Patrice lumumba Boy Production, Abderazzak El Houwate.

One of the best clerks of the production at Lumumba street is Abderrazzak El Houwate.He is a very hard working boy and never makes complaints but instead Abderazzak does his job with great enthousiasm and care ,projecting a warm smile out of his thin face .Interestingly, his job consists of bringing confidential files from Patrice lumumba street where the official bureau resides to local administration and sometimes he goes to the main PDG bureau somewhere at Dar El Brihi.

Abderrazak is a f flamboyant boy who fervently enjoys his job very much.Sometimes he brings files that hold too much money but he will never show it off to nosy - closy people who want to sniff money cashes either for themselves or to deliver to press for a cheap scandal, however Abderrazzak 's manner is strict and amazing and he could have been called the trusty chap or simply in Arabic Al Amin and surely the swing he is always doing from Dar El Brihi to Patrice lummba street remains mysterious ,because he knows the dangerous risk that he is facing especially SNRT administration remain fidel to this bizarre way to handle administrative things .

Allal El Alaoui

The golden voice of Africa,Salif Keita traces Madinati-Oummi

Salif keita the international praised Afro-pop singer from Mali, participates with his beautiful lyrics called Papa in a film documentary written by Allal El Alaoui for Rabat-Salé in Morocco to become a cosmoplitan city around 2020.

Keita's music combines traditional West African music styles with influences from both Europe and the Americas, while maintaining an overall Islamic style. Musical instruments that are commonly featured in Keita's work include balafons, djembes, guitars, koras, organs, saxophones, and synthesizers.


Allal El Alaoui







Links :


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salif_Keita

The image of Mekness through the eyes of a cool man named Hassan Aourid.

Although the festival of Meknès-Tafilalet 2008, spearheaded by Hassan Aourid,the Wali of Mekness,is deprived from technical backgrounds such as artistic director and technical co-ordinators for the benefit of the festival, there are things that are remarkably handsome and symbolic about this artistic event especially artists who show their talents upon the prison of Kara named also Qobat Assoufara which is something very iconic for the openess that Morocco is having,states Leila El Baaj, the president of Mekness association .

Being an agricultural town,Mekness could not resist to go into its deepest culture by calling out Sahara artistic troupes like Jerafa ,Damon and Tetwan Arab-Andalusia music which have ,in fact, given special flavours to this 2008 festival already fabricated by Leila El Baaj, led fervently by a cool intellectual called Hassan Aourid.


Believe it or do not believe it.Hassan is seen omnipresent around the arena of the stage among that incredible prison of death called in arabic "Al Habss Al Kahra".Aourid with his extravangant look, tries to beautify the scenary around Qobat Assoufara " house of ambassadors" that he insisted to be noticed by artistic lights of the festival.Through out his mere modesty,Hassan is also seen to do several jobs starting from cleaning the floor of stage,directing his bureaucrats to let go Meknessis to enjoy their festival without severe restrictions , writing poetic verses to welcoming the officials .


Too many observers state that the new age that Morocco wanted to have, has sadly gone, but the way that Hassan is leading his Ishmaelite town, gives fortunately a new breathe not to eternalize Mekness, but may be to redepart with sure steps towards a glorious age .

Allal El Alaoui

Eyes of the eagle,Abderrahim El Hansali,between life and death.

اللهم رب الناس اذهب اليأس اشف أنت الشافي لا شفاء إلا شفاؤك شفاء لا يغادر سقماً


The whole production staff in Rabat of Patrice Lumumba street are sad the fact that they have recently heard that Abderrahim Hansali is very sick due to a cancer found in his brain .Aberrahim Hansali known as the eyes of the eagle, is a brilliant cameraman working in SNRT for many years .No doubt El Hasali would love to talk about good quality of any artistic products that's why his manner can not support mediocrity and bad leadership especially if we talk about film-makers who do not trust themselves or have hesitating decisions.

Abderrahim has filmed too many cultural programs,telefilms and one of his famous Chef-d’ouvre is an artistic cilp called Houriya praised by Moroccan public viewers directed by Said Azar and Abdelwahed Aznak .

All SNRT technicians and journalists wish good health and good come-back to film-making to our colleague cameraman,Abderrahim El Hansali.

Allal El Alaoui

Adieu to legendary film director Youssef Chahine

Egypt bids farewell to legendary director Chahine

2 hours ago

CAIRO (AFP) — Egyptian screen stars were among around 1,500 mourners who gathered at a Cairo church on Monday to bid farewell to Arab cinema's most celebrated director, Youssef Chahine, who died on Sunday aged 82.

Hundreds of celebrities and officials were crammed into the Roman Catholic Church of the Resurrection, with hundreds more gathered outside as the controversial director's coffin was carried in, draped in the Egyptian flag.

His protégé and colleague Khaled Youssef, who co-directed Chahine's latest film "Chaos" in 2007, was among the pall bearers.

The congregation included many of the biggest stars of Egyptian cinema -- for decades the Arab world's most popular -- alongside officials from the ruling National Democratic Party which was often targeted in Chahine's films.

Representatives from other parties across the political spectrum were also in attendance, along with dozens of journalists, an AFP correspondent reported.

Chahine died in a Cairo hospital on Sunday after several weeks in a coma, with tributes from the Arab world and beyond pouring in for a man who actor Nur al-Sherif described as "one of the most important film-makers in the world".

He won official plaudits for his pioneering role in Egypt's film industry and was awarded the Cannes film festival's 50th anniversary lifetime achievement award in 1997.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Chahine was "a fervent defender of freedom of expression and of individual and collective liberty generally".

Chahine made his first film in Egypt in 1950 and it was there that he also discovered and launched the career of Omar Sharif, who shot to international stardom with "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Doctor Zhivago."

After the Cairo ceremony, Chahine's body was to be taken to his native city of Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast for burial in the family crypt.


Filmography

1. Youssef Chaban (Actor, Hub wa marah wa chabab (1964))
birth name "Youssef Chaban Shumais"
2. Youssef Charifi (Editor, Sociologie est un sport de combat, La (2001))
3. Youssef Chakiri (Actor, Anges de Satan, Les (2007))
4. Nadine Youssef (Miscellaneous Crew, "The Mummy Road Show: Cave Mummies of the Philippines" (2002))
5. Youssef Channay (Actor, Real Premonition (2007))
6. Sameer Ghanem (Actor, Awlad al-halal (1978))
birth name "Sameer Youssef Ghanem"
7. Charbel Youssef (Miscellaneous Crew, I Am Legend (2007))
8. Michael Youssef (Actor, "Leading the Way" (2005))
9. Amin Youssef Kohrab (Writer, Layaly el tawila, El (1967))
10. Yousef Shahidi (Cinematographer, Inside Out (2006))
11. Youssef Fakhr Eddine (Actor, Resala el akhira, El (1965))
12. Youssef Hamid (Actor, Double vie de Véronique, La (1991))
13. Youssef Sahbeddine (Actor, Mon père est ingénieur (2004))
14. Youssef Wadie (Sound Department, Blaue vom Himmel, Das (1964) (TV))
15. Cherif Youssef (Actor, Sortis de route (1988))
16. Hanan Youssef (Actress, Naama wa al tawoos, al- (2002))
17. Khaled Youssef (Writer, Assifa, Al (2000))
18. Amin Yousseff Ghurab (Writer, Shabab emraa (1956))

19. Youssef Chahine (Director, 11'09''01 - September 11 (2002))


links:

http://www.imdb.com/


http://www.youssefchahine.us/

Signature of co-operation between SNRT and DUNA - Tv from Hungaria.

According to Limage , a Moroccan on-line media ( see www.limage.info) an important co-operation between SNRT and DUNA-TV from Hungaria was signed last wensday in Budapest .

This signature was signed by the general director of SNRT ,Mohammed Ayad, and The president of DUNA-Tv ,Laszlo Cselenyi,predicts exchanges of informations and images , reporting materials and also programs of co-productions .

We sincerely hope that signature will contain continous exchange of tv directions in terms of technical trainings and working altogether for the benefit of good quality and finding international market.

Allal El Alaoui


Links :

www.limage.info

A stolen country called Palestine between poetry of Mahmud Darwish and cinematic images combined into graceful piano .

Either Randy Weston soft-piano notes written for African rythms or Chopin musical notes are being thought and debated to play on Mahmoud Darwish poetic verses . SNRT might be targeted by some intellectuals including a new vision fabricated by Allal El Alaoui and his production staff , are to introduce vey soon an artistic project for national Tv in Morocco spearheaded by Faisal Laraichi.This refection will celebrate the Palestian Nekba of more than 100 yers of occupations.

