SCREENING THE SAHARA:

CINEMA AS A VOICE

FOR REFUGEES AT THE

WORLD‟S MOST REMOTE

FILM FESTIVAL

IF A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND

WORDS, CAN A FEW MOVING PICTURES

SPEAK LOUD ENOUGH TO MAKE 200,000 OF

THE SAHARA‟S “FORGOTTEN PEOPLE”

HEARD?

BY MAYA PANKALLA JANUARY 2010

Films are a powerful and evocative tool for

fosteringunderstanding and tolerance in the world.

-Nelson Mandela, Nobel Laureate for Peace

For a small refugee camp in the middle of the

chapped Algerian Sahara, the mud-hut

settlement of Dakhla manages to come

surprisingly alive. Jeeps and Land Rovers create

an impermanent web of tracks, schoolchildren skip

away from their desks to work on special song and

dance routines, and small groups of women

dressed in colourful malfahs—light cotton robes

that cover the hair and body completely—chatter

excitedly on the way to the town centre. On the

dusty outskirts of town, a greeting committee

unloads a half thousand sweaty visitors, mainly

Spaniards, from the derelict school buses that have

jerked them around for the past four hours.

Off in the distance: a handful of palm trees,

a series of make-shift movie screens, and the town

bar (known for its abundance of coca-cola and

strict lack of alcohol.) This is the town centre,

where adolescent Saharawi boys strut their knock-

off designer duds, journalists congregate at the

camp‘s only internet café, and masses of tourists

and Saharawi alike gather, confused, for an

opportunity to volunteer, practice their

intercultural communication skills, or simply get

their hands on the week‘s festival program. As far

as anyone here is concerned, for a week each year,

this is the centre of the world. This is an

international film festival. In a desert. This is the

FISAHARA.

The Saharawi refugee camps, located in an

arid South-western corner of uninhabited Algerian

land, are far from the kind of place where one

might expect to find a star-studded international

gathering, let alone the adequate facilities in which

to house it. In fact, with Dakhla resting two

hundred kilometres from the nearest Algerian

settlement, a military air base at Tindouf, and with

each of those flat kilometres a déjà-vu of the one

before it, the camps are far from anywhere at all.

In the words of Oscar-winning actor Javier

Bardem, who attended the FISAHARA in 2008

along with big-name musician Manu Chao, this

slab of desert is ―the backyard of hell‖ (Culshaw).

Others still, have termed the barren terrain ―the

desert of deserts‖ and even ―the Devil‘s Garden‖

(Simanowitz). Unfortunately, while these words

may ring true with the nearly 200,000 refugees

that live there, for over three decades another term

has also stood, undesirable, at the foreground:

―home.‖

Yet, if the situation of refugees worldwide

is true to the sometime suggested adage, ―you

have two options: die or survive,‖ then in the last

seven years the Saharawi, with the help of the

Sahara International Film Festival (FISAHARA,)

have added a welcome third alternative. After

spending more than thirty years displaced and

ignored in one of the world‘s most hostile desert

regions, refugees from Western Sahara are using

cinema to showcase their dire situation.

Unsatisfied with the abysmal conditions of mere

―survival,‖ Saharawi men, women and children are

welcoming the big screen in the hopes that a little

movie magic will help put them on the world

radar, allowing them to finally ―live‖ and ―exist.‖

Since its inception in 2003, the yearly,

Spanish-run FISAHARA has brought the wonder

of film as well as a growing number of actors,

filmmakers, and cause supporters to four Saharawi

refugee camps, for a week every spring. The 2009

instalment, which ran from 4 May to 10 May,

drew in a record amount of visitors—two planes,

each seating 270 people flew in from Madrid

alone. With the majority of the festival‘s desert-

bound audience never having seen a film in their

lives, the FISAHARA has yet to cultivate the

glamour and sophistication of many of its African

adversaries, let alone that of festival deities such

as Cannes and Sundance. At this desert festival,

canisters of film travel alongside milk crates and

cardboard boxes of medicine in the backs of dusty

Jeeps; here, a red carpet would scarcely be visible

after a few minutes of Western Saharan sandstorm

anyway.

The inaccessibility of the camps and the

cinematic inexperience of the refugees instil the

FISAHARA with a notable innocence: this is not

the kind of festival that dissects the specific

achievements of particular films, but rather one

that celebrates the mere existence of film, and

perhaps more importantly, that of its spectators. It

remains the first and only film festival in the world

to take place in a refugee camp and is

unquestionably the most remote. If ―film festivals

are particularly important to the survival of world

cinema, art cinema, and independent cinema‖ (de

Valck 36), then the FISAHARA is equally vital to

the survival of this marginalized part of the

world—of its art and its independence. This no

less evident than in the festival‘s mandate:

The Sahara International Film Festival

uses film as a way to bring education,

culture and leisure activities to the

Sahrawi people in refugee camps, while

at the same focusing international

attention on the plight of the Sahrawi

refugees. (FiSAHARA)

With a fifth of a million ―forgotten people‖ spread

out over the four refugee camps—Smara, Ayoun,

Ausserd, and Dakhla—the organizers of the

Sahara Film Festival are at no lack for local

audiences, audiences that eagerly take in the

worldly messages of the films and by doing so

hope to send out an urgent message of their own.

Because intellectual, visual and aural

stimulation are needs frequently overlooked in

humanitarian responses—naturally, first priority is

accorded to matters of subsistence, health care,

and physical and legal protection—Saharawi

refugees have largely been deprived of arts,

entertainment, and film and video technologies.

For these desert dwellers, the FISHARA is an

opportunity to travel out into world, via the exotic

images onscreen, and to bring the outside world in

to one of the most desolate places on earth. Once

a year, when old Spanish city-buses cart in

hundreds of camera-laden visitors, the Saharawi

people engage in a week-long session of Show

and Tell. On the list of things to see: the

children‘s and women‘s schools, the hospital, the

orchard, the town centre, the dunes, the clump of

palm trees, the camels, the goats, this haima, that

haima, the gathering sandstorm, the great blue

sky, and anything that might attract attention and

fit adequately into a photograph.

Several mantras surface throughout the

course of the festival week: ―Free Sahara,‖ ―No to

the Wall of Shame‖ and ―Here in the Sahara…,‖

the last of which is followed by one of many

culture specific statements (―…we practice Islam,‖

―…it is very hot,‖ ―…we don‘t drink alcohol,‖

―…we don‘t have money,‖ ―…we don‘t have

jobs.‖) It may not be an easy task to convey a

lifetime in the Sahara to visitors who spend no

more than a week in the camps, yet it is a

necessary one. ―Because [the Saharawi] have kept

to the ceasefire and not gone in for guerrilla

activity or suicide bombing,‖ writes journalist

Peter Culshaw, ―they have been out of the news,

often described as "the forgotten people"

(Culshaw). Thus, while the FISAHARA boasts a

week of enticing entertainment, its political

motivations are hardly kept secret: the poster for

the 2009 festival may feature an audience viewing

a makeshift movie screen attached to the side of a

semi truck, but the first thing to catch the eye is

the bright red graffiti on the side of the truck. The

larger-than-life letters simply read Free Sahara,

―Sahara Libre.‖

FROM COLONIZED TO REFUGEES: IN

THE FACE OF MOROCCAN HUMAN

RIGHTS ABUSES, A GROWING

SAHARAWI NATIONALISM

An indescribable climate of terror reigns. The

abduction and arrest campaigns often occur at home

or in the streets. Searches by the police are

systematic. Everyone is suspect. Even the cowards

are not saved. Since 1975 there have been many

disappearances.

