The alterity of the image: the distant spectator and films about the syrian revolution and war

ABSTRACT

Images of the Syrian crisis, circulating on the international film festival circuit as well as in mainstream and social media, help to construct narratives about those events, people and places. This article explores how three Syrian documentaries – Silvered Water: Syria Self-Portrait, The War Show and Little Gandhi – appeal to their distant spectators and how the international film festival circuit shapes their aesthetic form. While the use of citizen videos in news reporting has generated a sense of familiarity with the audio-visual style and iconography of Syrian conflict imagery, these films invite us to look at their footage in a different way, foregrounding an experience of cultural distance through an emphasis on the formal qualities of the image. By focusing on the aesthetic rather than merely evidentiary qualities of these documentaries, I draw out a particular kind of transnational cinematic encounter in which, to borrow John Berger’s words, ‘meaning is a response not only to the known, but to the unknown’. Drawing upon the work of Berger and Laura Marks, the article offers a new conceptualization of distant spectatorship in terms of the alterity of the image.

KEYWORDS:

• Distant spectator
• Syrian uprising
• Syrian documentary
• Silvered Water: Syria Self-Portrait
• The War Show
• Little Gandhi

Notes

1. For further discussion of the hoaxes, see Della Ratta 2017.

2. DOX BOX began as an international documentary film festival that took place in Syria in 2008–2011 and has, since the uprising, become a transnational organization based in Berlin; it aims to assist and enhance documentary in the Arab world through activities such as online education, film archiving, research, policy-making and film production. Since 2013, the Lebanon-based company Bidayyat has been supporting Syrian filmmakers; it produces documentaries, along with short and experimental films, and provides funding and training for documentary makers.

3. I am indebted to Zaheer Omareen for the idea of Silvered Water as an ‘interactive’ film (see Chaudhuri 2016).

4. A number of Syrian documentaries, like The War Show, have become mired in controversies around ownership. These bitter fights bear out its stance on the reduction of the image to a commodified performance, produced and circulated in exchange for money and weapons as well for consumption by international audiences.