‘Arabic Cinema is Ditching Familiar Ideas,’ Tunisian Director Youssef Chebbi Tells Asharq Al-Awsat

‘Arabic Cinema is Ditching Familiar Ideas,’ Tunisian Director Youssef Chebbi Tells Asharq Al-Awsat
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‘Arabic Cinema is Ditching Familiar Ideas,’ Tunisian Director Youssef Chebbi Tells Asharq Al-Awsat

‘Arabic Cinema is Ditching Familiar Ideas,’ Tunisian Director Youssef Chebbi Tells Asharq Al-Awsat

The Maskoon Fantastic Film Festival concluded in Beirut with the film “Shapes” by Tunisian director Youssef Chebbi. This work, which combines imagination and reality, is Chebbi’s first feature film, and it is scheduled to screen in Lebanese theaters as of January 2023.

The film, hosted by Cinema Montaigne at Beirut’s French Cultural Center, focuses on one of the most significant symbols of Tunisia’s revolution in 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, who set himself alight and was the spark of the revolution. The director builds events enhanced with imagination and fantasia, using the Bouazizi story and fire that burns several characters on the way to freedom and salvation.

On the other hand, Chebbi tries not to limit his story locally by linking the Tunisian situation to what is happening around the world. He also raises many questions about the accomplishments of the Tunisian revolution and the instability in the country since its eruption.

The 90-minute film tells the story of Fatima (Fatima Ussifi) and her colleague, “Batal” (Mohammed Hussein Korei) who discover a burned body at a construction site in one of Carthage Gardens’ buildings.

The investigation of this mysterious case and another one that follows it starts, then Fatima and Batal manage eventually to solve the mysteries of the first one. The film features critical investigations that take the audience into a weird, ambiguous world of exciting events that captures the spectators’ attention from the beginning until the end, when the truth unfolds.

“Shapes” won a grant from the Red Sea International Film Festival that helped complete it, Chebbi told Asharq Al-Awsat. The film was shot in Tunisia around a year ago, in a massive residential complex known as “Carthage Gardens”, in which construction works stopped due to the revolution, and then resumed later. But why Chebbi chose this site for his film? “I chose it because it’s directly linked to Tunisia. It is a residential compound that was supposed to simulate the buildings of Dubai, and fulfill the dream of the old ruling class that ended with the revolution. In addition, the compound has a maze-like layout that I wanted the audience to enter during the film,” he replied.

Chebbi describes his film as “a dream that came true”. “I always wanted to make a film that combines fantasia with reality. It’s the kind of movies that we don’t see often in the Arabic cinema, especially in Tunisia,” he added.

When asked whether it was a tough challenge, he said: “the real challenge is choosing the movie’s topic and convincing the audience with its idea. People have watched exciting thrillers and understood them easily, but in “Shapes”, it’s different, because it is based on a universal idea that I tried hard to make it close to reality.”

Chebbi speaks about the Arabic cinema but focuses on the Tunisian works especially those made and distributed outside Tunisia, like in Paris. “I feel that the Arabic cinema has started to separate from reality and to head towards another world that explores imagination.” Would this affect our Arabic identity? “Not at all, on the contrary, I believe it will enrich and boost our culture.”

The talents working in the Saudi cinema industry caught the attention of the young Tunisian director. He liked their ideas, and met some Saudi scriptwriters including the mind behind “The Last Visit” film. “The Saudi cinema has great human energies that are ditching the traditional ideas, and I like that. The kingdom is ready today to make unique and exceptional cinema productions as long as they are based on good ideas,” he said.

The “Shape” film partook in several festivals including Cannes, Marrakesh, Toronto, Red Sea, and Maskoon in Lebanon, and won the “Critics” and “Best Music” awards at the Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival.

Chebbi says he’s happy with the feedback. “The film attracted both the Arab and foreign audiences. This makes me so happy,” he noted.



Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito Revisit ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ for Its 50th Anniversary

Michael Douglas, left, and Danny DeVito appear at the 5th Annual Reel Stories, Real Lives Benefit on April 7, 2016, in Los Angeles. (AP)
Michael Douglas, left, and Danny DeVito appear at the 5th Annual Reel Stories, Real Lives Benefit on April 7, 2016, in Los Angeles. (AP)
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Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito Revisit ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ for Its 50th Anniversary

Michael Douglas, left, and Danny DeVito appear at the 5th Annual Reel Stories, Real Lives Benefit on April 7, 2016, in Los Angeles. (AP)
Michael Douglas, left, and Danny DeVito appear at the 5th Annual Reel Stories, Real Lives Benefit on April 7, 2016, in Los Angeles. (AP)

Jack Nicholson did not want to go to the Oscars. It was 1976 and he was nominated for best actor in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” The Miloš Forman film, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a nationwide theatrical re-release on July 13 and July 16, had become a bit of a sensation — the second highest grossing picture of 1975, behind “Jaws,” and had received nine Oscar nominations.