Mahmud Darwish was born in Al-Birwah near Akka in 1941. In 1948, the village was attacked by the Zionists and its people left to other places. Darwish ran away at the age of seven to find himself in Lebanon knowing nothing about his family. A year later, he went back to Palestine to find his village totally ruined and an Israeli settlement is in its place. In 1964, he emerged as a major voice of the Palestinian resistance with Awraq Al-zaytun (Leaves of olives). His poetry became extremely popular, especially Identity Card written in 1964 :

"Record!

I am an Arab

And my identity card is number fifty thousand

I have eight children

And the ninth is coming after a summer

Will you be angry?

Record!

I am an Arab

I have a name without a title

Patient in a country

Where people are enraged . . ."


Allal El Alaoui

FNAP makes magical images out of Marrakech

Marrakech Popular Arts Theatres

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Academic Work art culture

http://www.scribd.com/doc/13423841/Marrakech-Popular-Arts-Theatres





It is not FIFM but it is FNAP, Marrakech Foundation of Popular Arts held from 14 to 19 of this year 2008.Anybody who comes to Marrakech, he or she will be astonished about the mise-en –scene that Abbes Fourag has done for this 43rd edition .It is a brilliant success because apparently, Abbas uses the verbal monologue narrated by a local actor Lachgar who with his wife in the right arena of the stage, introduces us every aspect of verbal popular arts that Morocco is proud of.



Bensouda team has thought to dispatch artistic groups around Marrakech in which he believes that 150.000 of theatre –goers will come to enjoy and among those audiences foreigners that come from every corner of this world. So, this audience will see 30 shows out of 32 traditional groups and 13 introduce modern musicals displayed by Moroccan youth.



To give to this festival a beautiful breath, Bensouda team thinks to present Marrakech through traditional clothing which is a specific initiative that will certainly colour the moods of this festival .Right in the stage, women will decorate their hands using El Hanna,a spiritual herb used very often for weddings and by surprise it is also used for this same purpose in India.





Press is omnipresent either locally or internationally. There are 150 journalists and several tv channel including SNRT.One of the distinguished thing that the festival is proud of is the collaboration of Moroccan Maestros called in Moroccan dialect El Maallamin who have willingly led their tribes to Marrakech for joy and entertainment.





writen by Allal El Alaoui









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Moroccan Political party PJD, a scoop on Allal El Alaoui 's film documentary Madinati-Oummi via a phone call .

Hassan Haitami,Al Adala Wa Tanmia journalist financed by PJD, met with Allal at the recent festival of Film d'auteur held in Rabat last june . Allal was impressed about Hassan continuous presence and deep interest of this festival of beautiful films .Hassan finds out that Allal is awaiting for SNRT to diffuse his lastest reportage film documentary called Madinati-Oummi which Samia-Fim Production has recently produced for Moroccan national television.

Because Hassan has enjoyed talking to Allal El Alaoui about this artistic project that pinpoints the unity of both towns Rabat and Sale for the first time in history of Morocco ,he writes an article about this film through a phone call made between him and Allal and here the summary of it .

http://www.pjd.ma/


By hassan haitam

س.من هو علال العلاوي ؟

اسمي علال العلاوي ،مولوع بالفن عامة وبالفن السينمائي خاصة.آحب كل ماهو جميل لان الجمال نعمة والجمال في عين ناظره، كما قال الساخر الارلاندي المشهور اوسكار وايلد.اعاشرالناس البسطاء و الفنانين كثيرا في كل مكان لانني لا اريد ان اصاب بمرض فوبياالكسل ، هذه الكلمة خبيثة وحقيرة تضطهد بدون رآفة المجتهدين والمبدعين ،و يجب مقاومتها بالعمل المتواصل والدؤوب

س.كيف جاءت فكرة إنجاز فيلم وثائقي عن مدينة سلا ؟

كتبت سيناريو "مدينتي -امي" بعدما كان اسمه الاصلي ميتروبوليس لكن غيرت اسمه لاسباب فنية و انتظرت طويلا لقاءا خاصا مع استاذ الانتروبولوجيا محمد الدهان الذي اردته ان يعطي لهذا الشريط نكهة متميزة خاصة وانه يشتغل حاليا في مشروع اسماه علاقة المدينة بالسينما وهذا بالضبط ماكنت ارمي توظيفه في هذا الشريط الوثائقي وفي الاخيراخرجت هذا الشريط بالعنوان المذكور وعلى العموم فالفكرة كانت موجهة ليس فقط لمدينة سلا
التي هي آصلا مدينة جميلة وعتيقة ويجب الاهتمام بها كثيرا ،وانما كانت موجهة لمدينة الرباط وبالتالي احلم كباقي المواطنين المغاربة ان ارى هاتين العدوتين متحدتين كمدينة و عاصمة موحدة وعالمية كدبي، باريس ولندن ثم تزامن هذا بوجود المشروع ابو رقراق الضخم الذي سوف يعطي للعدوتين رونقا وجمالا يضاهي المدن الكوزموبولسية المذكورة وكم فرحنا كثيرا عندما سمعنا ان الاجانب يدخلون الى مدينة سلا بالتاشيرة عن طريق الميناء القديم المسمى حاليا بالمارينا وعن قريب سوف يتم تدشينه من طرف ملك المغرب محمد السادس
.
س.كيف اخترت موضوع الفيلم ؟

آعتبر نفسي آني رجل محظوظ لآني ولدت في سلا ودرست في الرباط واستكملت دراستي في الخارج وبالتالي اعتبر هذه الثقافة المزدوجة هي السبب الاول في اختيار الموضوع خاصة اني عشت في مدن عالمية ،آما السبب الثاني يكمن في آنني اشتغل في ميدان السمعي البصري وبالخصوص في التلفزة المغربية حيث اعشق الصورة وتاثيرها في نفوس الناس ثم هناك عامل وجداني آخر هو التركيز على المشاهدة المستمرة للافلام الدولية التي اثرت في نفسي كثيرا مثل الفيلم الرائع والخالد - روما - لفريدكو فليني ثم افلام اندري طاركوفسي الاستيتقية والجمالية ناهيك عن الافلام المغربية التي تتعلق بالمدينة ومشاكلها
.
س.ما سبب عدم عرض الفيلم على القناة الأولى ؟

لابد آن يعرف قراء جريدتكم الموقرة آن التلفزة المغربية تغيرت كثيرا في الاتجاه الصحيح و ذلك راجع لعدة معطيات مهمة كالتكوين والتكوين المستمر،التشبيب ومنح فرص لطاقات مهنية اعتبرت نفسها مهمشة ثم في الآخيرتم زرع مسؤولين في المكان المناسب مثلا مجيئ العلمي الخلوقي لتدبير شؤون الآنتاج والبرمجة، لكن في المقابل هناك بعض العقليات المتحجرة التي ترفض التجديد ولست اقصد هنا جريدتكم وانما ترفض مثلا لعبة الديموقراطية والحق لكل العاملين و العاملات في الشغل والابداع .هذا يجرني للحديث عن شريطي الذي يوجد الان في رفوف مديرية الانتاج ،اعتقد ان موضوع الشريط جد مهم خاصة ان الصحافة المغربية تطالب الان بمواضيع جديدة ومفيدة لوطننا واشير بالذكر ان هذا الشريط عرض لآول مرة امام لجنة مهرجان الدولي لسينما المراة بسلا وقد اعجب به الاعلامي والمدير السابق للتلفزة المغربية السيد الصديق معنينو بالاضافة للصحافيان المشهوران خالد الجامعي ومصطفى حيران وفي المقابل اني واثق ان هناك مسؤولون في التلفزة المغربية رغم المثبطات المتواصلة كنشر افكار مسمومة في الكواليس لكن هؤلاء المسؤولون والاسف هم قليلون واعون بهموم المبدعين خاصة وانه حان الوقت لرفع التحدي وفتح الابواب لجميع العقليات والطاقات للتعبير بمسؤولية ومصداقية
.
س.هل هناك محاولات ليتمكن الجمهور المغربي من مشاهدة الفيلم ؟

