The 41e International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) tackles head-on a crucial issue, the migration of populations harassed by armed conflicts, through two powerful films giving voice to artists torn from their countries of origin, Syria in The Story Won’t Die and Afghanistan in Keeping the Music Alive. The musicians express themselves there on the indestructible bonds which bind them to their country and on the role to be played in the eventual reconstruction of these nations devastated by the war.
FIFA will have the privilege of presenting the world premiere of Keeping the Music Alivedocumentary by journalists and directors Sarah El Younsi, based in France, and Mandakini Gahlot, New Dehli correspondent for the France 24 channel. female, founded in Kabul in 2015 at the Afghan National Institute of Music, a school run by the Australian-Afghan ethnomusicologist Ahmad Naser Sarmast.
The Zohra Orchestra embodied the hope for a more liberal Afghan society, when the prospect of a woman becoming a musician was often misunderstood or banned. Symbol of a better future, the orchestra had even been invited to give a concert during the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2017 and to tour Great Britain in 2019. The lead blanket that covered the country with the return to power of the Taliban during the fall of Kabul in the summer of 2021, chased away the dream in addition to putting an end to the activities of the Institute, whose premises would have been converted into a military barracks — the new occupants of Kabul lit a pyre with musical instruments when they arrived, if it needs to be recalled.
The directors set out to meet musicians, conductors and collaborators of Zohra, scattered on the European continent and in the United States, recounting the efforts of the orchestra to rebuild itself in Portugal, which opened its doors to it. . The director, Ahmad Naser Sarmast, one of the main witnesses in the film, emphasizes the importance of giving female musicians from his country the opportunity to showcase the musical culture and their individual talents. The directors also dwell on the family relationships of the musicians, whose loved ones have remained in Afghanistan.
The artists met in The Story Won’t Die come from wider horizons. Visual artists, musicians, dancers, rappers pass in front of David Henry Gerson’s camera. They are part of that half of the population that fled Bashar al-Assad’s Syria over the past decade. They also cherish their family ties: a Paris-based illustrator who lost his younger brother in the civil war; a young dancer who, from his small apartment in Amsterdam, communicates daily with his mother, in the hope of being able to find her soon in his adopted country. The musicians met in the documentary all ended up in Germany.
Whether Keeping the Music Alive focuses on the story of Zohra and the impact of the return of the Taliban on the survival of Afghan musical culture, Henry Gerson’s film opens up reflection on the larger question of the role of art in the construction of a better world. Each Syrian artist uses their work to express their own experience of war and exile (and, in some cases, the acts of torture they have suffered), but many experience a profound questioning of their approach. The singer-songwriter who goes through a breakdown of inspiration, the rapper giving a concert in Germany who realizes that his words do not have the same reach as if they had been launched in his country. With tact and relevance, the director tackles these questions head-on, while introducing us to creators enlightened on their world and on the one, adopted, that surrounds them.