-Aminettou Mint Ali Mohamed, January 1984

In maintaining and asserting this independence, this

group of refugees has pulled itself up from the

tragedies of the exodus from the Western Sahara and

the threatened genocide of 1975-6, to prepare

actively and positively for the return to the Saharawi

Arab Democratic Republic, once the struggle results

in independence.

-Anne Lippert, ―The Saharawi refugee origins and

organization, 1975-85‖

International concern about Western Sahara

emerged in 1964, when the United Nations

General Assembly passed its first resolution

declaring the Western Saharan people‟s right

to self-determination. (The thinly populated

Western Sahara, an arid slab of land about half the

size of Spain, attractive primarily in its rich

phosphate deposits, had been colonized by the

Spanish since the Berlin Conference of 1884.) On

May 12 1975, a United Nations Missions of

Inquiry traveled to Western Sahara and recorded

findings that ―there was an overwhelming

consensus among Saharans within the Territory in

favour of independence and opposing integration

with any neighbouring country‖ (Smith 139).

Yet Spain strayed from the norms of

decolonization and on November 14 1975, by

virtue of the Madrid Accord or Tripartite

Agreement, Spain transferred the territory, what it

called ―the Spanish Sahara,‖ to Morocco and

Mauritania; the former claimed the northern two-

thirds, with the latter held on to the southern third.

On 27 Febraury 1976, the Saharawi Arab

Democratic Republic (SADR) was proclaimed,

with the Polisario Front (Popular Front for the

Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Río de Oro)

serving as its political-military wing.

The Polisario had been fighting a war of

liberation against Spain since 1973, and it now

turned its forces against both Morocco and

Mauritania, causing Mauritania to withdraw from

the Western Saharan territory and to make peace

in 1979. Morocco still occupies roughly two-thirds

of Western Sahara, and has since built a sand and

stone defence wall—known as the berm—that

slices horizontally through Western Sahara and is

equipped with sophisticated radars, surveillance

devices, a power-house of Moroccan troops, and

masses of hidden landmines.

For the Saharawi, ―people of the Sahara,‖

this over 2700 kilometre long barrier is El Muro

de la Verguenza (The Wall of Shame,) which

keeps them from their capital, El-Ayoun, the Bou-

Craa phosphate mines, Dakhla, Smara and a few

smaller towns. Even today, with the refugees a far

distance on the berm‘s dusty, unwanted side, the

barricade is hardly forgotten: international

activists rally at the wall in protest several times a

year, Saharawi musicians sing out their objections

and, in the refugee camps, more than a few

hobbling silhouettes have left a limb behind with

the mines.

The war in Western Sahara saw the

tragic deterioration of human rights, while a

prohibition in free speech prevented almost all

foreign media from entering the occupied territory.

Thousands of individuals and families, potential

threats to the regime, ―disappeared.‖ Many were,

and are still, held by Moroccan forces in army

camps, prisons and secret penal colonies, which

are said to exist in the South of Morocco.

Detainees are not granted the right to lawyer nor

phone call, let alone to a trial.

In 1975 and 1976, an inquiry by Amnesty

International found that ―Testimony from former

disappeared persons, who subsequently escaped or

were released, suggests that the Saharawis

abducted are routinely subjected to imprisonment,

torture and death‖ (Smith 143). Other reports

speak of individuals being thrown from planes and

helicopters, or ―drowned in the Saguia el-Hamra

river and in the sea‖ (Smith 145). Over thirty years

after the initial atrocities, the Saharawi people in

exile are still hearing similar stories. At the 2009

FISAHARA, a middle-aged man named Bah

recounted the tale of a young Saharawi detainee

who was imprisoned in Morocco, tortured, denied

an education, forced into drug addiction, and

released to wander the streets of a foreign city,

narcotized and alone. In December of 2009,

Saharawi activist Aminatou Haidar entered into

her second month of hunger strike in protest of

being denied admittance into her own country—

she still resides in the occupied territory—where

her children and family awaited. She has since

been allowed to return to her Western Saharan

homeland, following pressure on Moroccan

authorities from international public figures and

interventions by the United States and France.

When the Moroccan invasion began, a

large part of the Saharawi population fled to

camps organized by the Polisario, far from the

cities, in an attempt to escape increasing horrors.

In November 1975, and January, February and

April 1976, Moroccan forces raided the make-shift

camps with napalm, phosphorous and cluster

bombs, killing 2,500 refugees and causing the

surviving remainder to seek refuge across the

Algerian border, near the south-west military base

of Tindouf. For over thirty years, Algeria has

played an instrumental role in delivering and

donating food and supplies to the camps; Algeria

provides refugees with special Algerian passports

for travel, as well.

The refugees that left Western Sahara came

from ―a number of tribes, sub-tribes and fractions

of mixed Arab, Berber and black African descent‖

(Lippert 151); many speak both their native

Hassaniya Arabic tongue, as well as the

colonizer‘s Spanish. As part of the SADR‘s

policy—Article Six of their Constitution reads ―all

citizens are equal before the law and have the

same rights and duties‖ (Lippert 151)—the

Saharawis have moved past tribal and family

origins to create a virtually caste-less people

unified in the common struggle for independence.

Making a life in the dusty bowels of the

Sahara, where water and vegetation are scarce,

winds and sands destroy the tents, and

temperatures can climb to 60°C at midday, or drop

below -18°C at night, depending on the season,

has hardly been easy. While some refugees had

nomadic lives prior to the 1975 and 1976 exodus,

many had been permanently settled in Western

Sahara‘s larger cities, and were unaccustomed to

this rough, desolate existence. Some arrived at the

camps by Land Rover, while others marched on

foot from as far as 1,400 kilometres away. Most

lacked water, food, clothing, and shelter, and

many suffered from ―exposure, wounds,

dehydration and shock‖ (Lippert 153), as well as

from post-bombing scars and disfigurations.

One look at the camp of Dakhla today—

with its colourful schoolhouses, for both women

and children, its hospital, overstaffed by Saharawi

medics trained abroad, its network of streets,

markets, colourful homes, and solar panels, its

handful of gift shops and pizza places, and the

ever-present opportunity to drink a lukewarm

bottle of Coca-Cola—makes it difficult to fathom

the town in its skeletal, post-exodus chaos. Yet, in

1975 and 1976, reports of the League of Red Cross

Societies noted the abysmal conditions in the

camps: ―A medical student who has 4,000 people

under his care showed us all his equipment, one

pair of tweezers and a hypodermic syringe‖

(Lippert 153).