نعم بالتاكيد، سوف يشاهد الجمهور المغربي الشريط الوثائقي مدينتي - امي واتمنى كباقي المبدعين ان يشاهده في التلفزة المغربية لانه ببساطة اخرج هذا الشريط للجمهور المغربي وليس لجمهور آخر و كان لي لقاءا خاصا مع الفنانة المقتدرة نعيمة المشرقي حيث تحدثنا في موضوع الانتاج والظروف الصعبة للمنتجين والمخرجين ووجدنا انه الان وللاسف ان مجموعة كبيرة من المنتجين تتجه الى القنوات الفضائية كقناة الجزيرة لعرض افلامهم وبصراحة فاني اتفهم الموضوع لان الشركات حينما ترفض منتوجها تتعرض للافلاس .وفي هذا الصدد احيي نعيمة المشرقي لتشجيعها المتواصل للمخرجين الجدد
.
س.هل هناك اهتمام حقيق بالأفلام الوثائقية بالمغرب ؟

لابد وان توجه سؤالك للمجلس الاعلى للسمعي البصري لان الامر يهم بالخصوص دفتر تحملاتها اما بالنسبة للمخرجين والمبدعين فهم منشغلون فقط في كيفية اخراج اعمالهم ناهيك عن الظروف الصعبة التي تواجههم خاصة الظروف المادية
.
س.مشاريعك المستقبلية؟

كم كنت اتمنى ان آعيش في الصين، لماذا لان المسؤولين في هذه البلاد لهم ميزة خاصة مع شعبهم يترجمون هموم شعبهم بسرعة حيث هناك تناغم وانسجام بين الحكومة والشعب لافت للنظروهذا ما اسميه بالفعل ضوء الذكاء مثلا كم كنت اتمنى ان يفهم المسؤولون المغاربة كم هو مربح المشروع التي جئت به قصد اطلاق صرخة السلم والتعايش بين الشعوب عن طريق تنظيم مهرجان دولي اطلقت عليه اسم هليوود وبوليود من اجل السلم لكن بدون جدوي
وفي المقابل واخيرا وافقت التلفزة المغربية في انتاج فيلم قصير تحت عنوان - اولاد الشمس - من اخراج علال العلاوي واتمنى ان تفي بوعدها كما قال سبحانه وتعالى "وكان العهد مسؤولا " وسوف التجا قريبا الى المركز المغربي السينمائي طالبا الدعم لاخراج فيلم مطول مقتبس عن رواية وشريط عالمي للاديبة الامريكية المشهورة كالي الخوري بعنوان الغرباء

حاور علال العلاوي حسن الهيثم .

Cinema brings Australia so near to the world .

Whenever we talk about Australian cinema , we refer to its wondeful movie Mad Max directed by George Miller starring Mel Gibson.It is true that in Africa mainly Morocco ,Australia cinema is not really known a part from its imigrated actors and actresses to Hollywood such as Mel Gibson, Nickole Kidman and Russell Crowe.

Academicaly speaking, cinema-goers in Africa especially does not know too much that film magazine sensesofcinema more likely to Cahiers du Cinema, published on line in the net ,because simply it is written in English and i think that both Australian and African cinema lovers must get together so as to see their screenings .On this occasion, i find the interview that Sensesofcinema has done with Richard Franklin, an Australian film-maker ,so interesting .That is why i am republishing it in my weblog hopefully to allow Moroccan cinema-goers to go through Australian cinema which is,unfortuantely, little known in Morocco.

Allal El Alaoui





Cinema of Australia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

History

Australia's film history has been characterized as one of 'boom and bust' due to the unstable and cyclical nature of its industry; there have been deep troughs when few films were made for decades and high peaks when a glut of films reached the market.[1]

Australian film has a long history. Indeed, the earliest known feature length narrative film in the world was the Australian production The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906).

Arguably one of the world's first film studios, The Limelight Department was operated by The Salvation Army in Melbourne, Australia, between 1897 and 1910. The Limelight Department produced evangelical material for use by the Salvation Army, as well as private and government contracts. In its 19 years of operation, the Limelight Department produced about 300 films of various lengths, making it the largest film producer of its time. The major innovation of the Limelight Department would come in 1899 when Herbert Booth and Joseph Perry began work on Soldiers of the Cross, arguably the first feature length film ever produced. Soldiers of the Cross fortified the Limelight Department as a major player in the early film industry. However, Soldier of the Cross would be dwarfed when the Limelight Department was commissioned to film the Federation of Australia.

[edit] The boom of the 1910s
The old Pacific Cinema at Bulahdelah, NSW, a classic example of an early small country town cinema.
The old Pacific Cinema at Bulahdelah, NSW, a classic example of an early small country town cinema.

The first 'boom' in Australian film occurred in the 1910s. After beginning slowly in the years from 1900, 1910 saw 4 narrative films released, then 51 in 1911, 30 in 1912, and 17 in 1913, and back to 4 in 1914, the beginning of World War I.[2] While these numbers may seem small, Australia was one of the most prolific film-producing countries at the time. That is, between 1910 and 1912, almost 90 narrative films were made; between 1906 and 1928, 150 narrative feature films were made.[3]

There are various explanations for the subsequent demise of the industry; some historians have pointed to falling audience numbers, a lack of interest in Australian product and narratives, and the decision to participate in World War I. However, a major reason lay in the official banning of bushranger films in 1912.[4] Looking for alternative products, Australian theatre chains realised that Australian films were much more expensive than imported films from the United States, which could be purchased cheaply as production expenses had already been recouped. To redress this decline, the federal government imposed a tax on imported film in 1914, but this was removed by 1918. By 1923, U.S. films dominated the Australian exhibition sector, with 94% of all films coming from that country. [5]

Another explanation is concerned with anti-competitive behavior between film distributors and theaters. Between 1906 and 1912 Australia's burgeoning film industry produced more feature-length films than Britain or the USA, but in 1912 Australasian Films and Union Theaters established a monopoly over production, distribution and exhibition and shut out smaller producers. That opened the way for US distributors in the 1920s to sign exclusive deals with Australian cinemas to exhibit only their products, thereby crippling the local film industry [6].


The boom of the 1970s and 1980s

During the 1970s, government funding for Australian filmmakers was increased. The South Australian Film Corporation was established in 1972 to promote and produce films, while the Australian Film Commission was created in 1975 to fund and produce internationally competitive films.[1] A generation of directors and actors emerged who told distinctively Australian stories. Films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975) and Sunday Too Far Away (Ken Hannam, 1975) made an impact on the international arena. The 1970s and 80s are regarded by many as a 'golden age' of Australian cinema, with many successful films, from the dark science fiction of Mad Max (George Miller, 1979) to the romantic comedy of Crocodile Dundee (Peter Faiman, 1986), a film that defined Australia in the eyes of many foreigners despite having little to do with the lifestyle of most Australians.

The industry today

The Australian film industry continues to produce a reasonable number of films each year,[citation needed] but in common with other English-speaking countries, Australia has often found it difficult to compete in a marketplace dominated by American product. The most successful actors and film-makers are easily lured by Hollywood and rarely return to the domestic film industry.

After Rupert Murdoch, the head of Fox Studios and an Australian, saw that the new Fox studios were moved to Sydney, some US producers have chosen to film at Fox's state of the art facilities as production costs in Sydney are well below US costs. Studios established in Australia, like Fox Studios Australia and Warner Roadshow Studios, host large international productions like The Matrix and Star Wars II and III.

Government support

The Federal Australian government had supported the Australian film industry through the funding and development agencies of Film Finance Corporation Australia, the Australian Film Commission and Film Australia. In 2008 the three agencies were consolidated into Screen Australia.

A recurring debate in the Australian film industry revolves around the necessity or otherwise of government support for the industry. In brief, the argument for government support maintains that a viable film industry is only possible if it is supported in some way by the government and proponents of this view hold that the industry cannot compete against the hegemony of Hollywood. The argument against government support is that the industry is viable without support and will become stronger if increasingly globalized market forces are allowed full and untrammeled play. Others argue that a film industry in itself has little value. The history of the industry in Australia is to some extent a result of the ascendancy of one position over the other.

Australian exports

The Australian film industry has produced a number of successful actors and directors, some of whom have moved on to Hollywood.

These include actors and actresses Peter Phelps, Maj Zetterling (Sweden), Errol Flynn, Mel Gibson, Russell Crowe (New Zealand), Nicole Kidman (United States), Cate Blanchett, Naomi Watts, Geoffrey Rush, Hugh Jackman, Heath Ledger, Hugo Weaving, Paul Hogan, Guy Pearce, Toni Collette, Emilie de Ravin, Judy Davis, David Wenham, Rachel Griffiths, Rose Byrne, Abbie Cornish, Sam Neill (Northern Ireland/New Zealand) and Eric Bana, directors George Miller, Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford, James McTeigue, Alex Proyas, Mario Andreacchio and Baz Luhrmann, Phillip Noyce, Gillian Armstrong and associated production experts Mikael Borglund(Sweden).
Wikipedia.org

Richard Franklin:
Director/Producer
by Scott Murray and Tom Ryan

Scott Murray is a filmmaker and co-Editor of Senses of Cinema.
Tom Ryan is the film writer for The Sunday Age, Melbourne.
Originally published: Cinema Papers, No. 28, August-September 1980, pp. 242-6, 299.

