you want to buy a video camera they will say; “with this camera your image is very similar to film”. So if your goal is to look like film; just shoot with film.
With film; the eye of the filmmaker MAKES the image.
With video: you press Record, and Sony or Panasonic makes the image in your place.
For A Film Far Beyond A God I stayed in Yemen for three months and came back with 5 hours of rushes. Had I been shooting with video I would still have been carrying back hundreds of tapes…
As in my other movies I used no digital effects. Everything was made directly with the camera, and whilst editing I only cut .My camera is MOS and I like it , I shoot images, then I fish for sound .With all respect to our comrades the sound engineers, I think that sound comes after the image. That is what cinema is about, to separate image and sound and create a new meaning from that difference.
- Is it important for you that your film will be screened in a competition programme?
Aber natürlich!! Films are made to be screened!
- Which audience did you have in mind when you made this film?
Try to ask anyone: ‘What were Arabs before Islam ?’. Usually they have no answer.
Films are made to be seen and for History’s sake. Hubal was a ‘gentle God’. Even though all gods are bad, he got something special. He liked artists and poets and he demand nothing from his subjects! I want people to know that Arab # Islam.
- Could you please tell us something about the next project you will be working on?
I am about to finish editing an essay about the ‘History Of Drugs’ . I also want to make a statue of Hubal , and I would like to paint but I am a very bad painter.
With regards to cinema, I am writing the script for a feature film inspired by Dostoevsky’s Demons .