Of finer mettle

Nader Fergani* finds cause for celebration in Youssri Nasrallah's film Bab Al-Shams

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As they were preparing the second Arab Human Development report the compilers entered into dispute over the term "knowledge". One group felt it should be restricted to the modern empirical natural sciences while the other urged a definition that would include the social and human sciences and the knowledge embodied in literary and artistic creation. Ultimately the drafting team adopted the broader definition, upon which basis they completed and issued their report.

I was one of those who believed that an outstanding artistic work can be a hundred times more valuable than other products of knowledge in its narrowest sense. It was a conviction confirmed after watching Youssri Nasrallah's remarkable Bab Al-Shams.

An outstanding work of art addresses pressing moral and aesthetic values. It does so by temporarily delivering us from the mundane and leading us into an entrancing and mysterious, if sometimes disturbing, world that embodies the artist's perception of complex conceptual and historical problems that are difficult for even the most educated of the public to grasp. The artistic temperament can achieve a clarity of vision that those not endowed with this type of insight will always fail to reach. The splendor of an artistic work resides in its capacity to reach beyond the wretchedness of daily life -- the salient trait of the contemporary Arab era -- and posit solutions that cut through the subject at hand without blaring didacticism. This, in my opinion, is the highest level of commitment to human progress.

The message from the film was: sustain the resistance and undying dedication to the cause. So subtly and powerfully did Nasrallah handle his material that I believe he should not only be ranked among the great Arab film directors but should be granted a place on the map of world cinema. In addition to its conceptual framework the film was impressive on the technical level. The spectator was allowed to feel as if he were Palestinian, delighting in the rites and pleasures of daily life, the fragrances of the earth, the taste of the food and the music of the Palestinian dialect before his land was swept from under his feet by a Zionist earthquake, aided by Arab incompetence and, sometimes, treachery. We mourned the death of the peaceful Palestinian village and the violent expulsion of its inhabitants, and came to appreciate life in the refugee camps in Arab countries where, in spite of the degradation and hardship, the pulse of resistance against the Zionist project remains a source of inspiration to the entire Arab world.

I should also commend here the delicacy with which the director treated Islamic rites and scriptures in his work. But what most moved me in this film -- an epic by all standards -- were the central and diverse roles played by Palestinian women, whom Nasrallah and his team of talented actresses portrayed with consummate skill.

The only factor that detracted from the intellectual and aesthetic pleasure I had in watching Bab Al-Shams was the nearly vacant cinema. Only about 20 others shared in this unique experience in the screening I attended, while outside in the mall where the cinema is located thousands were window- shopping or loafing about. Moreover, while Egyptian television was screening the most inane films possible during the feast days, audiences were lining up to see this film in Europe, where it was received with much acclaim. Such are the depths to which our cultural life has sunk. Little wonder, therefore, that political and economic life is so impoverished.

* The writer is the director of Almishkat Research Centre, and the lead author of the Arab Human Development Report .