Third time the charm

Moviegoers packed the Grace Street Theater to capacity on Friday and Saturday nights, with no popcorn in sight. Many attendants of the third annual VCU Arabic Film Festival instead munched on traditional Lebanese fatayers, which are bread wraps containing meat or spinach, as they enjoyed a diverse array of free movies, all from or about the Middle East.

The festival featured 10 short and feature-length films, both fictional and documentary. Subjects ranged from two Chadian children searching for their father in “Abouna” to the lives of the war-torn Sudanese in “All About Darfur.”

Senior world studies major Clayton Klima said his favorite film was “Your Dark Hair Ihsan” because of its abstract, creepy cinematography. He enjoyed as well the other five movies he viewed.

“All of them have been eye-opening, revealing kind of films,” he said.

The films represented diverse genres. “Comedy Middle Eastern Style” followed Arabic comedians living in New York City as they dealt with post-Sept. 11 prejudice by telling jokes.

“It was hilarious,” Klima said. “There was also a comic that said he felt kind of guilty for using 9/11 as his main act. That was interesting, too.”

The first movie made in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, “Turtles Can Fly,” screened Saturday afternoon. Set in a Kurdish refugee camp on the Iraq-Turkey border in the days leading up to the 2003 U.S. invasion, the film follows a charismatic boy named Satellite, reminiscent of an Iraqi Corey Feldman, as he leads a group of children that collect landmines during the war.

Totaling more than 700 attendants, the AFF garnered an audience larger than those from its first two years. The theater filled to capacity on Friday night for “Paradise Now,” the Golden Globe Award-winning tale of two Palestinian friends training to be suicide bombers in Tel Aviv, Israel.

In between films, milling guests gathered in a reception area where a variety of Middle Eastern music played and paintings from VCU art students sat on display, several of which were inspired by Arabic architecture and typefaces. Local caterer and VCU student Fajir Amin sold fatayers and chocolate-chip cookies.

Question-and-answer sessions followed three films, “Paradise Now,” “All About Darfur” and “Iraq in Fragments,” a documentary about the effects of the Iraq war.

“We put them after three very political films,” festival co-director Jaime Bennett Stansbury said. “We did that on purpose.”

Most questions focused on concerns about U.S. involvement, or lack thereof, in crises in Israel, Darfur and Iraq.

While part of the festival’s mission was to bring up relevant political issues in the Middle East, co-director Hanan Abed said eliminating unfair stereotypes was equally important.

“There’s the classic stereotype that all Arabs are terrorists, all Arab women are oppressed, all families are violent, all Arabs don’t value education,” she said. “All of these are completely erroneous and really malicious stereotypes that unfortunately a lot of the media just continues to perpetuate. And it’s not just the news. We see it everyday, in movies, in TV commercials, children’s cartoons.”

Last year’s festival featured a short film called “Planet of the Arabs,” a montage of clips from American popular culture featuring negative Arab depictions in such works as the “Popeye” cartoon and the “Back to the Future” series.

There have been some changes, however, in the past 50 years in the American media’s portrayal of Arabs, Abed said.

“We can’t come out right and call someone a ‘dirty Arab’ anymore. That, the populace won’t stand for,” she said. “But we can show in a movie like Aladdin where all the good Arabs, like Aladdin and Jasmine, speak with American accents and all the bad Arabs, like Jafar and his henchmen, have Arab accents.

“So I don’t think it’s gotten any better. It’s just gotten more subtle,” Abed said.

Stansbury said one major recent change has been a rise in Americans’ interest in Middle Eastern culture, mostly because of the Iraq war.

“I hope that people are realizing that it’s just not enough to see what you’re seeing on the news,” Stansbury said. “It either builds your stereotypes stronger, or it increases your desire to want to know more. I think it goes both ways.”

Stereotypes in movies, however, have also proven to exist in the Middle East. The Turkish film “Kurtlar Vadisi Irak,” or “Valley of the Wolves Iraq,” stirred controversy because of several scenes critics decried as anti-American and anti-Semitic.

In one scene, American troops in Iraq open fire on an Arab wedding. Afterward, they take captives and ship them to the Abu Ghraib prison in a large sealed container. When one soldier complains that the prisoners cannot breathe, another soldier fires several shots to open up air holes, in the process killing several Iraqis inside. When the first soldier threatens to report the incident, another soldier fatally shoots him.

American actor Gary Busey plays a doctor who takes organs from Iraqi prisoners to sell to rich customers in New York.

Adeb said such stereotypes are not common in Middle Eastern popular culture, however.

“With us, you watch a movie, and it’s ‘Find the Arab in the movie, and that’s the bad guy,’ ” Adeb said. “Whereas with them, you find that the bad guy in the movie’s not necessarily American.”

Many of the attendants at the AFF expressed a desire to get beyond stereotypes and learn about Arab cultures. Freshman art major Savannah Bader came to see “Iraq In Fragments” to learn more about the country but also for more personal reasons.

“One of my good friends was born in Baghdad, so I try to understand some of the background that she comes from,” Bader said. “I want to know the issues that are going on over there so I can talk intelligently with her.”

The Office of International Education, the School of World Studies, the Honors College and the School of Social Work sponsored the festival, which was free to the public. The free admission made the AFF accessible to VCU students and the larger public.

“Film is an incredible vehicle for communication,” said Richmond resident Robin Jones. “You don’t have to be very educated. You don’t have to be wealthy. As opposed to literature, for instance, where you have to have the time and inclination to read and the understanding to process it all.”

Saying the VCU French Film Festival first lured her to the local film scene, Jones has attended the Arabic Film Festival every year since the first one.

The AFF originated three years ago after Stansbury returned from a three-year stay in the Middle East.

She took off a year between high school and college to work in Lebanon as an “au pair,” or nanny. Stansbury said she enjoyed her experience so much that she entered a language program in Jordan for two more years.

“When I came back from the Middle East, people’s questions always revolved around ‘Were you safe?’ ‘Was it terrible?'” Stansbury said. “And that’s what motivated all of this, was that my time there was absolutely wonderful.”

With help from the French Film Festival organizer Peter and Francois Kirkpatrick, the Office of International Education, and Abed, Stansbury founded the festival in 2004.

“I loved the people I met and the culture that I experienced,” Stansbury said of her time in the Middle East. “So I personally enjoy bringing that to Richmond, whether it’s through the art, films, music or food. It’s bringing a piece of Middle East culture to this part of the world that doesn’t often get to see it.”

This year’s AFF has been a long time in the making.

“It’s taken months and months and months of screening movies,” Abed said.

“We really try to pick a variety of different countries, different genres and ones that will appeal to different audiences,” Stansbury said.

The two will begin to plan the 2007 Arabic Film Festival in the spring, which is their last semester before graduating. Stansbury hopes more VCU students will get involved, especially as directors of next year’s festival.