Roadgames is Richard Franklin’s fourth feature, following The True Story of Eskimo Nell (1975), Fantasm (as Richard Bruce, 1976), and Patrick (1978). Franklin also recently co-produced The Blue Lagoon (1980), directed by Randall Kleiser.

Aged 31, Franklin trained at the film school at the University of Southern California, where he was a contemporary of George Lucas, John Milius and John Carpenter. Returning to Australia, Franklin joined Crawford Productions, directing episodes of Homicide.

Having been tutored at USC by John Ford, and being an avid devotee of Alfred Hitchcock, Franklin is one of those Australian directors to choose filmmaking out of the sheer love of it.

* * *

Your admiration for Alfred Hitchcock is well known, so how important is his influence on your work?

My first film, The True Story of Eskimo Nell, and, dare I say, my second film, Fantasm, were comedies. They were done in an improvised sort of fashion, trying to create magical happenings on the set that I would then capture on film. Both films worked only to a limited extent and I decided to re-examine my approach to directing.

I decided I hadn’t succeeded particularly in doing films off the top of my head and resolved to do what I had seen work for Hitchcock. I chose to make a thriller and, in doing Patrick, I found that the thriller form was incredibly intricate and satisfying. And the thing that I found most satisfying, because of my interest in film technique, was that it is an expressionist medium. One can do things in a thriller with more flourish and less naturalism than in a comedy, social documentary or character piece. You are dealing with highly extreme states of real life, like murder and death, and there is a great deal of freedom to indulge one’s imagination. Not many people have seen these things in reality, so they see murder on the screen relative to the conventions of cinema, rather than reality.

It only came to me recently, watching Helter Skelter [Tom Gries, 1976] on television and reading about the Thornbury killing, that I am dealing with a serious subject here. To me, it has always been the same as The Three Little Pigs: evil is personified by the big bad wolf for children and the psychopathic madman for adults. It is just simple storytelling in a fantasy-expressionist mode.

As for Hitchcock, I consider him the supreme film technician. That’s not to say I am not excited by Orson Welles’ use of angles, Sergei Eisenstein’s editing, Friedrich Murnau’s use of camera or Max Ophüls’ use of cranes. But, to me, Hitchcock was the director who could bring all those technical things together and turn them into an emotional experience that was never diminished, but only heightened, by one being aware of what he was doing technically.

A lot of people resent the unreality of Hitchcock’s work, but that unreality is much more exciting to me than reality, either in or out of quotes.

Those who see Hitchcock as a moralist often talk about the way he implicates his audience with characters who are morally ambiguous. One can see that potential in the screenplay of Roadgames, but not in your other films. Is that an aspect that interests you?

I see Hitchcock’s vision as one of an insecure man looking at a terrifying universe. Perhaps my love of his films, even as a 12-year-old when I first saw Psycho [1960], came from a similar insecurity. He was a small, fat Cockney and I was a small weedy Australian kid with glasses.

The Newsweek obituary on Hitchcock summed up his approach rather well. It talked about how he could project his own emotional fears and inadequacies in such a way that everyone could identify with them. Subjectivity is the key to this. It’s a question of using the film technique and the structure of the script to make the audience identify with your central character.

In Patrick, it was perhaps slightly different, but Patrick could never have worked had he not been seen through the eyes of Kathy Jacquard [Susan Penhaligon]. We had to learn about him through her.

In Roadgames, as in Patrick, the audience initially knows slightly more than the central character, in that it sees the event that precipitates the rest of the story, namely the opening murder. It is perhaps a little cowardly on my part to show this, because Hitchcock didn’t show Lars Thorwald [Raymond Burr] murder his wife in Rear Window [Hitchcock, 1954], a film that had a considerable influence on Roadgames, and you never quite knew what was going on. But I feel I have to deliver that little bit more to audiences. I also suspect audiences have become a little jaded by television and expect a teaser, even when they go to the cinema. They want to know they are getting their money’s worth instantly.

Bernard Herrmann said to Brian De Palma when he was scoring Sisters [1973] that he would have to write a very strong piece of opening music because nothing happens in the first half hour. De Palma said, “Yes, but nothing happens in Psycho for the first 40 minutes.” Herrmann replied, “Yes, but that’s a Hitchcock film.”

Something had happened in those 45 other Hitchcock films that made the audience know they were going to get their money’s worth. They don’t trust me yet, so I have to give them something in the beginning.

The interesting thing about thrillers, as opposed to mysteries, is the way information is presented. One finds oneself constantly having to work out what the audience knows at any given moment. Then it is a matter of keeping the central character just slightly behind the audience – enough so that the audience says “Come on, come on’’, but not so far that the audience gets frustrated with him. And the best way to keep him at that point is to move him back and forth. So, every now and then, he makes a jump, or a new piece of exposition will be introduced, which will surprise the audience.

One is constantly playing cat-and-mouse games with the audience, and you must have a very clear notion of where the audience’s head is at any particular moment. To me, that is much more interesting than so-called personal filmmaking – making one’s own statement, which the audience can like or lump.

At the same time, one can find in your films recurring elements, such as a central figure who is a dreamer. Is this deliberate?

All my life I have felt as if I’ve watched life rather than participated in it. So, in a way, it’s autobiographical. But don’t you think Hitchcock’s central characters are also dreamers?

Yes, but they are more morally ambiguous than yours. You always let your dreamers win, whereas Hitchcock’s characters, while winning in one sense, in another sense waste away.

Maybe his vision of life became a little sour in his later films. There are the sad, sad characters like Scotty Ferguson [James Stewart] in Vertigo [1958] and, I suppose, Roger O. Thornhill [Cary Grant] in North by Northwest [1959].

I am still young and idealistic I guess, and though my major inspiration is the later films of Hitchcock, like Rear Window, Vertigo and North by Northwest, I suppose my films are more along the lines of earlier ones, like Young and Innocent [1937] or The 39 Steps [1936].

It’s difficult for me to talk about recurring themes, though it is interesting to hear you find unconscious links between Eskimo Nell and Patrick. To me, they are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

I made Eskimo Nell as an attempt to be all-Australian, and to some extent explain aspects of the Australian sexual ethos as I saw it. That went all the way from the de-dakings I remember at a public boys’ school, through to the contemptuous way ockers speak of women in bars, to the homosexual overtones of mateship. Patrick was an attempt at a genre film of international quality that made no particular reference to Australia.

Roadgames, meanwhile, is an odyssey in the way Eskimo Nell was, and it has many elements of Australiana, unlike Patrick.

Connected with the idea of a dreamer is the repeated presence of voyeurism in your films. For many filmmakers, this is a way of talking about the process the audience is going through. Hitchcock’s Rear Window, for example, is about a voyeur, but it implicates the audience as well. Is this an aspect of Roadgames?
Roadgames
Roadgames

Yes. We decided to shoot Roadgames in Panavision because it is the shape of the truck windscreens. I was very conscious that what we had was an image of a man on the inside looking out. The voyeuristic thing has to do with subjective involvement with a central character. You have to see things through his eyes. Of course, if he gets very close to people you inevitably go into two-shots, which are no longer subjective.

There is a lot of discussion in the industry about the sort of films that we should be making. Given that Hitchcock’s films are often seen merely as technically accomplished suspense films, how do you value your own films?

When one considers that Hitchcock never won an Academy Award and it was only in later years that he was seriously analysed in an offbeat way, by people like Robin Wood, I suppose I can’t ask that my films be taken seriously. But I don’t ask that; I just ask that people enjoy them. I like sharing a paranoid fantasy experience with an audience in the same way as I enjoy telling my daughter bedtime stories.

As for the people who are keen for us to make great Australian films, I really can’t answer for them. I can only do what I feel. There are things about the Australian character that I am keen to extol, but what interests me most is an image of a man in the universe. If what we want to assert by making films here, as [producer and social commentator] Phillip Adams suggests in the introduction to The New Australian Cinema (1), is our accent, or that we drive on the left-hand side of the road, then I don’t think the rest of the world will be interested.

