Over the coming weeks, I will be writing about some films which I enjoyed at the festival Instants Vidéo in October 2023.
In Between, a haunting 17 minute collaboration between filmmaker Khaled Tanji, poet Khaled Alsaid and musician Apostolos Sideris, opens and closes with a panning shot of a green tree, verdant and majestic. The tree seems to fade in and out of view, in the rhythm of deep breathing which we hear on the soundtrack. As in some of the work of Shirin Neshat, the tree seems an image of nourishment, wholeness and peace, akin to the Tree of Life, a key symbol in many branches of Islam.
Abruptly, we shift to a desolate concrete room, empty, the windows lacking glass. The vibrant green leaves of the tree have been transformed into dry leaves which blow through the room on the wind coming through the glassless window. A solitary woman (Berfu Serçe) moves through the room listlessly, almost as if sleepwalking.
We begin to hear Alsaid’s poem No One Flatters the Neighborhood’s Women, read in the passionate, precise voice of the poet himself. From the English subtitles: “This country does not have a sky. So how can I write a song to the one who does hear my whispering to myself?” Sideris’ plaintive music, for solo bass, completes the atmosphere of desolation and loss which we see in the setting and in the woman’s half-dead expression. The text is Alsaid’s attempt to express the internal affects of the Syrian war from the point of view of women, the result of much research and consultation with women both inside and outside the country.
She drags behind her a bag of body parts, poetically represented by pieces of mannequins. As she wanders through the streets and alleys of a dark, deserted neighborhood, more body parts and mannequins litter the streets. Clothes hang from laundry lines, but otherwise the whole neighborhood seems devoid of life. The woman is clearly haunted by memories of an earlier, vibrant life in this neighborhood, and she wanders through her memories, trying to comprehend the magnitude of her loss. “Pierce your pockets so memory may fall,” says Alsaid, “and keep only the smell.” And she does, closing her eyes and breathing in, in front of the tree which is vaguely seen through a curtain. The breath, which begins the film, is a key Proustian gateway to her memories of the time before the war. The scent restores her somewhat, and she is almost smiling.
The poem describes the women’s grief at lost husbands and lovers, and describes the “ordinary men” who have survived the war, men who “do not know poetry except for the national anthem.” We see one such man, wearing a bleak expression. These men live in a world of practical things, of survival: “They do not forget the shopping list, the lists we write as if they were poems.” The women are resigned to find a way to love these men who lack poetry and romance.
This woman is indeed “in between,” suspended between her memories and the desolation of the present. The present, the war-torn reality she lives in, holds very little hope or nourishment. It is a broken world, haunted by the dead. Her memories are like a slender thread that connects her to the wholeness and beauty of the past, as represented by the verdant tree which reappears at the close of the film. Externally, she herself is like a ghost, barely alive as she drifts through the ruined streets. This slender thread which connects her to the past isn’t much to build a life on but for her, it will have to do. In Between is an example of one of those beautifully balanced collaborations, between Tanji’s poetic imagery and editing, Alsaid’s poetry, and Sideris’ music, in which the elements come together to express a desolation so deep that it can be hard to comprehend. The images, words and music come together to make this story vividly real, in all of its desolate beauty.
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