Zooming in

Chris Newbould talks to Yemeni independent film maker Ziryad Al Ghabri about his recent award-winning The Gift Maker – An uncompromising look at life in modern day Sana’a.

In 2010 the British Council in Yemen ran a national film making competition called Zoom. The aim was to find Yemeni amateur filmmakers with talent, determination, original vision and a passion for film making as a way of life.

While conditions for aspiring Yemeni film makers are far from ideal, with a lack of equipment, the threat of terrorism and, more recently civil unrest on the streets, the competition still garnered a number of high quality entries, which were whittled down to five finalists.

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From the five, a panel of judges including renowned Yemeni director and producer Dr Fadhl Al-Olofi and British film maker and lecturer David Alamouti selected Ziryab Al Ghabri’s The Gift Maker as the eventual winner.

Al Ghabri’s film is at once unsettling and strangely full of positivity for the future – it tells the tale of a man who makes bombs for his uncle’s unnamed group, living his life in darkness in a basement.

One day, however, the effects of his actions are brought home in the most terrible way, and he elects to finally do good for his fellow man. The film deals with some controversial subjects, including both terrorism and religion, but manages to do so without straying into sensationalism or didacticism.

In Al Ghabri’s own words: “This film tells the story of a young man living under the ground in a basement. He has left all his memories behind and is not certain that he will ever revisit them. Days are identical to him and each corner of the basement seems to be haunted by darkness.

One morning, he begins his day as he always does, but something strange happens – a brick falls out of the wall, letting in daylight.

He tries to block the light that comes in through his new window, but he glimpses something that takes him into a world of his own and changes his life forever.

We have been inspired to make this film by daily events like terrorism and the social discrimination of some parts of Yemeni society. We hope to shoot more films in the future and improve our equipment to create better and more professional films.”

The film was conceieved specifically for the Zoom competition, which required entrants
to make a film on the subject of ‘Yemen’. Al Ghabri takes up the story: “We sat as a group and tried to search for ideas that might be good, and at the same time that we could apply, as we had very little funding, a small crew and limited access to equipment.

“My brother eventually came up with the idea that became the film. My friend Abdurahman, who was also assistant director, then helped me to fix the script, with input from my brother too, and that was the first stage of the film.”

The lack of funding and equipment was clearly a specific challenge for the Yemeni crew – the country is not home to a developed film industry, and economic conditions coupled with social hardship can’t make life any easier for aspiring film makers – how did Al Ghabri manage to get his project off the ground?

“We used pretty simple equipment,” he says. “We had 2 DSLR cameras, a 5d and a 7d – I work as a photographer so we had access to those, but for the light and all the other equipment we had to make most of it ourselves.

The lights, for example, were almost all constructed from electronics we could buy in stores. In fact the one professional light we did hire – a big 1,000 Watt light that we needed for some shots – broke and had to be replaced three times – we never worked out why! The producer, Omar, helped out with making our dolly and other tools for location shooting – it was all very DIY, but that’s how it is here at the moment.