But Nicholson wasn’t feeling optimistic. In five years, he’d already been nominated five times. He’d also lost five times. And he told his producer, Michael Douglas, that he couldn’t go through it again.

“I remember how hard I had to persuade Jack to come to the ceremony. He was so reluctant, but we got him there,” Douglas said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “And then of course we lost the first four awards. Jack was sitting right in front of me and sort of leaned back and said ’Oh, Mikey D, Mikey D, I told you, man.’ I just said, ‘Hang in there.’”

Douglas, of course, was right. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” would go on to sweep the “big five” — screenplay, director, actor, actress and picture — the first film to do so in 41 years, (“It Happened One Night,” in 1934) which only “The Silence of the Lambs” has done since. That night was one of many vindicating moments for a film that no one wanted to make or distribute that has quite literally stood the test of time.

“This is my first 50th anniversary,” Douglas said. “It’s the first movie I ever produced. To have a movie that’s so lasting, that people get a lot out of, it’s a wonderful feeling. It’s bringing back a lot of great memories.”

The film adaption of Ken Kesey’s countercultural novel was a defining moment for Douglas, a son of Hollywood who was stuck in television and got a lifeline to film when his father, Kirk Douglas, gave him the rights to the book, and many of the then-unknown cast like Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd.

DeVito was actually the first person officially cast. Douglas, who’d known him for nearly 10 years, brought Forman to see him play Martini on stage.

“Miloš said, ‘Yes! Danny! Perfect! Cast!’” Douglas said in his best Czech accent. “It was a big moment for Danny. But I always knew how talented he was.”

A Joyful Shoot

Though the film's themes are challenging, unlike many of its New Hollywood contemporaries it wasn’t a tortured shoot by any stretch. They had their annoyances (like Forman refusing to show the cast dailies) and more serious trials (they found out halfway through production that William Redfield was dying of leukemia), but for the most part it was fun.

“We were very serious about the work, because Miloš was very serious. And we had the material, Kesey’s work, and the reverence for that. We were not frivolous about it. But we did have a ball doing it,” DeVito said, laughing.

Part of that is because they filmed on location at a real state hospital in Salem, Oregon. Everyone stayed in the same motel and would board the same bus in the morning to get to set. It would have been hard not to bond and even harder if they hadn’t.

“There was full commitment,” Douglas said. “That comes when you don’t go home at night to your own lives. We stopped for lunch on the first day and I saw Jack kind of push his tray away and go outside to get some air. I said, ‘Jack, you OK?’ He said, ’Who are these guys? Nobody breaks character! It’s lunch time and they’re all acting the same way!'”

Not disproving Nicholson’s point, DeVito remembers he and the cast even asked if they could just sleep in the hospital.

“They wouldn’t let us,” DeVito said. “The floor above us had some seriously disturbed people who had committed murder.”

A lasting legacy

The film will be in theaters again on July 13 and July 16 from Fathom Entertainment. It’s a new 4K restoration from the Academy Film Archive and Teatro Della Pace Films with an introduction by Leonard Maltin.

“It’s a gorgeous print and reminds me how good the sound was,” Douglas said.

DeVito thinks it, “holds up in a really big way, because Miloš really was paying attention to all great things in the screenplay and the story originally.”

Besides the shock of “holy Toledo, am I that old?” DeVito said that it was a treasure to be part of — and he continues to see his old friends, including Douglas, Lloyd and, of course, Nicholson, who played the protagonist, R.P. McMurphy.

One person Douglas thinks hasn’t gotten the proper attention for his contributions to “Cuckoo’s Nest” is producer Saul Zaentz, who died in 2014. His music company, Fantasy Records who had Creedence Clearwater Revival, funded the endeavor which started at a $1.6 million budget and ballooned to $4 million by the end. He was a gambler, Douglas said, and it paid off.

And whatever sour grapes might have existed between Douglas and his father, who played R.P. McMurphy on Broadway and dreamt of doing so on film, were perhaps over-exaggerated. It was ultimately important for their relationship.

“McMurphy is as good a part as any actor is going to get, and I’m now far enough in my career to understand maybe you have four, maybe five good parts, really great parts. I’m sure for dad that was one of them,” Douglas said.

“To not be able to see it through was probably disappointing on one side. On the other, the fact that his son did it and the picture turned out so good? Thank God the picture turned out. It would have been a disaster if it hadn’t.”

Douglas added: “It was a fairy tale from beginning to end. I doubt anything else really came close to it. Even my Oscar for best actor years later didn’t really surpass that moment very early in my career.”