I sometimes think that what people here want to assert is our past ties with Britain and Europe, as opposed to our present and future ties with the U.S. I am neither pro-American nor pro-British. I have lived in the US and Australia, and have spent some time in Europe, and I see people everywhere as being pretty much alike emotionally.

So, when people say they want Australian stories promoted, what they really want championed is the trivialities that are unique to Australia, because the fundamental things are fundamental everywhere.

That’s absolutely true. Take the example from Roadgames of the roadhouse at Yellowdine. It’s based on the one real roadhouse that’s still standing in the Nullarbor after they put the new highway through. It is very old-fashioned – the sort of thing [Australian playwright] David Williamson would write a play about, or Phillip Adams an article, and say was our cultural heritage. But what you really have out in the Nullarbor is a number of bland Mobil, Esso and Shell brick-veneer roadhouses selling Coca-Cola.

We reconstructed the interior of that roadhouse with its murals of Aboriginal massacres and other things uniquely Australian. And in the middle we put a Playboy pinball machine with Hugh Hefner and Jimmy Connors’ wife painted on it. And, between the Aboriginal carnage on the wall and the Playboy slot machine, we placed an Australian jackaroo. I even cast someone behind the bar who should have been saying, “Welcome to the Yabba”, because he looks like Chips Rafferty. (2)

Now, that jackeroo was asserted throughout the 1930s as our Australian hero, the character who was uniquely Australian. I believe, however, his contemporary counterpart owes a great deal more to John Wayne than he does to Slim Dusty.

Doing what David Williamson does, which is to assert the purely local and colloquial elements of our character and forsake the broad picture, which is that next to the pub there is a Colonel Sanders or a McDonalds, is to promote an incorrect cultural impression of Australia.

I live in a street that has, on one corner, a grocer’s shop – and I don’t mean a supermarket. You can go in there and buy a bag of broken biscuits, and out the back there is a wood yard where you can get Mallee roots. On the other corner is a Colonel Sanders’, but when I give people directions to my house I refuse to tell them to turn left at Colonel Sanders’, because I believe Americans make very bad fast food. But I do believe they make very good films, and those who say they don’t are kidding themselves.

To indiscriminately shit-can American cultural imperialism is to ignore the fact that they own most of our theatres and to ignore the cultural reality of this country.

That is not really in disagreement with Phillip Adams’ argument about cars being on the left-hand side of the road. What you have talked about is Australian culture in the films in terms of details of décor. But there is also a narrative.

I see our Australian landscape, geographically and culturally, as a backdrop for stories and ideas that should have universal relevance. I think it’s insular to imagine that we concern ourselves with things that the rest of the world doesn’t. And, if we do, then we have no right to want the rest of the world to look at what we do.

I can see an argument for a film industry that caters just to Australians, though it is a less compelling one than for a French film industry that caters to Frenchmen. After all, we do speak the same language as the British, the Americans and the Canadians, and we share a lot for that reason.

We have used the Nullarbor Plain in Roadgames in a way that I feel is universal. Frita Frugal [Marion Edward], who is on the run from the unions, stops at the Great Australian Bight, which is the longest stretch of unbroken cliff in the world. Frita says, “My God, it’s like being at the end of the world.” Now, that may be seen as a putdown of Australia, but I believe that most Australians see the Nullarbor Plain as a frontier area, and the alienation that we derive from the setting is perceived in the same way by Australians as by people overseas. It is a very powerful and universal image, and I don’t believe that it’s selling Australia out.

It is the people who haven’t spent time overseas who get some sort of distorted image that by showing our culture the way it really is we are somehow selling out. If that’s the case, then Australia sold out when it didn’t win at the Eureka Stockade.

Did [co-financier] Avco Embassy make any demands, in terms of scripting or casting, when agreeing to invest in Roadgames?

Yes. They had right of final script approval, but they so liked the first draft that they didn’t interfere.

They also had the right to approve the casting of the lead actor. Had I been able to give them Errol Flynn as Pat Quid, I have no doubt they would have accepted an Australian, but that wasn’t possible. They never specified that the lead actor had to be an American; they just said he had to be of international standing, as opposed to standard. There is no doubt that our actors are of international standard; it’s just that they don’t yet have the standing.

Avco also has the right to change the final cut of the film, but I have the right to release whatever cut I want in Australasia. So, regardless of what they do for the rest of the world, my version will exist. I suppose I can’t complain, as no American director I know of has final cut.

Do they have any rights in terms of dubbing?

No.

So it will go out as shot here?

I can’t say that yet. But I’ll be a party to any decision that is made to do otherwise. I don’t believe there will be any problems.

The screenplay of Roadgames reads as if it were written with Stacy Keach in mind. Was he the first choice for Pat Quid?
Roadgames
Roadgames

No, but when I looked into it further he became the obvious one. He has the rugged looks of a truck driver, while his considerable legitimate theatre background gives him the credibility to carry off the poetry Quid quotes early in the film. This is an attempt to legitimise the character.

Everett de Roche and I, after talking to a lot of truck drivers, felt they were a race apart, and to make an audience identify with one of them we had to make him atypical. So, in the opening scene, he tells us that he doesn’t take uppers, which makes him hallucinate more than any other truck driver.

Why did you select Jamie Lee Curtis, who is relatively unknown apart from her work with John Carpenter, for the role of Hitch?

It is difficult to be relatively known at the age of 21 and Hitch is an ingénue part. There aren’t really any ingénues here who are experienced and established.

Of course, we could have used an overgrown and overblown child star like Jodie Foster or Brooke Shields, but we felt Brooke, who is still only 14, was too young to be a potential partner for Quid, the way Lauren Bacall was for Humphrey Bogart in To Have and to Have Not [John Huston, 1944].

Jamie, I felt, was in the middle ground between being a child star and a romantic heroine. She has also done four features, which no girl of that age has done here, and one of them, John Carpenter’s Halloween [1978], is the most successful non-studio film ever made.

It was also nice, after Hitchcock died, to be able to write to Mrs Hitchcock [Alma Reville] and say that we were making a film called Roadgames, in which Janet Leigh’s daughter was playing a hitchhiker nicknamed Hitch. We asked whether she would accept this as a tribute to Mr Hitchcock, and she wrote back and said she would. All in all, it’s been ideal.

What was Actors Equity’s reaction to your wanting to bring in two American leads?

We had a great deal of trouble with Equity, not because there was concern about us bringing in two overseas leads, but because the Melbourne executive approved the importation and the Sydney executive disapproved it. We found ourselves as the ping-pong ball in a game of politics between Melbourne and Sydney, and it nearly resulted in the film closing down.

So it had nothing to do with whether your choices were of “international standing”?

No, though I feel Equity’s way of defining distinction and merit is ridiculously subjective. They are now attempting to define someone of “standing” as a person who has made five features. To me, it is a ridiculous and destructive position to take. They might as well use Fantales wrappers as a criterion.

The producers are the people who are initiating production, and who take the risks, along with the distributors who have to sell the film, and they should make the decisions about who is of international standing, not a union executive which may have the best intentions but may not necessarily be the best informed.

What annoys me is that the government has initiated an Australian certification process and the union is trying to go against it. Equity seems to me to know more about television than cinema, because it doesn’t seem particularly difficult to get approval for rather second-rate television names, whereas you can put up top cinema or Broadway names and they ask, “Who’s that?”

Some observers feel the rise of unionism in Britain in the 1960s was a major factor in the decline of British cinema. Do you see similar dangers with unionism in the Australian film industry?

Unquestionably. It has even reached the level of a bloody obsession with me at the moment. Take, for instance, the phenomenon of tea breaks in this country. We are making a film in mid-winter in Melbourne, where there are only eight hours of daylight. One hour of that goes on lunch, so that leaves us with a seven-hour shooting day – and then you have to take tea breaks out of that.

Sure, the union coffee break is only 10 minutes in the morning and 10 in the afternoon, but it generally adds up to 20 minutes at a time, which cuts your working day to something like six and a bit hours of sunlight. To me that is idiotic.

I have tried to institute the American system, whereby we have coffee-making facilities on the set at all times so that people can have as much coffee as they want while they are working. And there is a lot of slack time while one is waiting for lighting and so on.

The spectre of the unions is really bothersome. All it will take is for the union to start demanding that we use teamsters and it will be as expensive to make films here as it is in the U.S.

In his interview in Cinema Papers, Everett de Roche said that if one gave him $1000 he would write a $1000 script, and if you gave him $10,000 he would write a $10,000 script. Is the script of Roadgames as good as time and finances will allow?

