Abou Naddara (the man with glasses) is a group that produce and distribute short documentary movies. “Since the start of the Syrian uprising in 2011, Abounaddara has been engaged in a war of images unfolding on fronts, the anonymous collective attempts to undo stereotypes that cloud our gaze on Syria” (Zabunyan, 2013). The content they create is dignified image, mostly short documentary movies that demonstrate the life of Syrians living beautifully with this disaster. The filmmakers post their work online on Vimeo, and sometimes they participate in film festivals where they screen their short movies. This paper will discuss how Abou Naddara’s films resist against the undignified image that brutalize people in war and how it fights against the government dictatorship and the ruling regime.
Abou Naddara resists against the injustice to humanity and brutalizing to people through undignified images of war in the media. “Abou Naddara argues that images of the war in Syria are too frequently about mutilated and starved bodies, not about persons” (Vera List Center, 2015). Nowadays, Syria is described as the war country nothing more than dead bodies covered with blood to produce sympathy without any respect to the dead individuals nor to the reality of the people living and struggling to live ordinary in this extraordinary situation. In other words, in order to be newsworthy a story has to be dramatic with emotional pictures and sensationalized language. “It takes more and more dramatic coverage to elicit the same level of sympathy as the last catastrophe” (Moeller, 1999, p.3). The coverage of Syrian war is manufactured by geopolitical forces either to create sympathy and commiseration or to show the barbarism and brutality of Arab and terrorists. Western media channels use the images of dead bodies to reflect their geopolitical illusions that we cannot do anything about the Syrian war, it is just some brutal Arabs fighting against each other. On the other hand, Bashar al Assad utilize these images to show that he is fighting the brutality and barbarism of terrorists in his country.
In addition, Abou Naddara fights against the government dictatorship and the ruling regime. In the first year of Syrian war, Bashar al Assad claimed that Syria is in peace and there is nothing to worry about. In an interview after 7 months of the war the president stated: “Syria is fine, we are moving forward, the situation is practically getting better, but the victory needs more time.”(Mahmood & Harding, 2012). Abou Naddara opposes the claims of Bashar al Assad; in the video Everything is Under Control Mr. President, we perceive the reality of surviving in Syria through this disaster and that the claims of peace and serenity are just a mask to cover the brutality that is happening in this country. Additionally, in some of their movies Abou Naddara promotes feminism and fights against the image of Syrian women in media. For example, the video The Woman in Pants is an interview with a woman where she explained strongly about her participation in the revolution and the way she fights for the peace of her beloved country and for other women in Syria. Equality is also reflected in their frames; the frame chosen in this movie reflects the power of the woman: they don’t victimize her, no shots from above showing her as weak, instead they use down shots that reproduces her strong position against the government.
The anonymous collective resists against undignified images by creating dignified images showing Syrian citizens living their routine of daily life that became rendered by war. “We want to address the injustice of the images circulating in the dominant media; the indignity of the images of Syrians as victims, dead and mutilated, or shouting, angry, in the streets.” (Kambarami, 2015). Abou Naddara movies demonstrate life as it is in Syria opposing to the mainstream geopolitical frame it was put into. For example, in the movie Breaking News people live their normal routine beautifully and strongly despite the disaster and two men are watching the news about Syria in some western channel, then we can see the difference between the reality and the news. The form of the video also reflects dignified image, the light is natural and beautiful, it is the normal light we see everyday, not the mainstream dark or yellow, full of dust lighting they use in images of war. Abou Naddara don’t usually shoot in the war zone and even when they do, it is always dignified image. For instance, in the short film I Will Cross Tomorrow the person died while crossing the road, however they don’t show his dead body resting on the floor, instead he appears respected, covered in a white blanket with his loved ones praying for him; the way they shoot his family reflect also the dignified image, they don’t victimize them nor zoom on their crying faces with a slow motion dramatic moment. Moreover, this movie does not follow the photojournalistic norm that: “attempt to freeze fast-moving events by depicting an instantly recognizable fragment of a larger situation in order to convey a single dramatically perspicacious point” (Kandutsch, 2015, p.4), on the contrary it showed the sequences of the story and gave more respect to the dead body, without dramatizing and freezing the death scene. In other words, Abou Naddara fights the mainstream undignified image of war in Syria by showing in alternative method of representing the struggle with respect to the population. In addition, the documentary movies include interviews with Syrians strongly talking about their experience or about what they want, rather than the mainstream image of them as muted dead bodies. Syrian are dehumanized and represented in media as numbers and objects not as human-being. “Some argue that dehumanization is especially to be linked to a portrayal of refugees as a faceless mass instead of individuals, through the use of terms as “influx”, “flux”, “tide” and “wave”, etc.” (Venir, 2016, p.31). On the contrary, Abou Naddara retrieves the agency of Syrians who are excluded from the news of their own war. For example, in the movie Voyage to the Islamic State a young man narrates his experience when he was arrested by the government but it was dignified image far from the usual image of passive victims or grainy shots of bombs in the street. This movie fights against undignified image also by form: they didn’t brutalize the subject by light or use the mainstream lighting used in interviews that flash white lighting on the face of the victim. Instead, the light is natural and dark reflecting the reality.
In addition, Abou Naddara fights against the mainstream coverage of Syrian children as victims to create sympathy; instead their movies show children as part of the war and as brave and intelligent children that understand the political and social complexity of the war. For example, in the short film Children of Hayfaya, a child narrates the stories he heard about the sufferers and he is not represented as a poor victim instead he talks in a pure and honest way about what is happening to the population in Syria. In addition, the lighting is so natural on the face of the child and he fill the whole frame which gives him more power and authority. Furthermore, there is resistance in the platform of distribution, they didn’t use media channels regulated by the government or the cooperated media landscape that share the undignified image, instead they used an online free platform Vimeo where most Syrian can access and watch the films.
In conclusion, Abou Naddara’s short films resist by content, form and distribution against the undignified image that brutalize humanity and against the government dictatorship.
References
AbouNaddara. (2013). The Women in Pants [Video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/77826189
AbouNaddara. (2012). I Will Cross Tomorrow [Video file]. Retrieved from
AbouNaddara. (2016). Breaking News [Video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/174833800 AbouNaddara. (2013). Children pf Halfaya [Video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/64876057
AbouNaddara. (2011). Everything is Under Control Mr. President [Video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/23660136
AbouNaddara. (2015). Voyage to the Islamic State [Video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/146247611
Kambarami, S. (2015). Abounaddara: the right to the image. The New Context. Retrieved from https://thenewcontext.org/abounaddara-the-right-to-the-image/
Kandutsch, E, C. (2015). A Yarmouk photograph. CTheory. 1-10. Retrieved from http://ctheory.net/ctheory_wp/a-yarmouk-photograph/?template
Mahmoud, M. & Harding, L. (2012). Bashar al-Assad Says There Is No End in Sight to Syrian Civil War. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/29/bashar-al-assad-syria-war
Moeller, D, S. (1999). Four habits of international news reporting. Brandeis University. Retrieved from https://frameworksinstitute.org/assets/files/PDF_GII/four_habits_of_news_reporting.pdf
Vera List Center (2015). AbouNaddara the right to the image. Centre A. Retrieved from http://centrea.org/2015/11/abounaddara/
Venir, A. (2016). UK Media Representation of Syrian Refugees. A Focus On the Press, 4 (p. 21- 43). Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/download/35547007/academia.edu_version.pdf
Zabunyan, D. (2013). AbouNaddara. Documenta 4. Retrieved From https://www.documenta14.de/en/artists/949/abounaddara
Maria Issa, Media & Society 