Following the escape of 1976, refugees

received on-site assistance from Médecins sans

Frontières as well as a Cuban Medical Team, and

financial relief from organizations such as the

League of Red Cross Societies and the UN High

Commissioner for Refugees. The Polisario Front

readied the refugee population for survival by

dividing its people into twenty-six camps in a 200

km area along the Algerian border (each of these

camps belong to one of six dairas (camp

communities) which in turn belong to one of four

wilayas (provinces).) The Polisario, with the

backing of foreign aid, assured that daily needs

were met: it implemented sanitation rules, helped

construct hospitals, schools, and homes, created

kitchen areas, and crafted cisterns, shallow-wells,

and boreholes (all of which currently have

chlorinated water supplies.) In wetter areas, the

Polisario developed goat herds and farming. Yet

because the dry, rocky land is a stubborn barrier to

agriculture, even today the Saharawi are forced to

rely on water and food sources, mainly grains and

milk, from abroad. In her paper ―The Saharawi

refugees: origins and organization, 1975-85,‖

historian Anne Lippert describes this inevitable

dependency:

―Since the Saharawis cannot yet return to

their own independent nation and since

they do not benefit from the natural

resources of that nation, medical

supplies, vitamin supplements, milk for

children, inoculation materials,

laboratory equipment and advanced

training of health care personnel must all

be supplied by outside humanitarian

groups.‖ (157)

Still, if the Polisario has been unable to provide

the Saharawi with tangible necessities, it has made

every effort to build and ready a new society for

the dreamed return home. In the refugee camps,

education is both mandatory and gender inclusive;

where only five percent of the population was

literate at the time of the post-colonial exodus,

now a

remarkable

ninety-five

percent of men

and women

can read and

write (Thorne).

Unfortunately,

three decades

of Saharawi

resilience,

national pride

and

preparations

for a better

future, have yet

to place the

Saharawi on a

global list of ―refugees to care about‖ or ―conflicts

to solve.‖ Following years of war in the area, a

1991 United Nations ceasefire mandate stated that

a referendum should decide the fate of the country.

Yet because the Saharawi people have ―not gone

in for guerrilla activity or suicide bombing‖

(Culshaw), the situation has hardly garnered

international attention, leaving Western Sahara

under Moroccan rule.

In 1987, Saharawi historian and then

Executive Director of The Western Sahara

Campaign (U.S.A.) for Human Rights &

Humanitarian Relief, Teresa K. Smith called for

international recognition of the grave human rights

abuses in the area. Voicing what many Western

Sahara activists, both Saharawi and non, still feel

today, Smith wrote:

―The phenomenon of disappearances has

touched hundreds of Saharawis. These

missing persons are the victims of a

disregard for law, little short of state

terrorism. […] A great injustice will be

done to the disappeared Saharawis if the

international community does not persist

by asking: ‗Where are they?‘‖ (148)

Today, tens of thousands of Saharawis still live in

the ―occupied territory,‖ while close to 200,000

―forgotten‖ refugees have existed near the

Algerian border for over thirty years. Here, they

subsist on international aid in an inhospitable land

where decaying goat hooves lay strewn across the

sands, a toilet is any chosen place in the distant

horizon, and ―wealth is a dwelling with electric

light-powered by a car battery‖ (Loewenberg in

Newsweek). Here, they wait for freedom, for

reunions with lost people and places, and for the

chance to proudly fill in ―Saharawi‖ under

nationality, without getting instantly detained by

Moroccan authorities.

THE FISAHARA: A TRACE OF

HOLLYWOOD IN THE DESERT OF

DESERTS We don’t want to live here. It is a very inhospitable

place. But the film festival alleviates the boredom

and hardship of being here. It is kind of an escape.

-Zrug Lula, Saharawi refugee

Today we say a free Sahara without walls or mines.

Today the camera is the sign of our identity.

-Khadija Hamdi, Saharawi Minister of Culture

The poster for the 2009 Sahara International

Film Festival shows an audience watching an

outdoor screen attached to the back of a semi

truck. In early May, this very poster—scrawled

with ―Free Sahara‖—hung proudly above a small

stage in the desert, alongside the green, white, and

red flag of the Saharawi Arab Democratic

Republic. Onstage, a middle-aged Saharawi

representative introduced the festival.

―Art is an expression, an expression

through which the artist expresses his support for

the cause!‖ he announced, as a half Spanish, half

Saharawi crowd erupted into cheers. The flash of

cameras moved

from festive to

blinding, while

strong winds

kept

photographers

actively

brushing the

plastic bags

away from

their lenses

(anyone

carrying a

camera in this

dust-blown

desert has

learned to wrap

it tightly in thin

grocery bags.)

―We always have hope,‖ the speaker

continued, ―that the world will open its eyes to the

cause of the Saharawi. We are not Moroccan! We

are Saharawi!‖ From beside the stage, a large

placard of Che Guevara—advertising Steven

Soderbergh‘s two-part film CHE—promised

bloodshed and revolution, onscreen, if nowhere

else. Whether for its cinematic merit, or perhaps

more by virtue of its inspiring and relatable

content, CHE: El Guerrero went on to pick up the

Festival First Place prize—a living white camel—

at the Closing Ceremony a few days later.

The Spanish-run FISAHARA (Festival

Internacional de Cine del Sahara) is amongst the

youngest of over two dozen film festivals that

enchant viewers across the African continent every

year. Since the festival‘s launch in late fall of 2003

in the Dakhla camp, it has returned every year—

typically in March and April, though in 2009 it

was scheduled for May—in one of four Saharawi

camps. In the past two years, the Sahara Festival

has remained stationary in Dakhla, leading the

camp‘s inhabitants to hope that it might stay there

for good.

The first FISAHARA was organized

largely by Peruvian film director Javier

Corcuera—who in the words of critic Paul Laverty

―could persuade the devil himself to examine his

conscience‖ (Laverty)—in ―a bid to draw attention

to the Saharawi's forgotten cause‖ (Loewenberg in

Newsweek). Since then, FISAHARA has

showcased various Spanish-dominated films and

has garnered the attention of numerous celebrities

(not surprisingly, most of which are Spanish.) At

the 2008 festival, musician Manu Chao and actor

Javier Bardem (who earlier that year received the

first Academy Award won by a Spanish male) said

they were attending ―to raise the profile of the

plight of the Saharawi refugees‖ (Culshaw).

Journalist Peter Culshaw, who attended and

covered the festival that same year, witnessed the

need for a collective action between refugees and

celebrities:

When I spoke to several Saharawi

refugees in a camp this month in

Southern Algeria they felt they had two

options. One: violence - freedom

fighting, from their point of view;

terrorism, according to their enemies - or

two: hosting an arts festival and getting

some celebrities along to garner some

media attention. (Culshaw)

Like any other film festival, FISAHARA yearns

for ‗buzz‘ and relies on the attendance of

celebrities to generate it. Though unlike with

many of the more commercial film festivals, the

word of mouth at this desert extravaganza has less

to do with the films and those who made them and

more to do with those who are watching them.

