China Daily Global Edition (USA)
War takes role in television dramas
DAMASCUS — The sound of the blast in Syria’s capital Damascus brought worried residents running, but rather than carnage they found a crew filming one of the country’s famed television drama series.
Moments before, director Rasha Sharbatgi had been wielding her loudhailer, calling for silence before counting down to the controlled explosion.
Onlookers arriving at the set near Arnus Square in central Damascus found a burning car and people lying on the ground.
One swore in anger when he discovered the blast that had startled him was a scene being shot for Sharbatgi’s latest series Shoq, named for its main character.
She is one of many Syrian artists who have decided to draw inspiration from their country’s bloody six-year conflict.
Her series is among the offerings on television during this year’s fasting season of Ramadan, a peak viewing period for many in the region who settle down to watch after eating their sunset meal.
Syria, along with Egypt, is known as a hub for television and film production in the Middle East, and the country’s war is having a major impact on its output.
“Lately the content of series has varied between love stories, comedy and historical dramas,” Sharbatgi said.
“There has been little in the way of real-life drama because everyone is trying to escape from depicting the current reality and fresh wounds.”
“I personally fled into work on love and relationships over the past three years, but I couldn’t escape all the time,” she added.
“I promised that this year I would do something that focuses on the crisis in a direct manner.”
Shoq focuses on the issue of the kidnapped and missing, a painful and sometimes overlooked part of the Syrian conflict, which has killed more than 320,000 people since it began in March 2011.
It does not shy away from depicting the conflict, featuring scenes of fighting, death and destruction.
“It was very difficult to make,” Sharbatgi said.
“But not more difficult than living the reality.”
Once-popular filming locations are now too dangerous to use, but some directors have opted to incorporate landscapes scarred by war directly into their work, including Ahmed Ibrahim Ahmed, who filmed his latest movie Ma
Ward , or Rosewater, in Daraya. The town was badly damaged over years of conflict before being captured by the army in August 2016, and fighting was ongoing when Ahmed was filming in the summer of 2016.
“International companies spend thousands of dollars to create scenes of destruction or depict a landscape in war, but here we don’t spend anything — our country has become a real-life set,” Ahmed said.