The award-winning documentary Still Recording by Saeed Al Batal and Ghiath Ayoub will be screened in Arabiske Filmdager 2019. On Saturday, March 23, Arabiske Filmdager, Norsk PEN and SPACE organize a panel discussion after the screening; for more details, please see the Facebook event.
This film is an observation of what happened for us, for all my generation – one that believed in the revolution. A reflection from a calm perspective, in an attempt to learn lost or forgotten lessons, pay tribute or make some excuses. – Saeed Al Batal
Saeed is a young cinema passionate trying to teach the youth in Eastern Ghouta in Syria the rules of filming, but the reality they face is much harsher to respect any rule. His friend Milad is on the other side of the fence, in Damascus, under the control of the regime finishing his studies in Fine Arts. At one point, Milad decides to leave the capital and joins Saeed in under sieged Douma where they set up a local radio station and a recording studio. They hold the camera to film everything until one day the camera films them.
Two hours of raw footage distilled from 450 that Saeed Al Batal, Ghiath Ayoub and six other videographers shot between 2011 and 2015, Still Recording was smuggled out of Syria on hard drives. It is bleak indeed, but required viewing as a savage critique of man’s inhumanity, a testimony of horror but also an homage to the filmmakers who have chosen to witness it on our behalf. – The Hollywood Reporter