Gathering enough funds to bring big-

screen cinema to ―the backyard of hell‖ has

proved no easy task. Currently, the Sahara

International Film Festival is financed by public

bodies and solidarity associations, such as the

Saharawi-backed Polisario Front. Furthermore,

the festival is sponsored by a number of Spanish

businesses and organizations including the

Spanish International Cooperation Agency for

Development, two Spanish banks (Caja Duero and

Caja Madrid,) the European Citizens Foundation,

and the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture

and Sport. The municipality of San Sebastian also

backs the event, its own San Sebastian

International Film Festival having declared ―its

support for the world‘s first and only film festival

held at a refugee camp, making an important

contribution to the creation of a cultural platform

for the Sahrawi people under difficult conditions‖

(FiSAHARA).

While the FISAHARA has been ―warmly

welcomed by both public and private institutions,

and has received enormous response and support

from professionals of the audio-visual sector‖

(FiSAHARA) in Spain, raising money has not

come without struggles. In the first year of the

festival, founder Corcuera had to ―persuade a

cinema owner to lend him two precious film

projectors as well as invit[e] a rock impresario to

make up the shortfall from funds raised from local

authorities and usual solidarity sources‖ (Laverty).

With its skimpy budget, the Sahara

Festival hardly boasts any luxuries: tourists,

media, and celebrities alike brave the inevitable

delays on Air Algerie, and fly into a military

airport; visitors ride for a bumpy four hours across

stretches of hard sand, rocks and dust in old

Spanish school-buses; everyone sleeps on rugs in

tents or mud huts; all shower by means of ladle

and water-filled bucket. ―It‘s not ideal,‖ says one

Saharawi organizer, "but at least they are

witnesses to the real situation‖ (Lula in Newbery).

Even the FISAHARA official website is not shy

about the festival‘s financial needs, giving cyber

visitors a chance to ―collaborate financially‖ with

the project by depositing funds directly into a

Spanish-based FISAHARA bank account.

Fortunately, what the Sahara Film Festival

lacks in monetary wealth is easily made up for in

the abundance of local audiences and steady

amount of foreign visitors. As an initiative to bring

education and entertainment to the thousands of

stranded Saharawi refugees, the festival‘s target

audience members are precisely those who are

already there—the same people who have been

waiting in the Algerian desert for over thirty years.

Film and festival critic Marijke de Valck explains

why a marginalized audience can readily sell a

film festival‘s image:

The survival of the phenomenon of film

festivals and its development into a

global and widespread festival circuit has

been dependent on the creation of film

festivals as a zone, a liminal state, where

the cinematic products can bask in the

attention they receive for their aesthetic

achievements, cultural specificity, or

social relevance. (de Valck 37)

If a festival can indeed find a niche and

recognition in its ―liminality‖ and social relevance,

then the FISAHARA is set. Not only are the films

as well as the festival itself imbued with social

sensitivity and relevance, but the festival is set in a

remote zone, a ―liminal state‖, a refugee‘s limbo.

If the chosen audience for this festival are the very

people who inhabit this zone, then the second most

important audience is certainly that of actors,

filmmakers and general celebrities—an audience

without which the plight of the Saharawi people

remains silent to rest of the world. Fortunately,

the dire conditions in this windblown desert have

caused the visiting ‗famous folk‘ to take their role

as necessary audience members quite seriously.

Since the first year of the festival, visiting

celebrities have signed renewed manifestos

pledging to share the art of cinema and to support

the cause of the Saharawi. Meanwhile Free Sahara

activists, such as Free Western Sahara Network

president Stefan Simanowitz, who after a trip to

the FISAHARA in 2009 quit his job to take on the

Saharawi struggle full-time, are equally aware of

the power of celebrity in generating media

attention. ―We need first class, not second class or

third class, stars,‖ admits Simanowitz, who is

hoping to free the Sahara in the quickest and

biggest way possible by convincing actors such as

Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem to make the trip

in 2010. (Apparently, Cruz couldn‘t make it in

2009 as she was tied up with a screening at

Cannes.)

On average, FISAHARA draws around

400 foreign visitors every year, though this

number is slowly rising, with the last festival

boasting roughly 600 foreigners. Audiences are by

no means limited to the ―already there‖ (the

Saharawi refugees) and the ―deliberately invited‖

(various current

celebrities), and

tend to include

an assortment

of film buffs,

humanitarian

workers, return

visitors, and

curious

sightseers

interested in the

culture and

conditions of

the camps. The

exotic setting

and

circumstances

of the festival

make for an interesting treatment of audience and

of the notion of ―viewing‖: while fascinated

refugees gaze at their first cinema screens, visitors

seem more transfixed by the films‘ intended

audience than by the actual films. As 2008 festival

attendee and journalist Samuel Loewenberg points

out: ―the film types were predictably thrilled with

their desert adventure and soon went about in

Saharawi chic-brightly coloured scarves and robes

for the women, black turbans for the men‖

(Loewenberg in Newsweek).

Since Western Sahara was a Spanish

colony until the early 1970s, it is unsurprising that

Spaniards—many with a post-colonial feeling of

culpability—are most numerous amongst visiting

celebrities, and that Spanish language films

dominate. In 2003, the first Sahara International

Film Festival showcased twenty-one feature length

films, most of which were from Spain. In 2005,

film selections were still predominantly Spanish

yet included entries from Denmark, India and

Cuba, as well as the Spanish film The Sea Inside

which took home the Oscar for Best Foreign Film

that same year. In 2008, films from Britain,

Mexico and Mongolia appeared alongside the

usual Spanish works to make an official selection

of 29 films.

This past year, the FISAHARA screened

over fifty films, ranging from black and white

silent comedies and children‘s cartoons, to an

international array of the dramatic, the joyous, the

inspirational, and the revolutionary. As well as

enjoying a special selection of Algerian films—

Algeria was this year‘s honoured guest country—

for the first time, audiences were shown short

films, many of which had been directed by

Saharawi refugees themselves. Venues at the

festival have been make-shift since the start: some

of the films are shown in mud-brick warehouses,

some are screened in cleared-out restaurants and

schoolhouses, and others still are projected onto

screens mounted on semi trucks and viewed under

the stars. Since the beginning, Spanish and Arabic

subtitles have accompanied each screening.

Given the unique setup and destitute

location of this festival, a cinema experience in the

Sahara is likely just as fresh to Saharawi first-

timers as it is to film critics and connoisseurs.

Loewenberg remembers the instant appeal of the

2008 festival:

The films were shown on an ad hoc

screen under the Saharan night sky, the

screenings joyously chaotic with children

running around shouting, teenagers and

adults sitting on the desert sand, all

watching scenes from Danish farm life,

the Argentine ghettos, health clinics in

Equatorial Guinea and Indian slums.

