The conflict of dramatic novels in the experiences of cinema and war

The devastated Hajar al-Aswad district of Damascus swarmed with Chinese soldiers and tanks in an unfamiliar scene.

Individuals in traditional Yemeni uniforms began to move among other soldiers in Yemeni military uniforms with Syrian personnel in what appears to be another conflict uncommon in Syria.

The ambiguity of the scene was only blurred by a bright red sign in Arabic reading "The first Chinese movie to start shooting in Syria, good luck", in addition to other phrases in Chinese and English in what seemed to be a message addressed to viewers who speak these three languages.

These were the few leaked scenes from the filming of "Operation Home", produced by the famous Chinese Academy Award-winning actor Jackie Chan, and directed by the young Chinese Sun Yinxi a few months before this year 2022.

The film embodies a true story that takes place in Yemen in 2015, when China managed to evacuate about 600 of its diplomats and nationals from Yemen due to the war, in addition to 200 of different nationalities, within 13 days.

It is a film officially supported by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, and it is one of the few cinematic productions on the current war in Yemen.

It presents the official Chinese view that describes the process as demonstrating that China is "global, humane and responsible as a great power."

The film gives the green light to experiences coming from China or other countries to transform the tragedies of the current Arab wars into cinematic narratives that present themselves on the silver screen.

The relationship between cinema and war is not limited to an attempt to present the political narrative through cinema, whether by countries or individuals, but rather expands to include the height of hope, pain and major fateful transformations, which explodes the flood of feelings among film creators to turn all of this into a visual narrative.

Therefore, it is not surprising that many wars accompanied the rise and emergence of cinematic waves such as the neo-realism movement or Italian neo-realism in cinema that followed the economic crises that swept the societies of Europe in the aftermath of World War II.

The war also affected cinematic criticism and its relationship to television in the Arab world. The October 1973 war accompanied the famous "Cinema and War" program presented by the late broadcaster Ahmed Samir.

He was showing films about wars and represented a kind of cultural mobilization for the conflict with Israel at the time.

After the war ended, the program stopped, but it sparked a continuation of the process of televised criticism of cinema. The Cinema Club program appeared in 1975, which Dr. Doria Sharaf El-Din continued to present for many years, not only as a broadcaster, but as a film critic and professor at the Academy of Arts.

It was prepared by the late film critic Youssef Sharif Rizkallah, a member of the New Cinema group that emerged in the aftermath of the 1967 war.

Rarely do you find cinematic films that talk about the stories of Afghans themselves, although the country is full of many stories and tales and has a history and ethnic diversity, heritage and culture, which is a source of an endless number of exciting stories

Forgotten war stories in cinema

It is not enough for a war to be long or tragic for cinema to tell its story.

How many wars have been forgotten.

How many wars spanned long and bloody decades, and only the story of the invading warrior soldier reached the cinema, not the story of the oppressed landowner.

Among these wars was the Afghanistan War, which extended from 2001 to 2021 in 10 lean years, exhausting the Afghan citizen.

This man whose story got lost between films supporting this war and others condemning it.

There are films that opposed the entry of the United States into a war on Afghanistan, such as the American film "Lions and Lambs" in 2007 directed by Robert Redford, which criticizes American policy.

Or the famous director Michael Moore's movie "Fahrenheit 9/11", which presented a scathing critique of US President George W. Bush and the war on Afghanistan in general, in contrast to other films that review the intelligence capabilities in Afghanistan, such as the movie "Thirty Minutes After Midnight" in 2012 directed by Catherine Bigelow. Which revolves around the method of assassination of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

The common denominator between all these films, regardless of their slant, is their focus on the American soldier and American politics.

Rarely do you find films that tell the stories of Afghans themselves, although the country is full of many stories and tales and has a history and ethnic diversity, heritage and culture, which is the source of an endless number of exciting stories.

The exception that proves the rule here are films like "The Kite Runner" in 2007 directed by Mark Furzer, based on the Afghan-American writer Khaled Hosseini's novel about two Afghan boys.

In contrast to the experience of Afghanistan, the experience of the Lebanese civil war, around which the identity of modern Lebanese cinema revolved, stands out due to the intensity and diversity of cinematic productions, which began before the outbreak of the war, accompanied its bloody chapters, and extended years later.

It is a unique cinematic case in the Arab world and perhaps internationally, described by the writer Muhammad Sweid in his book "Postponed Cinema, the Lebanese Civil War Movies" as the labyrinths of the Lebanese cinema's income in the midst of war.

Suwaid considered that war cinema cannot exist in the shadow of war, but rather it is a long and complex process that needs to see the young generation, which found itself between two options, either to follow the path of a violent war game or to switch to another culture that is opposed to the idea of ​​war in the first place.

The writer took advantage of the fate and identity of Lebanese cinema, always playing the chord of war, to reveal the crisis of identity and the historical narrative in Lebanon, and that Lebanese cinema is nothing but an expression of this crisis.

And that the idea of ​​war in Lebanon is not confined to the conflict of Lebanese identities within the civil war, but rather an expression of a series of wars that passed through Lebanon from the 19th century onwards.