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• JOCELYNE SAAB: KISS ME NOT ON THE EYES (AND LET ME SHOOT MY MOVIE)

  Friday, Dec 4, 2009 7:22PM / Video / Cinema / Members only
  

  Born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, Jocelyne Saab became a war reporter in 1975, and began directing independent documentaries in the Middle East.
  

  

  After more than 20 films and numerous international awards Saab moved into fiction. In 2005, living between Paris and Cairo, she directed an extremely beautiful and strong movie in Egypt, about female desire called “Dunia دنيا - Kiss me not on the eyes”.

   

  
  
  

  Starring beautiful Egyptian actress Hanan Turk, “Dunia” had A LOT of trouble with the local censorship, before the shooting, during the shooting and after the shooting. The pressure were so intense that even the lead actress is now denying the movie (sad).
  

  
  

  Here is the beginning of the synopsis (from Johanna Hypatia blog – warning: the complete article contains spoilers): “Dunia is a university student taking courses in poetry, and also a promising belly dancer, about to enter a dance competition. Her mother had been a star of belly dance, who was referred to in Arabic respectfully as fannān: an artist. She is studying with the same dance teacher who had taught her mother, and while revering the mother's accomplishments in dance, he urges Dunia to release her potential and stop imitating her mother, to find her own self in the dance...”

  

  The film was nominated at the Sundance International Film Festival, opened at the Singapore International Film Festival in 2006 and was screened at the Vesoul International Asian film festival 2009 during a retropective about Lebanese female directors. The following video is a (less than) 3-minute teaser of the Q&A which followed the screening in Vesoul  The whole Q&A was about 25 minutes.
  

  
  

  
  
  

  I also had a few solo interviews with Jocelyne Saab during the festival. Part of them will included in a documentary that I’m now editing about the 15^th edition of the Vesoul International Asian film festival.
  

  
  

   Jocelyne Saab just finished a new movie,  "What's Going On" starring Raia Haidar,  a project which began in December 2008 was mainly shot in Beirut. 
  

  Frédéric Ambroisine (Dec. 4th, 2009)