(Loewenberg in Times)

On top of these star-lit screenings, for which the

audience consists of both humans and the not

infrequent camels and goats, the five day festival

enjoys roundtables with cinema professionals, and

the chance to unwind at both the concert in the

dunes, and the closing concert. (The 2009 surprise

band, a Spanish politically-inclined reggae group

by the name of Macaco, kept Saharawi men,

women and children, as well as their visitors,

singing and dancing until the wee morning hours.)

Video, film and photography workshops and

debates run alongside parades, exhibitions and

camel races.

Essentially, the FISHARA is only a part

of ―an ambitious project called "Cinema for the

Saharawi people", which expects to be opening

videotheques and audio-visual training workshops

in the camps‖ (Sahara News.) Thus, the festival is

―not all about stars and award-winners‖

(Loewenberg in Times), and professional directors,

cinematographers and professors spend nearly half

the day teaching basic film production,

documentary making and children‘s animation.

True, the film festival can be an important

messenger to the Saharawi—several featured films

―promote health, peace, and human rights, or […]

warn against HIV/AIDS or gender violence‖

(Newbery)—yet FISAHARA‘s main focus is

cultural exchange and exploration.

The old, and perhaps rightfully over-

quoted, proverb—give a man a fish and you feed

him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed

him for a lifetime—comes to mind. A large part of

the FISAHARA‘s goal is to give the Saharawi the

tools to be able to transmit their unique culture,

and plight, as they see it and for themselves. In

celebration of the coming together of an

international community and in appreciation of the

Saharawi culture, artistic events at the festival are

filmed and played back to the audience at the very

end.

With the very cause-oriented

FISAHARA, sponsoring and publicity are

necessary elements in the building of integrity and

status for both the festival and the Saharawi

people. The festival‘s apparent lack a of an award

system beyond the single white camel and its ―no

man‘s land‖ accessibility are far from the

circumstances under which both budding and

commercial filmmakers aim to release their

―masterpieces.‖ The fact that the fifty jury

members are potentially not only first time-

viewers of these films but first time viewers of

film in general, hardly helps the festival‘s

credibility as a serious film festival. Yet that‘s the

point. The Sahara International Film Festival will

never be one of the world‘s premiere film

festivals. But, if all goes well, it may just become

one of the world‘s highly exposed humanitarian

causes, through the medium of film.

FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE

DESERT, A SAHARAWI VOICE:

CINEMA AS A POLITICAL TOOL You don’t have to have everything fine to want to

see movies. You see them because you want to

connect, to communicate from your position on

the other side of the moon, to check whether you

still belong to the same reality as the rest of the

world.

-Haris Pasovic, 1993 Sarajevo

Film Festival Director

Your videos are going to be a personal

communication and obviously, in your case, the

personal is political.

-Isabel Santaolalla, ―Digital Postcards‖ video

workshop leader, FISAHARA 2009

All forms of storytelling are important. If you

don’t have military muscle or political weight,

you have to gain legitimacy and truth to get out.

-Giles Foreman, Caravanserai Productions

For thirty years, the Saharawi have waited

for the kind of global response that will send

them back to their native homeland of

Western Sahara. The initial hurdles of refugee

life have been overcome, soldiers have gone off

to the front, women have raised a new

generation of nationalists in the camps, and the

long wait for freedom has set in. The 1991

United Nations ceasefire mandate put a

tentative end to war activities, yet failed to

bring a promised referendum and potential re-

migration. And so, the ―forgotten people‖ are

dwindling quietly in the desert. Habituation has

made the unbearable bearable.

Enter the Sahara International Film

Festival: the juxtaposition of film festival

glamour with a make-shift town in middle

Sahara is enough to draw a crowd. And draw

crowds it has: since its inception in 2003,

visitors, journalists and stars with million dollar

smiles have made the trip to the camps. At the

2009 festival, a roomful of Spanish, British and

Algerian journalists worked tirelessly to send

festival updates to a variety of international

newspapers, via both personal laptop computers

and those supplied by the camp. Visitors

without media deadlines to meet could also

send off an e-mail from one of a handful of

comparatively ancient and slow-running

computers at the camps sole internet café.

Every year, even the non-writerly types manage

to spread the festival experience and Saharawi

cause through photographs—hardly anyone

comes to the FISAHARA without a camera—

and word of mouth.

If the only way to put the Saharawi

camps and their political agenda on the global

radar is to do so through the spotlight of a

cinema celebration, then Sahara residents and

supporters have few objections. Pro-Saharawi

organizations such as London-based Sandblast,

which works with the refugees to express their

struggles through the arts, bring in workshops

year-round, and continue to draw visitors to the

festival and the political issue. Sandblast knows

firsthand that ―the arts have done more than

simply express, they have been instruments of

resistance and change too, not least in helping

to build the new social and political vision of

the Saharawi state-in-exile, known as the

Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic‖

(Sandblast). Inspired by what he saw at the

2009 FISAHARA and convinced that the issue

might get noticed by the British government

through a series of blogs and articles,

symposiums, and marches on Parliament,

journalist Stefan Simanowitz gave birth to yet

another campaign—The Free Western Sahara

Network—soon after his return from a first-

time trip to the camps.

Like most of her ―forgotten‖ people,

Saharawi Culture Minister Khadija Hamdi sees

the importance of the media coverage that

comes with this anomaly of a film festival; in

the opening page of the 2009 FISAHARA

program, her welcome message affirms that

artistic means are well worth the political, and

human, ends:

[T]his artistic initiative has come to

represent a civilized form of

solidarity, uniting with our legitimate

cause and reaffirming the noble

objective for which we have been

honored with visits by great artists,

such as Javier Bardem, Manu Chao,

and all those who believe in the role

of the seventh art in refining tastes and

enriching human experience.‖

(FiSAHARA09 Program 3)

Fortunately, like many of his colleagues, actor

Javier Bardem is glad to attend despite the

festival‘s clear lack of frills for his own career:

―"If me being here helps in any way, I am glad

to help". A bit different from the Oscars? "That

was for professional recognition – this is

something else"‖ (Bardem in Culshaw).

The FISAHARA has the support of

actors, filmmakers and producers, ranging from

Pedro Almodovar, Eduardo Galeano and Luis

Garcia Berlanga, to Syliva Munt and Pilar

Bardem. Will getting a few celebrities down to

middle-Sahara make any difference? Maybe

not. But, according to journalist Peter Culshaw,

―Bardem and Chao's suggestion that the

Spanish, as the ex-colonial masters of Western

Sahara, were responsible for the situation and

should help sort out the mess, did get

significant coverage in the Spanish media and

has put some pressure on Prime Minister José

Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's government to do

something‖ (Culshaw). If visitors to the Sahara

Film Festival can share the Saharawi plight

with the outside world, then they can help give

these marginalized desert people a voice and

perhaps, if outside governments feel the

pressure, a long awaited freedom.

