Originally published in Sisters of the Screen: Women of Africa on Film Video and Television. Africa World Press, Trenton, NJ, 2000.
Interview held during Vues d'Afrique, April 1997, Montreal, Quebec. Translated from French.
How do you express yourself as a filmmaker from the North African Diaspora, as an Arab woman and a woman of the African continent?
I cannot say that I am a filmmaker or artist, I can only say that I try to make films. How do I situate myself? First of all, I am an Arab woman living in Montreal. Yesterday, I was speaking to a friend regarding Africa. I told her, "Well, we don't ask ourselves the question 'What are we?'" In my case, it is within the context of immigration that I position myself. The question that drives me the most is, "What kind of cinema will I do?"
Yes, I am African, I am from the African continent, it is a part of who I am. At the same time it is more than a continent that I feel, it is this sense of a psychological and emotional proximity that I have with a person. I do not feel out of touch with a fellow African from Niger, Mali or Burkina, nor do I feel that I have a completely different dialogue than she does. I feel a closeness to African women, not only among filmmakers, but with all women, and of course, women from Egypt, and the Maghreb in general. In fact, I am all of these women at once. I think that the actual identity of my cinema is my identity, at the same time one and multiple, and sometimes fragmented.
Could you talk about your identity as it informs your films?
My first film, Heritage, was a Tunisio-Canadian production, yet for me it was a Tunisian film. It was a voyage deep in my memory, a memory of the footprints that I left in Tunisia. I traveled in these tracks.
My second film is a documentary called Rupture. It is 52-minute documentary produced here in Canada. It is a film that addresses the problem of conjugal violence lived by Arab women in Canada. While doing this film about conjugal violence, I discovered that the complexities of this inquiry are tied to the circumstances of immigration, and the host country and its culture.
I focus on women living in Montreal, and who at the same time are connected to Canadian culture. And yet, there is a fundamental element that I want to touch. Beyond this complexity of violence, I find myself making a film about the Arab woman, her condition, which is not different from that of the Arab woman living in Tunisia or any other Arab country.
So this films reflects your multiple identities as well?
It is very difficult to situate myself in relation to this film, to say what identity I should give it. I would say that it is the identity of the moment. I find myself invested in this film, inhabited by it, and finally it is allowing me to have a certain reconciliation with myself. At certain times I think, "It has been seven years since I have lived in Montreal." I lived for a long time in Tunisia, then France, and then I went back to work in Tunisia, and I re-immersed myself in the Tunisian culture. While in France I thought, "I am an Arab woman living in Paris." Now this film is a kind of quest, in order to understand: "Who is this Arab woman? What is she like?"
I am doing a documentary whose style facilitates this quest through the kind of research that is required. You know, this documentary evolves everyday. I encounter women who I think I have gotten to know, and then afterwards I discover that there is not only one world of Arab women, but there are many worlds of Arab women.
So for you, filmmaking is in some ways a quest?
Well, I would say that one does films to grow, and yes, I am growing through my films. I have been concerned with the question, "What kind of films am I going to do?" In some ways, this decision to let myself grow with my films has been reconciling.
At a given moment I thought that I would not be able to do a film about Quebec, the Quebecois people. I wanted to let this country come to me gradually. At one time there was a fear, of being completely dried out, of not being productive, of no longer being able to make films. However, it is not true, because we are all constantly surrounded by questions. Of course, I cannot do a film as a Quebecois of 100% pure wool, would do it. At the same time, I do have my own perspective, a perspective of this multiple woman regarding this country as well. A perspective of the people, of their reality. My fear is that it is an exterior gaze. It is a fear that we can overcome only at the moment when we are doing a film. We are afraid to have an exterior gaze, and at a certain moment, we accept that we are from the outside and we will have an outside gaze up until the time that we actually go towards the inside. It is perhaps then that we can speak of universality, and then we must take on the task. However, I do not think that these are things that will be fulfilled overnight, the next day when we awaken. It does not happen that quickly.
So you film from the inside and outside?
Well, I am attempting to resolve this question, which goes in the direction of my film. Because when I talk about the condition of the Arab woman in my film, I realize that there is a reality that surfaces in which the Arab women who live here are trying to overcome their situations individually. They do not do so within a community. There is no movement to propel this process; there is no revolution. In the Arab world, it is the same thing; women cope with their problems alone, it is the same case in Africa.
I decided that I would start with me. Through my films, if I find myself...I cannot pretend that we can actually overcome our situation by doing a film, whether it is a collective film, an Arab film, or a Canadian film. These expectations frighten me. It is for this reason that I attempt to do films, it is certainly an inside look from the outside, a look at a certain reality. It is a quest. That is the privilege of doing cinema. Of course, in making films we realize many things, we make mistakes and correct them.
I give the crew with whom I work the opportunity to evolve with me from day to day during the shooting, to have another perception of things. If one, two, or three of them can be touched by those moments of contact with others, that would be remarkable. Of course, I do not pretend to change the world. I try to do the little things in which I believe, in a humble manner.
There is an impressive number of Tunisian women filmmakers. Could you speak some about this phenomenon?
