IN A CITY SCARRED BY WAR, LIFE AND LAUGHTER TAKE THE LIMELIGHT
▶ ‘10 Days Before the Wedding’ is a triumph of the Yemeni spirit, reports Ali Mahmood in Aden We wanted to light a candle of happiness for the people in our country who have been living in doom and gloom because of the war SALLY HAMADA ‘Rasha’ in 10 Days
It may seem an unlikely film location. Aden, at war for more than three years, is a city where basic services are hard to come by. Entertainment has taken a back seat to survival.
But for Amr Gamal, the Yemeni director of 10 Days Before the Wedding, the destruction of his city has not stopped him.
The movie is believed to be the first feature filmed, directed, produced and publicly screened since Yemen’s southern secessionists and northern-based government unified in 1990.
It will be shown during Eid Al Adha.
There have been a series of conflicts in the 28 years since unification but nothing has damaged cinema more than the Houthi rebels’ war against the government, a conflict that has raged since 2015. The Houthis destroyed or closed Aden’s cinemas.
Although it is now under the control of the internationally recognised government of President Abdrabu Mansur Hadi, much of Aden lies in ruins.
For Gamal, his film offers a rare opportunity for people to forget the pain and fear of war.
Describing it as social commentary laced with comedy,
10 Days Before the Wedding nevertheless revolves around the war, he told The National.
The overarching message, the filmmaker says, is that “we must resist until the last moment”.
“Films have occasionally been produced in Yemen before but they were only shown on TV channels,” he says.
“The people of Aden have never experienced going to theatres to watch such a movie.”
Needing somewhere to show the film, however, has required ingenuity.
In a nod to the title, wedding halls have proved the solution, Ali bin Ammer, the film’s promoter, told The National.
Filming took place in the streets of Aden’s old districts in an attempt to show aspects of its cosmopolitan history. Aden has long embraced different religions and nationalities.
“We wanted to show the real nice face of Aden, the port city that was a link between the East and the West in the 18th and 19th centuries,” Gamal says.
“We tried to shed light on the daily life of the ordinary people who have been living peacefully in Aden for a long time until the Houthis invaded the city, causing pain and suffering.”
The film was produced on a tight budget but includes Qasim Omar and Hashim Al Sayed, two top cinema figures in Yemen, in addition to 38 other actors and actresses.
“We wanted to light a candle of happiness for the people in our country who have been living in doom and gloom because of the war,” Sally Hamada, the actress in the film’s lead role tells The National.
Portraying Rasha, a young woman from Aden who tries to overcome several dilemmas before her wedding, was an experience tinged with hope and sadness.
“The movie was a great chance for me because it will restore the role of the cinema in Aden, which is coming at a very critical time,” she says. “People are so excited to see the movie because they miss happiness, they miss the smiles that were stolen from their faces because of the war.”
Tickets and venue organisation is under way.
The production is causing a buzz in the city, with the talk in newspapers and on websites a rare distraction from politics, as well as drawing international praise.
Sara Ishaq, a British-Yemeni director and co-founder of Comra Films, who in 2015 devised a two-week documentary training course aimed at aspiring Yemeni filmmakers, tells The National: “In a time like this in Yemen, it is an act of sheer resistance to be able to make films. Yemen had a non-existent film industry before the war began, so to say that the climate for filmmaking is even harder now is an understatement.”
Of Gamal and his colleagues, she says: “You can guarantee that they have only succeeded to bring their projects to light through unwavering commitment, passion and unimaginable struggle.
“We hope to be able to support filmmakers more actively through training programmes, production and marketing in the future, but for the time being, hats off to anyone who walks this path alone.”