In this parched, waiting part of the Sahara,

cinema is not only a way to get the peoples‟

story out, but to make sure that that story

does the Saharawi justice. In the past two

decades, over thirty documentary films, ranging

from the short to the feature length, have

emerged about various aspects of Saharawi

politics, hardships, culture, and day-to-day life.

Filmmakers from Spain, England, the United

States, New Zealand, France, Sweden, Norway,

Mexico, and several other countries, have

recorded real-life stories in the area; film titles

range from the more conflict related Blood and

Sand: War in the Sahara and The Berm:

Hidden Dangers to the culture infused Beat of

Distant Hearts: The Art Revolution in Western

Sahara, The Cubarawi Women and Sahara

Marathon.

Because the impact of visual images is

often initially stronger, or at least more

universal, than words, there is little denying

that film can be ―a vehicle for trying to

understand the international political

community‘s most vexing dilemmas‖ (Turan

9). And while films about the Saharawis and

their distress are essential in getting the

Saharawi cause out to the world, films by the

Saharawis guarantee that outgoing reports and

messages are spoken from a Saharawi

perspective, in a true Saharawi voice.

Completed films can offer more than a record

of present and past history—they also yield a

documentation of culture and identity.

Beyond simply carting in Jeep-loads of

films for projection, the FISAHARA offers

weeklong workshops in conjunction with the

festival. At the 2009 event, workshops topics

included Editing, Cinematography, Sound,

Documentary Filmmaking, Photography (―I

Am a Refugee,‖) Digital Postcards, Animation

for Children (―Stories of Sand and Stone,‖)

Documentary Filmmaking for Children (―A

Window Open to Reality,‖) Short Fiction

Filmmaking for Children, Radio, and ―A

Celebration of Motherhood—Mothers‘

Experiences and Stories.‖ Though workshops

have varied slightly over the FISAHARA‘s six

years of operation, adults, teens and children

have been able to learn and even hone basic

filmmaking techniques through a variety of

professional-led sessions.

Journalist Samuel Loewenberg

recalls his workshop experience at the 2004

Sahara Festival:

―The cinematographer Jordi Abusada

was one of the most popular teachers,

with his class for teenagers. He shot

the award-winning film Mondays in

the Sun, starring Javier Bardem. For

six hours a day Abusada demonstrated

the basics of how to use a camera to a

rapt audience. He took the kids out to

practise their newfound talents,

making short documentaries about

their lives.‖ (Loewenberg in Times)

Indeed, the wonder of such workshops is that

they facilitate just the sort of self-expression

and disclosure of a refugee situation that the

Saharawis could use. Instead of settling for

visual documents created by an outsider, with

workshop-taught tools, Saharawi men, women

and children can, and do, create their own

testimonies.

In her ―Digital Postcards‖ workshop,

Isabel Santaolalla met with a dozen young

Saharawi women to help them create one-

minute video messages about their lives. The

finished (extremely short) films were shared not

only by the women with each other, but also

posted online for women around the world to

view and respond to with their own video clips.

According to art therapist Shaun McNiff, ―[t]he

basic emotional response that most of us have

when engaged with videotape is the feeling that

we will be ―seen‖ by others and by ourselves‖

(McNiff 244). It makes perfect sense, then, that

video and film are becoming important forms

of expression in these inhospitable desert

camps.

Whether the goal is to broadcast a

hidden truth to the rest of the world, send a

memo to a nearby camp, or show-off a finished

product to a fellow refugee, the documentary

images of

films made in,

about and by

the Sahara

hold great

value.

Because

visual art—

and in this

case hand-

held camera

art—is ―not a

linear process

and need not

obey the rules

of language,

such as

syntax, grammar, logic, and correct spelling, it

can express many complexities simultaneously‖

(Malchiodi 12). Thus, for budding Saharawi

filmmakers, language barriers can be the last

point of concern, and more important things,

like human rights, visibility and freedom can be

the first.

Beyond articulating the political woes of a

disenfranchised nation, cinema gives a much

needed voice to some of Saharawi society‟s

often muted members—the women. While

Saharawi females are well educated and

encouraged to participate in both the nation‘s

politics and cultural posts—the current

Saharawi Minister of Culture is a woman—

many are still hesitant to express themselves

openly in the presence of men. According to

Western Sahara historian Biancamaria Scarcia

Amoretti, while some literature about the

Saharawi indicates ―the possible existence in

some groups of an ancient matriarchy, or a

freedom of initiative in marriage or divorce‖ a

much more widespread literature presents the

―Saharawi social structure as that of an ordinary

patriarchal and hierarchical society‖ (Amoretti

187).

More than thirty years of waiting, of

which nearly twenty were spent at war, have

entrusted women with extraordinary challenges

and a series of non-traditional responsibilities.

Whereas the Saharawi woman has always run

the home/tent—from erecting and dismantling

as well as furnishing and upkeeping the

structure, to planning how food and resources

should best be put to use—and has long been

―the privileged trustee of a specific cultural

tradition‖ (Amoretti 188), the altered situation

of war and exile ―has pressed women into

taking part in public life‖ (Amoretti 186).

While Saharawi men have been engaged in

wartime activities, many of the women have

single-handedly raised children and efficiently

run civil society by leading women‘s unions

and collectives, worker‘s unions, and students‘

associations, as well as by representing the

Polisario Front at various associations and

women‘s groups (Lippert 162).

Amoretti suggests that any future

reconstruction of a Saharawi nation and country

depends on the Saharawi women:

―In effect then, it is the duty of the

Saharawi women to turn the ‗refugee‘

situation into an experience which will

help pave the way for the introduction

of an efficient, effective and modern

way of life. In the same way, it is the

Saharawi women‘s duty to use the

circumstances created by the war to

build a people, a nation and a state.‖

(Amoretti 190)

Considering that such responsibilities have

fallen into the hands of the female half of

Saharawi society it is startling, and stunting to

that society, that these women do not have a

confident voice.

Through its numerous workshops, many

of which are now women-only, the FISAHARA

enables girls and women to get their messages

out, and to not feel intimidated or embarrassed

in doing so. ―In its simplest sense, art making is

an activity that can generate self-esteem,

encourage risk taking and experimentation,

teach new skills, and enrich one‘s life‖ (14)

affirms art therapist Cathy A. Malchiodi in The

Art Therapy Sourcebook. Indeed, at the 2009 ―I

Am a Refugee‖ Photography Workshop for

children, girls were initially far more timid,

while boys took greater risks with subject

matter, camera angles and the quantity of shots

taken. After a few days of instruction and

encouragement in gender-separate groups, most

girls began to experiment with the visual art

form and to take control of the camera without

their former indications of shyness or restraint.

Similarly, Sandblast founder Danielle

Smith remembers her own keenness to work

with the Saharawi women—who in the eyes of

many, ―run the whole show anyway,‖—after an

initial trip to the camps in 1991. The first

workshop that Smith led in the area included

both male and female participants and the

response was extremely positive. Yet Smith

found that the Saharawi women had a difficult

time expressing themselves, both creatively and

otherwise, in the presence of men. To the

outrage of the males, Smith brought back the

workshop the following year as a women-only

endeavour, a model which has proved ―a huge

success‖ year after year.