It is true that more and more women in Tunisia are making films. It is extraordinary because we know that for men and women of the Southern Hemisphere it is very difficult to make films from the inside. I think that these women are very courageous. Why is there this movement of women filmmakers? I think that it follows other movements as well. There is theater, and there is literature, whereas cinema is relatively new for us on the African continent.
I think the first woman in Tunisia began to do films, now about twenty years ago, if I am not mistaken. As I just stated, there is this movement in cinema, I think, that follows other movements in Tunisia. These women who were able to break into cinema while living in France and elsewhere are working very hard,
because to work in the world of cinema is not easy, especially when you do not know anyone, and when you come from the outside.
Fortunately, the number of women who are able to do films is increasing and it is very important to have many of them. Let us hope that there will be many quality films. It is a new look at society, and certainly a transformation. It is a phenomenon that perhaps cannot exactly be explained, and yet, it is essential. I hope it will bring a new vision that is female, that is particular to women, with all its beauty and sincerity. It is also another way of looking at things.
I think that it is time to stop saying that others are responsible for our problems, that others are speaking for us, or that it is the media that is distorting the image of women. There is a space that we have to fill ourselves. We are not in a period of mass militancy, but we are at a particular moment in time—I don't want to call it "feminist militancy," because it is often viewed as aggressive to say feminist today, it has become like a bad label—perhaps it is a modern form of feminism, to go forward, to simply express oneself, to say things the way they are lived and felt by women. This is in itself an act of life.
Do you feel there is a certain woman's sensibility that women filmmakers express in their work?
I think so. It is a truth that is very simple. There is a woman's sensibility and a man's sensibility. For a long time men have spoken in our place, even the most militant, progressive men who make films about the condition of Arab woman.
Nonetheless, it is a man's point of view, with all its sincerity to understand from the outside. However, this vision could never take the place of a woman's.
I speak of a woman's sensibility in the sense where...in the case of my film, I speak of violence. It is not only the woman who is beaten by her husband who understands what it is like. I always say that I suffer for all the others, for this chain of women behind me, that I have in my genes, which I feel are here inside me. One has it or one does not. A man can feel it and understand it; he does not live it. I live it. I live it through my mother, within my own self, through my daughter. This brings a certain treatment to the subject, the questioning is different, the vision is different. Even from one man to another, one filmmaker to another, and even from one woman to another. This vision that comes out of women's experiences is problematized in another way, for better or worse, but nonetheless, differently. Here, we are talking about a woman's sensibility.
You spoke earlier about positionality in terms of where you make your films and the identity that informs your filmmaking. Though you live currently in Montreal, do you envision doing a film in Tunisia?
As I stated earlier, I was afraid of only being able to do a film in Tunisia. Now I am doing a film here in Montreal. It is true that sometimes the scripts go through cycles, where one takes priority over the other. I could do a film in Tunisia, but the truth is that the reality of Tunisia, I am living from a distance today. I no longer touch the daily life of Tunisia; I am living it from a distance. If I were to use the same script that I wrote several years ago when I was there, and were to rework it today, it would be from my point of view in exile.
My country, I take within me, but there is also another reality. Yes, I could go live for several months there and perhaps some things will surface, it is somewhat complex. It is a "no man's land" [stated in English]. At the same time, we are everywhere and nowhere. Perhaps that is particular to the first-generation immigrants, my daughter, perhaps will not experience this fragmentation.
My culture is always there, I carry it with me and I struggle not to see it in a nostalgic or exotic way. No matter what we say, "No, no it is not exotic"; this discourse frightens me, because somewhere, nostalgically, we want to rediscover certain things that are dear to us. If I have the privilege to be able to examine culture in relationship to me, I would have to ask, "What is it?" Because the word culture is vague, and besides, what is this culture?
In the end, it is not whether to do a film here or there. Today we Arabs, women and men, have the responsibility to question this culture that sometimes becomes dogma. We think: "It is our identity, and therefore it cannot be touched." With this attitude, anything and everything is allowed. No, this culture, once so beautiful, needs to be questioned today, by us, so that we may live it fully and be able to be at home within it.
Today, when we look at the Arab culture with its calligraphy, architecture and music, we see vast influences—especially from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—of the Golden Age of the Arabo-Muslim civilization, when it was open to the entire world. Today we are closing ourselves within our culture. No, it is worth rethinking. We must look around us and ask questions. With the rise of fundamentalism, we Arab women are now living in a period where we must question the issues around religion. We are living in a very complex period, very rich, of course, but very complex.
The problem for me at the moment is not whether to do a film here or there. If I could, not financially speaking, nor on the production level, but if I could, emotionally—because the technical side can be applied anywhere, there are no borders—but emotionally, if I could do a film in Tunisia, yes, I would be delighted. If I could do it in France or elsewhere, I would be equally pleased, but there is a core that exists that will follow me wherever I go, my commitment. That is why I am in cinema.
Of course, I do films for the pleasure of it, but also to have at least the impression that we are not on this earth to be ineffective. I think that we each have a mission. Not a mission guided by a flag, but rather to take life, not as a banality, but as richness. This life is worth looking at from our point of view, with our own passion and emotion.
