Yasmina Tawil was walking out of a screening at the Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg one night when she thought it might be nice to bring a film to the Brooklyn-based theater rather than the other way around for a change.
“I was like, ‘I want to do my own thing,’ and they were like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it,” says Tawil, who envisioned her upcoming series Cinema Arabiyya, launching this Wednesday as a movie night with friends, only rather than any exclusivity that might imply, it would encourage audiences to take as much of a chance on something new as she was.
It wasn’t without qualification. Tawil is the director of film programming at the Arab Film and Media Institute, but what she was thinking was off the beaten path for both her day job and what might regularly screen in New York’s robust repertory scene, bringing contemporary films with roots in the Middle East that push past perceptions of what Arab cinema is and by extension an entire culture. It seems like a statement in itself that the series will start with Zeina Durra’s wily 2011 comedy “The Imperialists Are Still Alive,” about a conceptual artist (Elodie Bouchez) who has found professional benefits from unabashedly drawing on her Arab heritage as a foundation for her provocative work, but needs only to step outside the gallery openings and clubs where she’s considered a cool enigma in Manhattan to feel defined by others as the city still reels from 9/11 a decade earlier. (A cameo from Whit Stillman is indicative of the fact that whatever you think the film will be, it is not.)
What can be expected from Cinema Arabiyya is the unexpected, though one thing that shouldn’t come as a surprise is the undertaking as a whole when Tawil appears to be as bold as any of the films she plans to show, hardly waiting around when it comes to a good idea. (Beyond following through on the passing notion there should be a series like Cinema Arabiyya from a trip to the Nitehawk, her own curiosity about screenings of Palestinian cinema in the city led to a most comprehensive calendar of films that can give context to the current ongoing crisis.) On the eve of the opening night of Cinema Arabiyya, she spoke about curating a series with a sense of adventure for anyone with either an interest in the Middle East or as a cinephile, finding her way into the art of programming, and preventing strong yet hard-to-define work from getting lost in the margins.
How did Cinema Arabiyya come about?
This is my first solo professional programming series. I’ve been the director of film programming at the Arab Film and Media Institute for the last two-and-a-half years, and I wanted to just do a little something on my own. I get really frustrated that a lot of the people I surround myself with who consider themselves to be cinephiles lack almost any knowledge about Arab cinema, which is a very old, rich and interesting cinema and I wanted to program something for them, something that might be a little bit more challenging than what I normally do at AFMI. I didn’t want to do like a beginner’s guide to Arab cinema or rare cinema, but stuff that is exciting to me, and maybe a little under loved even within the Arab film scene that I really love and I think is unique. It’s going to be experimental, avant-garde, and things that are really intriguing to me that will hopefully be really intriguing to people who love cinema. Don’t just love movies, but really love cinema.
“The Imperialists Are Still Alive” is an incredible opener, especially when you know from those first five minutes you’re either in or you’re out. Did it immediately come to mind to launch this?
That first scene is very “either you’re in or you’re out,” but in terms of thinking about trying to get American cinephiles involved, there’s something about starting with a predominantly English language film that the community here in New York will have a lot of fun with [because of its setting in the] early 2000s New York art scene. It was not originally what I wanted to start with, [because] a Lebanese film called “The Sea and Its Waves” was what triggered me to want to do a series like this. I really, really loved it, but it’s quite artsy and I knew it could be a bit challenging.
But I watched “The Imperialists are Still Alive” for the first time a few months back and I knew immediately that’s what I wanted to start with. It’s very appropriate because it’s currently Arab American Heritage Month, and it’s indicative of how I feel as an Arab American throughout my life, but especially in the last six months – that feeling of being split between these two worlds. There’s a great quote [from the director Zeina Durra], saying that she wanted to see how one’s daily life is affected by politics and how the film is about how any moment can be completely frivolous and completely urgent at the same time. That’s something I’ve felt for my entire life, and I feel like a lot of people in New York are feeling right now, watching not just [what’s going on] in Palestine, but in so many countries right now, [witnessing] horrors that are going on in your homeland, and then trying to continue to have a life here at home.
What got you into programming in the first place?
Like a lot of people’s careers, I feel I just fell into my niche. I went to school for film and I thought I wanted to work in production, but it turns out that is not what I wanted to do and I started to take more film theory classes, but wasn’t really sure how I wanted to apply this interest. I was in the distribution space at Oscilloscope for a number of years and I had always been interested in the idea of being the person who gets to select what people get to see. I like being able to help like support films that I find important and like, and be their champions, which is definitely an aspect of distribution, but I had toyed with the idea since I graduated college about wanting to work at like a film festival or a theater. [And this specifically] was not something I knew for a long time I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to do something in the vein of programming, whether it be in acquisitions for distribution or the programming that I do now.
It may be too early to ask where the series goes from here, but what do you hope it will look like?
I already have a very long short list of films that I would like to show. And the films we show are always going to be also predicated on if they’re available. The one thing about programming international films is sometimes things really get lost, the rights or the contacts [to get in touch about the rights or the materials]. All of these are going to be recent enough that it shouldn’t be difficult, but you never know. There’s a film called “Akasha” from Sudan, and as mentioned, “The Sea and Its Waves” is something I’d really like to show. How often it’s going to happen, I will have to talk to Nitehawk, but I just want to say that I’m so grateful to them, especially to Desmond [Thorne]. When I was like, “I want to do something,” he [said], “Great. Send me the concept” and he and Nighthawk have been so supportive of me and of Arab cinema in general, so I need to talk to him about how frequently we can do this, but I will say I’m excited and I’m energized.
As you alluded to, “The Imperialists Are Still Alive” is a film that deals with social and political issues, but it isn’t the main focus, which I think is the expectation of Arab films that make it to America. Is that something you’re hoping to show more of?
I’ve found that being Arab, at least in this country, is inherently political, whether or not you want it to be, so there will definitely be films in the series that touch on social and political issues, especially when the political issues are so large and all-encompassing, it’s hard to tell stories that are not connected to them. In “The Imperialists Are Still Alive,” there’s a lot of political issues that, that arise around the story. But the concept of the series is not politically or socially focused and I want to celebrate all aspects of what make us Arabs and all of our cultural differences, our creativity, our artistry and all the beautiful aspects of our culture. And I do think a lot of people don’t want to take the time to learn about Arab cinema because they assume it’s going to be all war dramas and [social issues] – which a lot of it is cause we have things that we’re working on. [laughs] But sometimes we just make a fun movie.
“The Imperialists Are Still Alive” will screen on April 24th at the Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg at 7:30 pm. You can keep up with Cinema Arabiyya and all of Yasmina Tawil’s programs here.