In its sixth year, the Sahara Film

Festival brought with it several workshops

restricted to girls and women alone. Isabel

Santaolalla‘s ―Digital Postcards‖ workshop,

now two years in the running, was founded

when Santaolalla realized that ―very few

people—certainly not my students—very few

people knew about the reality of the Saharawi

people.‖

―I wanted my students to hear it from

you,‖ emphasized Santaolalla as she taught her

group of eager female pupils how to record

short messages on a set of FLIP video cameras.

The messages have since been posted on the

Just Messaging/Mensaje Justo website, in an

attempt to ―facilitate the circulation of

messages created in three different locations:

the UK, Spain and Saharawi camps in Western

Algeria‖ (Just Messaging). Chances are, these

women will not stop at Digital Postcards

alone—several left the workshop speaking of

ideas for films that they would like to make in

the future, films about the lives of Saharawi

women. If the lives and voices of such

Saharawi women can reach the outside world,

then perhaps so can the cause of the Western

Saharan nation which they stand behind and

continue to build.

A VIABLE FUTURE FOR THE NEW

GENERATIONS: CINEMA AS AN

EDUCATIONAL TOOL However, six years ago, friends of our community

opened a new window of solidarity, reflected in

the initiative of a film festival held in the Sahrawi

refugee camps […] This idea has represented for

the Sahrawis an extraordinary human experience

[…] This novel event invites all Sahrawi refugees,

whatever their judgement may be, to recognize

the importance of this art and accept one another,

their customs and ways of life.

–Khadija Hamdi, Saharawi Minister of Culture

In a population desperately short of basic skills,

those who have relevant experience are in a key

position to teach others.

–James Firebrace, ―The Saharawi Refugees:

Lessons and Prospects‖

Film is increasingly viewed as a development

tool, not just for Saharawis, but for displaced

people everywhere.

–Beatrice Newbery, Journalist

Educating the viewers may not be at the top

of the Sahara International Film Festival‟s

To-Do list, yet year after year the dusty

desert gathering equips both Saharawi and

visitors with a plethora of vital lessons. With

its films, roundtables and workshops, the

FISAHARA opens a window to the world,

through which those unfamiliar with Saharawi

culture and post-exile resilience can look in,

and those unaware of a diverse water-laden

world beyond the stretch of sands, can look out.

The weeklong festivities provide grounds on

which to ―de-other‖ the ―other‖ and to best

prepare a nation for a double-scenario—either

an extended existence in the Algerian desert, or

the freeing of Western Sahara and a long

awaited independence.

Since the initial Saharawi exodus in

1975, the Polisario Front has championed both

health (preventative medicine and care for the

ill) and education—Article Seven of the

‗fundamental principles‘ section of the SADR

(Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic)

constitution reads, ―Education, health and

social protection are rights guaranteed to all

citizens‖ (Lippert 159).

Under the Polisario‘s guiding hand,

literacy rates have soared from only five

percent during Spanish colonization to over

ninety-five percent for both men and women. In

the camps, the Polisario have opened schools

for children and women—children and women

comprise eighty percent of the current Saharawi

population—and have sent brighter students

abroad, mainly overseas to Cuba, for both basic

schooling and a university education.

(Unfortunately foreign education has not come

without its problems: many Saharawi who

return home feel disconnected from their desert

origins, and find that the refugee camps, whose

few hospitals and institutions are already

overstaffed, have little use for their new

engineering and medicine degrees.)

In an attempt to ready its in-camp

population for eventual independence, the

Polisario has opened vocational schools which

teach future-oriented trades such as mechanics,

plumbers, electricians, masons, secretaries and

administrative assistants, radio and refrigerator

repairmen, designers, printers, and so on

(Lippert 162). Dye shops and sewing

workshops in women‘s schools produce the

colourful malfahs that the Saharawi women

wear, as well as the vibrant clothes to ornate

and patch up the haimas (tents). When

independence comes, the Western Saharans

―plan to be prepared with Saharawis trained to

manage every aspect of their [democratic]

state‖ (Lippert 160).

For the Saharawis, the FISAHARA

means a necessary boost in education and

awareness for those still relatively unfamiliar

with the outside world. Khadija Hamdi,

Saharawi Minister of Culture, addressed this

issue in the 2009 Festival Program welcome:

―The Saharawi refugees have lived for

more than three decades in a desert

environment where they experience

all kinds of suffering and in which

they have raised generations of youth

who‘ve grown up without any kind of

leisure or knowledge of a world

different from the one they inhabit.‖

(FiSAHARA09 Program 3)

Indeed, not only have most of the desert-raised

children never seen a river or an ocean, but

many have trouble conceptualizing a world that

includes countries beyond Western Sahara,

Morocco, Algeria, and Spain. Schoolhouses are

in desperate need of world maps—the only

visible one at this year‘s festival hung in a

dimmed

internet café,

though

rumours spoke

of another

map, hanging

upside-down

across a hole

in some mud-

hut toilet to

stop the

endless

Sirocco

breeze—and

children, at

least those

who have not

studied in Cuba, are prone to assuming that

Canada, England and other European countries,

are simply cities in Spain. If the Saharawi are to

govern their own country, then such a myopic

understanding of the world will prove

extremely detrimental.

Not only do many visitors to the

FISAHARA bring with them textbooks,

teaching supplies and visual aids, all of which

are in short supply, but their language, clothing,

mannerisms, and physical attributes tell of

foreign lands. (At this year‘s Sahara Festival, a

visitor with Asian features caused quite an

excitement with the young Saharawi boys and

girls.) Furthermore, an assortment of

international films conveys a sense of the

different customs and cultures that lie beyond

Saharan lands. ―Some Saharawis have never

seen a film on 35mm,‖ says Sarah Pujalte, the

festival‘s Spanish production coordinator. ―We

want to normalize life here, show them what

they would be doing if they lived in their own

country now. We choose films that will both

provoke debate and educate people who have

never traveled‖ (Pujalte in Newbery).

Because the majority of visitors and

films screened are still from Spain, Saharawi

adults and children get a much welcome

opportunity to practice speaking and reading

Spanish—a second language which is taught in

schools and allows the Saharawi to

communicate with their Spanish ex-colonizer

and with much of the outside world. The

FISAHARA has also helped trigger a variety of

exchange schemes and international programs

that ―are important for children living in such

isolation in order to broaden their

understanding‖ (Firebrace 177). As a result of

the festival, up to three hundred Saharawi youth

are invited to spend their summers in Spain

each year; their welcoming committee includes

non-other than Bardem, accompanied by the

likes of Miguel Ángel Silvestre, Julio Medem,

Lola Herrera and Rosa María Sardá. Sandblast,

the London-based arts organisation, is also

―working to provide longer-term cultural and

artistic opportunities for the Saharawis,

including month-long film and theatre

workshops, and artist exchange visits to

Europe‖ (Newbery).

