Warm, friendly and spontaneous, documentary filmmaker Tahani Rached, is one of those intriguing characters you’d want to spend hours picking their brain.
Every word she says shows her love for people in general, and women in particular. It is no surprise that most of her movies are about strong women in diverse settings and cultures trying to survive and find happiness. Her films are an atypical celebration of these women’s lives.
Amid the hullabaloo surrounding the controversial Yacoubian Building last year, Canadian-Egyptian Rached’s 68-minute documentary “El Banat Dool (Those Girls) burst out to steal the limelight; redefine the documentary film scene in Egypt and create a superstar out of its revered filmmaker.
The groundbreaking, shocking and compelling documentary about female street children captured the hearts and minds of all those who saw it.
Yet despite a career that spans over 20 years with nearly 20 remarkable films cementing her reputation as a daring and original director, most of Rached’s works are unknown to the majority of Egyptians.
All this may change with the Contemporary Image Collective s (CIC) screening of her mini-retrospective that started last Tuesday and ends on Tuesday the Feb. 20.
To mark this occasion, Rached sat down with The Daily Star Egypt to discuss her life, her work and the overnight success of El Banat Dool.
Rached was born and raised in Cairo. At 16, she moved to Canada in the 60s with her family. At first she studied art but soon her interest in documentary filmmaking to root after working with a film crew from New York in the 70s that was shooting a documentary about Quebec, where she lived.
After making small projects, she joined the Amateur Filmmakers Association in Tunisia but later returned to Quebec to teach video production at Quebec University. When the prestigious National Film Board of Canada (NFB) refused to fund her project, she took matters in her own hands and shot her first full-length documentary feature in 1978 about immigrants in Quebec.
Ironically, in 1980 the NFB hired her on the merit of the same film they had refused to produce.
It was fantastic. I finally had a work place, a salary and [was] paid to do whatever I wanted to do, she says. It was a great place to be, and it felt a like family of filmmakers, editors and producers. You start a film there and you do it till the end. .
One of her earliest film ideas was a project about women in Egypt that the board believed to be too big for [her] small shoulders. She moved on to make Beirut! Not Enough Death to Go around, a graphic portrait of the daily lives of ordinary Lebanese people shortly after the 1982 massacre of Sabra and Chatila.
She had to wait 14 years to make hit Four Women of Egypt in 1997
About a group of friends who shared something in their youth, grew up, changed but still maintained friendship “Four Women was an instant success. It is a fascinating account of the experiences of four women with different ideologies, lifestyles and religions but who nevertheless share a deep love and respect for one other.
Through them, I charted a history of contemporary Egypt.
Rached’s next film would be Emergency! A Critical Situation about nurses in a suburban Montréal hospital, presents one of Rached s recurring themes: Humanity and joy found in the harshest of places and circumstances.
I think humanity means a way of resisting, of surviving, of being alive and having hope that this situation, no matter how hard it is, won t be stronger than you.
For her, each film is a new experience, a new question to investigate and new territory to discover. You go into a film with your own prejudices and ideas and you have to prepare yourself to change and learn something new, she says.
Her following project turned out to be the sweet and enchanting For a Song, about a Canadian choir group whose shared love for music becomes the center of their universe.
The idea was basically about a group of people from different origins, rich and poor, men and women who have a passion for music and a gift they re willing to give others for free, she said. I think everyone needs to have meaning, beauty, help one another.all of the things that seem ridiculous nowadays.
Another recurrent theme in her work is the need for people to establish a connection with each other in order to live and survive.
Life is about that. This is the only thing that really counts.
Before returning to Egypt to film Those Girls, Rached released Soraida, A Woman of Palestine in 2004 about the lives, dreams and loves of Palestinian women. Like her previous works, it steered clear from the usual political issues.
Ideology or politics are too narrow a framework for a film.You need life, you need more than that, she asserts. Besides, everything s political and for me, a woman saying I don t want my soul to be lost to violence is more political than all the Hamas and Fatah talk.
When the NFB let her go because of budget cuts, Rached was ready to settle down in Egypt. She even contemplated quitting filmmaking altogether to manage her aunt’s bookstore.
At the time, producer Karim Gamal El Din, who was preparing a project about street children, offered her the opportunity to direct a film about that subject.
Those Girls’ launching-pad was the Cannes Film Festival. People said I m crazy to submit my film in Cannes and nobody expected a documentary to go all the way to Cannes. But it eventually did, she said with a smile.
It was great. I screamed. People in Canada heard those screams.
The reviews were ecstatic, overshadowing both Yacoubian, Halim and other local films.
Those Girls later participated in various film festivals including one in New York. In Egypt the film received unprecedented media attention for a documentary film won a prize at the Ismailia International Documentary Film Festival.
So how does she feel about being a celebrity?
Rached blushes and denies my claim. “This success is nice but honestly, I don t care. What I really care about is that my films have touched people.
Her love for women isn t a mere case of an artist empathizing with her subject; it s a case of a very compassionate human being using her art to help others and learn about the big mystery that is life.
My films are a way to connect with others, to connect with life.
El Banat Dool (Those Girls) is showing on Sunday Jan 18 and Four Women of Egypt is showing on Tuesday Feb. 20. Both films are screened at the Contemporary Image Collective. For more information, call CIC at 794 1686