Roadgames is Everett’s best work and he was paid a higher fee for it than he has had before. We spent a lot of time on it, and he came to Fiji when I was working on The Blue Lagoon and worked in a hotel on the mainland while I was on the island. I would go into town twice a week and go through what he had done. We also did some work at the studio at Burbank.

Time is really the main thing, though if one gets paid low fees, one has to do a lot of work and that runs the risk of spreading one’s talent a little thin. Everett had been on holiday in the US for three months before beginning Roadgames, so his creative batteries were fully charged.

Everett is a very inspirational writer and the first draft of Roadgames was written in eight days. He is very strong on ideas, while I am quite strong on discipline and structure, so we tend to work well together.

At the moment, I am looking for a way in which to stage the final fight between the two characters. I have come up with lots of ways, but I don’t feel that any of them is inspiring. So I have asked Everett to write me an expansion of the fight, with every punch described. That’s not to say that I will use it exactly as he writes it, but there may be some little thing he sees that will bring the whole sequence to life for me.

One criticism levelled at Patrick is that De Roche has the tendency towards being too explicit. One thinks, in particular, of the extended scene of the typewriter at the end.
Patrick
Patrick

The Oscar Wilde quote – “Each man kills the thing he loves” – was my idea. I had always puzzled over what motivated Patrick [Robert Thompson], and the only thing I could think of was that quote by Wilde. And when I spoke to one of our psychological advisers on Patrick, he said it was a very good link. Oscar Wilde and Patrick had a great deal in common psychologically.

There was probably a lot of expositional dialogue in the film because at the time Everett and I were fascinated with the occult. We even had some Kirlian photography in one of the drafts of the screenplay. So, perhaps there was too much explanatory dialogue, and that could be a failing of Patrick. I hope it’s not a failing of Roadgames, which starts with a lot of very florid dialogue and almost ends as a silent movie.

Everett gives one too much of everything and you don’t always know what to use. You start editing down and you end up with words and single lines of dialogue that were once scenes. That is maybe how this problem, as you see it, comes about. But that only has to do with Everett’s extraordinarily fertile imagination and his writing speed.

There have been suggestions that you had disagreements with your producer on Patrick. If true, did this affect the film?

Tony Ginnane and I had a very good working relationship. I enjoy working for him because he is an executive producer and spends most of his time doing what I find hardest: the packaging and raising of money. He doesn’t interfere during the creative phases and I find that makes him a rather ideal producer to work with.

What was your reaction to Patrick being dubbed into ‘American’ for the U.S. market?

I was unhappy because I had gone to great lengths to neutralize the accents in the first place. And I say “neutralize” as opposed to “neuter”. We had an almost all-expatriate British cast and I made a point of having everyone speak the Queen’s English, which I believe is the most universal form of English.

Unfortunately, our US distributor, who was a small distributor and probably wouldn’t have known anyway, believed that British films did not hold a great deal of interest for the American public; he felt the film should be done in an American accent.

However, it is not the dubbing as much as the re-cutting that I find hurts the film.

Was it shortened or re-structured?

Both. But the things that one would expect to have been shortened, like Kathy’s relationships with her husband and Dr Wright [Bruce Barry], were not. In fact, one of the long scenes with Dr Roget [Robert Helpmann], where he talks about euthanasia, was extended. They asked for our off-cuts and included them.

Where they cut the film was in the ending, and, to me, that destroyed the film. The whole notion of Patrick slipping away was incredibly delicately balanced, and the shock of him leaping out of the bed came as a result of it being carefully set up.

They also turned the husband trapped in the lift into a major plot point. It was already stretching things a bit to believe that someone could be trapped in a lift for two days, but by de-emphasizing what Patrick was doing they turned the husband into a sort of super hero, which was just idiotic.

Do you want to continue working in the thriller genre?

Before becoming interested in Hitchcock’s work – and I must say here that I am as much inspired by, and probably more in awe of, John Ford’s filmmaking – my great love was Sherlock Holmes. So I have always been interested in the crime thriller area, though Holmes was more into the cerebral mystery than the suspense thriller.

I read a book (3) recently about the crime thriller genre that went all the way through from Arthur Conan Doyle to Dashiell Hammett. It made the point that 40 per cent of all books published in the world are in this genre. Perhaps they meant all fiction, but they said “all books”. Now I don’t know how one would prove or disprove that, but certainly if one looks at television one sees people are fascinated by crime thrillers. They are the modern morality play and I find them utterly fascinating.

The more thrillers I do, the more I want to do them. I would not like to cut myself off from making other types of films and I am very keen to do a musical, for example. I am also a great fan of comedy, particularly [Ernst] Lubitsch’s films. I would love to make a high style, sophisticated comedy along the lines of his films.

One of the most important elements in your films is music. How did you come to work with composer Brian May?

I was not particularly excited by what I had heard in Australian film scores at the time we did Eskimo Nell, and from my film school experience I was aware that most American composers began as arrangers. Max Steiner, for example, was an arranger on various Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers films before he scored King Kong [Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Schoedsack, 1933], and [one of Erich Wolfgang] Korngold’s first job[s] was arranging Mendelssohn music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream [William Dieterle and Max Reinhardt, 1935]. Hugo Friedhofer was also an arranger.

I saw film composition as being primarily the ability to convey moods via the colours of an orchestra, not necessarily through melody that is one of the least important elements in film music. So I was looking for the most exciting arranger that I could find, and, as a listener to the ABC, I had heard various radio programs with Brian May’s orchestra.

Finally, I heard an arrangement Brian did of the music from [the stage production of] Hair for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, which made all sorts of tongue-in-cheek references to Holst, Stravinsky and other composers. It’s an extraordinary piece and probably the best film music I’ve heard. I thought that anybody with that arranging talent had to be worth approaching.

Brian did a superlative job with the score of Eskimo Nell, and though it lacks the unity Brian has since found in his film writing, it is different. Brian is heavily into atonal scoring now, which is very well suited to films, but sometimes I miss the melodic character of Eskimo Nell.

The Eskimo Nell score was probably the first local music track to be actually scored: the music paused for sound effects rather than being pulled down in the mix.

That came about because a friend of mine from USC, Andrew London, who was the editor of Eskimo Nell and who is working as the sound editor on Roadgames, had been a music editor at Universal. When he came out here he brought a lot of scoring equipment with him: digital metronomes, sheets for marking up click tracks, calculators and things like that.

Eskimo Nell was not done to a picture, but just a click track. It was only when we finally saw it all laid up together that we found this extraordinary system worked. Patrick was the first Australian score to be recorded to picture. We have all learnt a lot about it since, and Brian has spent quite a bit of time in the US, studying with people like Elmer Bernstein, Jerry Goldsmith and John Barry. I think Brian is extraordinarily well-equipped now to write scores of international standard. The Patrick LP sold very well in the US.

On the set, you give the appearance of being very calm and confident. Is that a stance you adopt deliberately?

Yes. I don’t like histrionics on the set and I work from a chair as much as I can because it relaxes me. I try to put myself in the perspective of someone who has just paid $4 and is waiting to see whether he has wasted his money. So, instead of standing there by the camera leaping about saying, “Give it to me; give it to me, baby!”, as I have seen directors depicted as doing, I try to be as calm as possible. This is the way I have observed American directors work. Hitchcock’s set, for example, was like a library: it was so orderly and quiet. Hitch always referred to people who enjoy making noise on locations as “All the action on the set and none on the screen’’.

When you are trying to squeeze life through a tiny aperture on to a piece of celluloid, you have to focus your attention totally on that process, and distractions on the set just destroy that.

You are one Australian director who storyboards his films. How important are they?

Very important. I used to work off a script, which I broke down like a continuity mark-up, but I didn’t find it particularly satisfactory, especially when someone asked me which way I wanted a door to open on the set. I then turned to blocking diagrams, but found them not particularly satisfactory either, because I ended up with very complex drawings with lines and numbers everywhere. So I tried the approach I had seen Hitchcock use, which is to storyboard scenes.

I have pages printed at the same time as the script, and on my next film I am going to print a storyboard on the back of the pages of the script and circulate them to everybody. People have a great laugh about my storyboards and draw moustaches on them. But the really frustrating thing about my storyboards is that it is only after we have done a shot that people say. “Oh, that’s just like what you drew. I couldn’t see until we did it.”
Roadgames
Roadgames

On those sequences of Roadgames that rely heavily on atmospheric lighting, I have had my art director John Dowding draw up storyboards with me. I don’t storyboard dialogue sequences unless they have complex blocking. I think dialogue is a thing of the theatre, and I try to encumber actors with blocking as little as possible, so as to allow them to do what they are good at, which is acting.

