Biography of the director across the cinema and Steven Spielberg's experience

A cinematic projection machine scatters strands of light on the wall of a dark home room, turning the wall into a small screen closer to a mini-cinema, while the American child, Sami Dari, embraces his mother while he watches a home movie with her.

The mother's eyes relate to the scenes of the film at a time when the passion in the eyes of the child appears towards his mother and not to the film.

The child grows up and becomes a teenager, then a young man, and his journey towards the cinema continues in the theaters, accompanied by his mother at times, and accompanied by his father at other times, or in their presence together in the movie “Fablemans” about the cinematic biography of American director Steven Spielberg, which he directed and wrote jointly with Tony Kushner, who started Show it in cinemas and on some digital platforms.

Steven Spielberg says that most of his films are inspired by things he lived through, except for this movie that embodies memory, that is, the story of his life.

Here, Spielberg comes out with enviable courage to present to the audience his biography with the cinema under his personal supervision, to explain the roots of his human relationship since childhood with the silver screen, and to reveal part of his family's stories.

In his autobiographical film, the director must question his personal history and refer his career to a convincing visual narrative for the viewer, an experience that British writer Tom Huddleston describes as requiring a great deal of honesty, audacity, and a sense of self, and this is something few directors possess.

In this film, what is subjective overlaps with what is objective. The director will not be absolutely objective with his life story, but he was able to embody the story of the repeated struggle between artistic passion and the social responsibilities of the individual, in addition to mysteries about the concepts of happiness and talent.

This talent was born from the womb of the dreamy artist mother who encourages her son to art, and the father who works in the field of engineering and who sees cinema as nothing but a hobby and not a professional job.

The story here depicts the traditional conflict in the world between the mind and the heart, or between those who think in a practical way and those who think in a dreamy artistic way, which was reflected in the film in the dialectic of the relationship between the scientist and the artist.

Spielberg used all possible capabilities to make the film match his life story, using his old personal photos as a reference with the help of the interior designer to design a house that looks like his home, and a room that looks like his own room.

In his film, he plays on the chord of personal nostalgia, and incorporates cinema terminology into the vocabulary of the script to exalt the value of metaphor in the film.

As if he entered into a discussion with his father about the importance of light in life and how it changes everything in projecting the use of lighting in cinema.

Spielberg thus joins the list of directors who decided to reveal to the camera the secrets of their private lives and use cinema to write their biographies in a dramatic rather than a documentary format.

And this new movie of his may bring him to the Academy Award next year 2023, which is not a new nomination for his artistic career, but it will bear a special character if he manages to seize the golden statue this time, because it will be the culmination of his cinematic career for a work of art about his life and his passion for the camera.

Biographers

Biographical films differ from those that deal with the life and story of directors.

The first is a common type of film where a person writes and directs a film about another person's life, and it is the most common type of film.

As for the second and less common type, it is for the director to produce a work that deals with his life, especially if it is in a dramatic rather than a documentary format.

The director must then interrogate his personal history and turn his career into a convincing visual narrative for the viewer, an experience that British writer Tom Huddleston describes as requiring a great deal of honesty, audacity and a sense of self, and this is something few directors possess, he said.

He adds that it embodies how cinema is just as a window, it can also become a mirror.

Among the most prominent biographies of directors’ films that dealt with sensitive Arab issues is the movie “Waltz with Bashir” directed by Israeli director Ari Volman in 2008, which tells of his journey as a former Israeli soldier digging into his lost memory with a colleague about the details of the war and blood in Lebanon more than two decades ago. .

The film caused a great deal at the time for several reasons, first because it deals with the issue of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 with Israeli eyes, with all its bloody and references to the Sabra and Shatila massacre, and secondly, it was in the form of a cartoon movie for adults.

As for the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, he presented his autobiography in 1975 in the movie “The Mirror” using sharp visual contrasts in visual paintings that refer to contemporary scenes in color, and others that refer to childhood memories in black and white to the extent that he used newsreel footage in the narration, a biography that included his father, the poet Arseny Tarkovsky And his mother, Maria Vishnyakova, is in a wonderful mixture of the past and the present, the subjective and the general, the world of reality and the world of dreams.

And there are new generations trying to immerse themselves in this unique cinematic experience, including the Italian director of Moroccan origin, Adel Azab, who directed the movie “My Name is Adel” in 2016, which deals with his autobiography, although he is relatively young in age, as he is in his thirties.

What is new about this film is that the director himself acted in it.

This artistic phenomenon is still somewhat weak in the Arab world, because the economic situation of film production is not encouraging to engage in this style, which we can consider experimental, in addition to the fact that cinemas are still confined to the framework of entertainment mainly, unlike other arts that have a more venerable status. Such as poetry and literature, where it is permissible for the poet and the writer to express himself clearly, unlike the director of the cinema.

But the exception bracket here can include films such as the movie "Summer Thefts" in 1988 by the Egyptian director Yousry Nasrallah, in which he tells his biography and the story of the feudal family of the child Yasser, which was negatively affected by the July 1952 revolution due to the decisions to nationalize their property, and he meets his new friend from poor peasants.

The film was screened at the Directors Week at the Cannes International Film Festival.