I also remember something John Ford said to me: “You have to try and see their eyes.” I try to get my camera as close to the axis of the scene as I can, so that you can see the people’s eyes. The trouble with most live television and videotape is that the use of multi-cam means you can never get close to this axis in close-up because there is another camera in the way. Half the time a close-up on television is a profile.

At what point do you start talking to your cinematographer about the way you are going to shoot a sequence?

We discuss the overall feel in advance, then, in the case of simple sequences like dialogue scenes, I will even rely on the cinematographer to suggest improvements on my shots on the set.

As for more complex scenes, like the closing alleyway chase in Roadgames, [DOP] Vince Monton and I would have already spent six or eight hours in discussion. And he is now going through my storyboards with the gaffer in advance of doing the sequence. So, a lot of time and thought goes into the planning, as I believe it’s only very occasionally that good things happen by accident. You also save yourself a lot of trouble.

Take the scene at the weighbridge, where Alan Hopgood plays a one-armed attendant named Lester who holds the plot up by trying to be helpful. Next to the weighbridge there had to be a service station, but, because we could not find one, the art department was all ready to build one. I then pulled out my storyboard and said, “But we only ever see one wall of the service station.” So all we did was build that one wall, and it looks absolutely convincing.

I get a kick out of that, because it’s creating your own reality. That to me is more satisfying than just filming what’s already there.
www.sensesofcinema.com

Nour-eddine Bamhawoud, a brilliant tv director of sports live .

Nour -eddine was born in Rabat around Swika suburbs,a place called Boukroun where a famous restaurant belonging to his grand -father used to be frequented by Rbaty lovers to listen up to Arabic classical music such as Oum -Koultoum and Abdelouham Mohammed .

RTM, now becomes SNRT, must acknowledge artistic dedications that Bamhawoud family has given to the Moroccan national telelvision; brilliant actor like Ibrahim bamhawoud ,graphist like S.Bamhawoud and sports tv director like Nour -eddine .This latter has started his career as mixer and editor and indeed he used to mix up artistic and sportive programs through monolog and digital machines and this allows him to be a brilliant Tv sports director along with Karim and Tawfiq Mustablid

SNRT technicians believe that Nour-eddine Bamhawoud is quite lucky ,because matches that he usually captures, are being watched on- line by Faisal Laraichi himself via his TNT mobile phone and that is something that Nour-eddine should be proud of ,getitng a gentle gift from the president-director of SNRT .

Allal El Alaoui

Turkish Drama soaps invade TNT Moroccan tv sets.

Turkish Drama Series Gain Popularity in Arab World

27/04/2008

Jeddah, Asharq Al-Awsat - Nur, Rafif, Elif and Yilmaz among others are without doubt the stars of the silver screen today. These names have paved the way for the success of Turkish television drama series in the Arab world.

Turkish soaps such as ‘Nur’, ‘Years of Loss’ and ‘Bouquet of Flowers’, which have been dubbed into the Syrian Arabic dialect to be broadcast on Arab satellite channels have rapidly captured the attention of various groups of society, not only women. They have previously been dubbed into German, Romanian and other European languages to be broadcast in Europe.

These television dramas deal with social issues within the framework of overlapping stories and dramatic plots for suspense. These series look at issues such as love, family values, society, unemployment, poverty and greed from an Eastern angle.

If most Arab viewers in general, and Saudis in particular, are able to imagine life for instance in Mexico as a result of the numerous dubbed drama series that reflect major problems within that society, life in some countries that share some ideological and ethnic links with Arab societies, such as Turkey for example, is somewhat unknown to the majority that has not had the opportunity to visit that country.

Turkish drama series, which have gained substantial popularity, portray the Eastern attitude towards family, women and traditions. There are similar taboo issues and as a result of the dubbing, it seems as if the series is based on another Arab society.

Abdulaziz, 22 years old, is a dedicated fan of Turkish drama series. He admires the acting, the plots and the courage shown in dealing with taboo subjects in Eastern societies.

Social worker Layla Abu Shama emphasised that the popularity of Turkish series amongst women in particular is proof that these programs deal with topics that correspond to their own personal issues and aspirations. “It is important that parents talk to their children and discuss their interests as this reflects what is going on in their minds,” she said.


efai - Closs life
..The problems is not from the tv, the problems from our closs life
abdul - othman dynasty
sorry i dont have arabic keyboard your comment about othman dynasty and his relationship with arabic nation is unacceptable
remote - CONFUSED
The first part about Turkey TV telefilms is so confused both in writing and in concept. bringing up 500 years of 'occupation" in a non political soap made .for TV is pushing it. The part about Marcel khalifeh was touching
الدكتور فادي المرعبي - ما هذا الغباء!
يا لجهل الكاتبة الأهوج والمركّب! كيف تسمي من دافع عن الإسلام وحماه خلال خمسة قرون بالإستعمار والحكم أوليس هؤلاءالأتراك كانوا مسلمون؟ بل كانوا زينة الغاشم! من أوصل الإسلام الى أوروبا الهمجية و جعلها متحضرة؟ المسلمين في ذلك الوقت. ألا يقال في الفرنسية: "قوي كالتركي"؟ قوي على من؟ أما كان اليونانيون يرتجفون خوفاً من إرجعِ الى التاريخ الصحيح والغير مسيس أو محرّف ولا تُرددِ كلام الإفتراء بدون هذه المقالة التافه! الأتراك المسلمين؟ يا للأسف!تحقيق!
Abdelrahman Elbaz - It's Not occupation
.It’s my pleasure to contact you to invite you to our booth in Sahara Ex. L66 wish we me Although I agree with you that this two series have different from our customs and sometimes disagree with our religion but I can’t accept that ,this or last 5 centuries was occupation for us.... (Really our mind is like stone )we don’t back to Islamic life or even react with the civilized nations near to us .... just live the worth life in the world I prefer if you write article complain why we don’t learn our people Islam to have the romantic feeling and nice dealing like Mohamed "PBUH" … wish you understand my meaning
akef alzghoul - turkish serial
arab people they just copied every thing they just like any thing who not from the arab world ...girls dreaming about the turkish haha they think that they r romantic people poor girls the tukish in the reall side they behave as
ولكن !مشعل - مقال جميل يا زهرة
ولكن ! الأتراك لم يكونوامحتليين فهم كانوا امتداد للخلافة الأسلامية التي خطط الغرب لهدمها مقال جميل يا زهرة مع ان السلطان وشاركه رموز الخيانةالعربية وهذه لا تحتاج لدليل بعد تسهيل حكام العرب تسليم قلسطين لليهود. وطن قومي لليهود في فلسطين اتفق معك بهمجية وشناعة عبد الحميد "التركي " رفض الوف الملايين لمجرد اقامة هذه القناه . هدفها ليس هذا هدف فهي قادرة على انتاج مسلسل عربي يطرح هذه القضايا . ولكن mbcقناة تستطيع ان تجلب المال بكل هذةالسهولة فلا اخراج ولا الأساسي المال المال المال المال . لماذا تتعب هذة القناةوهي . تحياتي لك بتمجيد ميشيل خليفة وشعب فلسطين . والله من وراء القصدgممثلين ولاعرب ولا قيم




الأتراك الذين خرجوا من بلادنا مهزومين يعودون ابطالا علي الشاشة
زهرة مرعي

11/07/2008
من حكم تركي غاشم أستمر أكثر من 1918بعد أن تحررت بلادنا في العام خمسة قرون، ها هم جيراننا الأتراك يعودون إلي إستعمارنا من جديد عبر الدراما التركية المدبلجة. وإذا كان الإستعمار القديم وجلائه قد يكشف عن مصائب لا تعد ولا تحصي علي صعيدي الحضارة والتنمية. فإن الإستعمار المدبلج" الجديد قد كشف وفي خلال فترة زمنية قصيرة عن إضطراب كبير، لا " بل فظيع، أو ربما خطير في بنية مجتمعاتنا النفسية. تلك المجتمعات التي أصيبت دفعة واحدة بوباء مسلسلي "سنوات الضياع" و"نور" تكاد تحتاج إلي أن تُغلق بالكامل، بحيث يصح حينها أن نطلق عليها تعريف "كرنتينا".
حمي المسلسلين تتفشي في عرض أمة الضاد وطولها، وإنعكاساتها المدمرة علي العائلات لا تعد ولا تحصي. فما معني أن تُطلق زوجة أو تُضرب ضرباً مبرحاً لأنها طلبت من زوجها أن يكون رومانسياً كما "مهند"؟ في علم النفس ربما تكون هناك قراءات وقراءات لأسباب وتداعيات ذلك. إنما في مفهومنا المتواضع فنقول بأن "مهند" صار غريم الملايين من الأزواج العرب. فهو الصورة المثالية للزوج الرقيق والشفاف والرومانسي. وهي بكل تأكيد صورة تفتقدها زوجات وطننا الفسيح لأنهن مقموعات مهملات. وفي جانب آخر، نري من الطبيعي أن تضرب زوجة ضرباً مبرحاً لأنها طالبت زوجها بقبلة تشبه قبلة "مهند" ل"نور". العربي "حمش" بما فيه الكفاية، بحيث يستحيل أن يرضي ب"ثالث" فالزوج من جنس آدم يشاركه زوجته حتي ولو كان ذلك بطريقة التماهي فقط لا غير. والرجال العرب الذين أنزلوا قصاص الضرب المبرح بزوجاتهم، أو قصاص أبغض الحلال وهو الطلاق، يحفظون عن ظهر قلب بيت الشعر الذي يمثلهم خير تمثيل وهو:
لايسلم الشرف الرفيع من الأذي
حتي يراق علي جوانبه الدم
وهؤلاء الأزواج لم يتقبلوا مطالب زوجاتهم بروح رياضية، ليعمدوا بعدها إلي التغير في حياتهم وعلاقاتهم الزوجية. بل هم وجدوا في هذا "الإفتتان" بآداء مهند" العاطفي فعل "خيانة" لا تسامح فيه. ولهذا بتنا نقرأ إزدياد حالات " الطلاق في هذا القطر العربي أو ذاك، من الأقطار المحافظة جداً، والمقموعة جداً.
في كل الأحوال، علينا أن نعود بالذاكرة إلي بدايات البث التلفزيوني الفضائي، وتحديداً حين وصلت شاشتي ال بي سي والمستقبل اللبنانيتين إلي شعوبنا العربية المختلفة جذرياً في علاقاتها الإجتماعية عن تلك السائدة في المجتمع اللبناني. حينها تناقل العديد من وسائل الإعلام المكتوبة ذلك الإفتتان الذكوري" العربي بالنموذج النسائي اللبناني، الذي وصل عبر الشاشات، " وعبر برامج المنوعات، والفيديو كليبس. في ذلك الحين صار الأزواج "يهتون" الزوجات بهذه أو تلك من المذيعات، ويتمنون لو تكون لديهن بعض من رقتهن. وعندما وصلت نانسي عجرم في أول صورها إلي الفضائيات ومن ثم الجمهور عبر فيديو كليب"أخاصمك آه" الذي فتح لها أبواب الشهرة علي مصراعيه، صارت النموذج المطلوب والمرغوب من الأزواج. في حينها لم تقدم الزوجات علي طلب الخلع لأن الأزواج باتوا يتماهون بهذه أو تلك من اللبنانيات. لقد كنّ متسامحات. في حين أن الرجال لم "يهن" عليهم مشاركة ثالث في حياتهم الزوجية.
تحدثنا عن مفاعيل "المدبلج التركي" علي الحياة العائلية، ولسنا معنيين كثيراً بالحديث عن الجانب التجاري المزدهر ذات اليمين وذات اليسار كإنعكاس لمسلسلي "سنوات الضياع" و"نور". أما في الجانب الفني فثمة إصطياد ناجح لهذا النجاح. فقد كان الممثل التركي "كيفانش تاتليتوغ" الذي غزا عقول وعواطف نسائنا بإسم "مهند" ضيفاً علي بيروت عاصمة المقاومة، بدعوة من الفنانة رولا سعد التي صورت معه علي مدي يومين متتاليين فيديو كليب أغنية نويها لو". وفيه تم تجسيد قصة حب مشوقة، علمنا أن رولا خلالها "ذوبت " قلب مهند". فهل عملت رولا من خلال هذا الكليب لإستعادة ماء وجه الأزواج العرب؟ ربما؟ لكن الأهم من كل ذلك أن أخباراً قالت بأن "تاتليتوغ" تقاضي ألف دولار! والأهم الأهم أن كليب رولا عندما 120في هذين اليومين مبلغ سيعرض علي الشاشات سيكون "ضربة معلم" وسيقطف نسبة مشاهدة لم تكن لغيره من الأغنيات المصورة.
ألم يكن من الأجدي أن تنتج بنفسها MBCوفي الجانب الفني نسأل قناة مسلسلاً رومانساً من واقع حياتنا العربية. مسلسل أو مسلسلات مؤثرة في العقول والقلوب، تعمل بالتدريج علي عتق المرأة من قسوة الرجل ـ الزوج. وتعمل بالتدريج علي تشجيع الحياة الرومانسية بين الأزواج؟ هل تعتبر الدراما السورية أو المصرية قاصرة عن مثل تلك الأعمال؟
سبباً في إنتشار وباء الدراما التركية الذي شظي العائلات MBCأما وقد كانت العربية، وكشف بعضاً من عوراتها، فعليها أن تتحمل مفاعيل فعلتها "الشنيعة" تلك.

الموسيقي تطرح عليكم البهجة!

توقفت آلة التحكم عن بعد علي قناة فلسطين المكللة بقبة الصخرة. لوغو يترك في نفسي آثاراً جمة غالباً ما أعجز عن التعبير عنها. بالأمس القريب أتحفتنا تلك القناة بنقل لحفل توزيع جائزة مارسيل خليفة للموسيقي. الحفل الذي تم تنظيمه في قصر الثقافة في رام الله، وقدمه متسابقون درسوا الموسيقي في معهد إدوار سعيد في القدس كان بهيجاً رغم ضعف الإمكانات، وإقتصارها علي الحد الأدني، قياساً بالإمكانات التي "تتحفنا" بها القنوات العربية العائمة علي آبار النفط.
ربما يسألني سائل "بأي معني كان الحفل بهيجاً" وهو الذي ترافق مع الكثير من الأخطاء التقنية؟ والإجابة بنظري بسيطة جداً جداً. فأنا شخصياً أُكبر في عائلة فلسطينية تعيش في القدس، أو في الضفة الغربية أو في غزة، وتعاني الأمرين علي الحواجز الصهيونية، وتبقي علي إصرارها بمتابعة موهبة إبن أو إبنة في تعلم العزف أو حتي في تعلم تقنيات وأصول الغناء الشرقي. في هذا الشريط الذي تابعناه كنا نسأل علي الدوام: كيف لهذا الفلسطيني ذلك الإصرار علي تعلم نوع من أنواع الفنون في ظل حياة عنوانها القمع اليومي والشهادة في كل لحظة؟ والإجابة بنظر الفلسطيني الموجود تحت الإحتلال ربما تكون بسيطة ومعبرة وبكلمات قليلة "إنها إرادة الحياة". وحينما تكون إرادة الحياة كبيرة يعيش الإنسان حالة تحدٍ مع الذات والمحيط. والتحدي يولد المعجزات.
أما ذلك اللقاء عبر "اللينغ" من باريس مع الفنان مارسيل خليفة الذي حملت الجائزة إسمه فكان أكثر من معبر وشفاف. فكلمات مارسيل دائماً تصيب الروح برقتها ومدي مطابقة وصفها للواقع. فهو ليس شفافاً فقط في موسيقاه وإختياراته الشعرية، بل هو كذلك أكثر شفافية في تعبيره الكتابي. ولا نستبعد أن يكون يوماً شاعراً، إنما في مراحل قادمة من عمره الإنساني الذي نتماناه مديداً.
في هذا اللقاء عبر البحار لم يكن مارسيل خليفة بحاجة لأن يقول للجمهور الحاضر في قصر الثقافة في رام الله "أحبكم نعم أحبكم... وهذا حق مشاع ليس لأحد مصادرته". فكل شبر من فلسطين، وكل كبير أو صغير في فلسطين يدرك المساحة التي تحتلها فلسطين في قلب مارسيل. وربما تكون تحتل كل تلك المساحة من قلبه الكبير، أو تكون نقطة الضعف في حياته الإنسانية. يدرك الفلسطيني ذلك منذ شدا بقصيدة "ريتا" و"جواز السفر"و"أحن إلي خبز أمي" وغيرها.
الموسيقي تطرح عليكم البهجة" هكذا قال مارسيل لمحبيه في فلسطين. ونحن " نقول بأن هذا الحفل بكل ما فيه طرح في نفوسنا البهجة أيضاً، والكثير من الأمل. فألف تحية لفلسطين وأهلها.

صحافية من لبنان
links : www.alquds.co.uk