As well as fostering a more global

outlook, the Sahara International Film Festival

has, in diverse ways, tackled matters of health

and health education. ―In some [refugee]

camps, film is used to put across messages—to

promote health, peace, and human rights, or to

warn against HIV/AIDS or gender violence‖

(Newbery), and while FISAHARA screens a

small number of films that perform such

functions, health in the camps is generally

enhanced by other means. Many of the

festival‘s foreign attendees cart in boxes and

luggage brimming with medical supplies—from

painkillers and antibiotics to disinfectants and

bandages—which are later distributed and

entrusted to town leaders, and those in direct

contact with the hospitals.

At the 2009 event, while others

marvelled at moving pictures under a starry

sky, a Saharawi translator, humanitarian

worker, women‘s cooperative leader and micro-

credit partisan by the name of Fariya, sorted

through boxes of the Western pills and potions

that had been delivered to her haima. A visiting

Spanish doctor explained and labelled the

individual packets, laying them out one by one

on the richly coloured carpet, ensuring that the

Saharawi woman could pass these medicines

and information about their use on to hospitals

and those in

need.

Chances are

that with

the film

festival

drawing in

increased

visitors—

this year, a

record of

nearly six

hundred

foreigners

flew in for

the

festivities—

offerings of

medicine will continue to sustain basic

Saharawi health care.

Even those that do not bring health

supplies can offer their own brand of valuable

lessons and observations. Because the desert

expanse is so vast and sanitation is limited,

many Saharawis fail to dispose of garbage

properly. Young and old casually throw plastic

bottles, broken pens, and ragged shoes into the

sands, assuming that the desert winds will

promptly sweep the scraps away. And though

much of this lingering waste is more unsightly

than harmless, items such as old batteries, when

improperly disposed of, release harmful acids

into the water wells, causing damage to

residents‘ bones and teeth. By packing away

their own garbage as they would in their home

countries, and teaching the Saharawi to do the

same, FISAHARA visitors can help the nation

to preserve its health and build sanitation

habits.

Yet perhaps the most obvious sort of

educating that occurs through the Sahara Film

Festival is the technical and artistic training that

men and women, adults and children, receive at

FISAHARA workshops. From cinema and

photography to jewellery making and music

recording, these educational sessions strengthen

hope for the future: ―[t]he focus on projects for

education and technical training for all

Saharawis, the experience of working together

as equals, the training provided in self-

management and self-expression, are all part of

their nation-building‖ (Lippert 163).

And where art-making has

traditionally been a personal expression rather

than a financial endeavour—many artists and

art therapists agree that ―art is a way of life, not

a way to make a living‖ (Nadeau 62)—training

in cinema and other artistic crafts could bring

monetary gain to this marginalized region of

the Sahara. Not only does festival tourism draw

money into the ―Saharawi economy‖ by

providing drivers, tourist shops, town eateries,

and haimas with a week‘s worth of work and

pay, but the technical skills that the Saharawis

acquire through festival workshops can pay off

financially and politically. Saharawi musical

recordings, visual art and jewellery have been

sold both at home and abroad, and have sent

silenced traces of Saharawi culture out into the

world. As for Saharawi filmmaking—the will

and inspiration are already present. If the

technical skill and equipment can match it, then

Saharawi national cinema too has the potential

to one day turn a profit.

As with the ―Third Cinema‖ and

―Aesthetic of Hunger‖ film movements of the

1960s and 1970s—movements which emerged

―from the Cuban revolution, from Peronism and

Peron‘s ―third way‖ in Argentina, and from

such movements as Cinema Novo in Brazil‖

(Stam 99)—the Saharawis have the opportunity

to use their oppression, desolation, and

minimalist reality as important cinematic tools.

With ―Third Cinema,‖ the idea was ―to turn

strategic weakness—the lack of infrastructure,

funds, equipment—into tactical strength,

turning poverty into a badge of honour […]‖

(Stam 100-101). Whether the Saharawis choose

to zoom-in on their dire situation or to

showcase their unique culture and

determination to survive, the end effect will be

a document, voice and testament to the

existence and tenacity of this forgotten desert

people.

In the ―desert of deserts‖ cinema is

perhaps as much of an educator to short-stay

visitors as it is to the 200,000 permanent

residents. The Sahara International Film

Festival offers foreigners an opportunity to

learn about the marginalized ―other,‖ and to

dispel any notions they may have had about the

Saharawi camps and the people that inhabit

them. Through personal interactions—visitors

connect with their host families at the very

least—and onscreen depictions of the Sahara,

often filmed by emerging Saharawi filmmakers,

guests to the area become temporarily

immersed in refugee life.

What many find in place of presumed

chaos, desperate violence and malnourished,

bloated stomachs, is a society in which literacy,

culture and health-care are championed as the

building blocks of the future Saharawi society.

―We are very well,‖ said translator and

women‘s cooperative leader Fariya, at the 2009

festival. ―Compared with other camps, we are

doing very well.‖ Certainly, a mere week of

FISAHARA-style cultural celebrations,

displays of solidarity, educational workshops,

and cinema for all ages, is enough to suggest

that though material circumstances are

desperate, other, less tangible riches do abound

in this ―backyard of hell.‖

IN WITH THE OLD, IN WITH

THE NEW: CINEMA AS A

CULTURAL TOOL

Our country [Burkina Faso] is modest and

underdeveloped, and people used to say that

priority in development should be for agriculture

and other things. Now we understand that no

people can be developed without their own

culture, that showing our culture is a priority. If

you know yourself in terms of identity, you can

succeed.

–Filippe Sawadogo, Former Secretary General of

FESPACO

The help of international organizations has

always been limited to food, health and, in part,

education, without taking into account projects

and educational programs that would make the

Saharawis able to conserve their culture and to

learn of foreign cultures, by means of libraries

and cultural centers or through art of any kind.

–Khadija Hamdi, Saharawi Minister of Culture

Culture maintains identity and solidarity, which

allows nomadic groups to create and uphold a

particular, distinct identity.

–Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti,

―Women in the Western Sahara‖

An International Film Festival in a forgotten

corner of Algerian desert may be a relatively

new construct, but the burst of colour and

culture that resides therein is not. Since their

exodus from Western Sahara more than thirty

years ago, the Saharawi have been filling their

temporary patch of desert land with the sorts of

cultural displays that were forbidden them

under Moroccan rule. While they wait patiently

for independence, a social affairs committees

maintains the spirit of the refugees and

―provides other activities: music and dance,

both traditional and contemporary, dramatic

performances, story-telling, poetry recitals‖

(Lippert 161). And in the past six years a new

form of art—cinema—has entered the desert

sphere, not to quell the old forms of expression,

but to give them another reason to occur, and a

bigger audience to occur for.

The FISAHARA may be a film festival,

but both locals and visitors know that the film

part of the event is hardly as significant as the

actual festival. In the opinion of journalist

Beatrice Newbery, the FISAHARA‘s primary

focus is cultural exchange and exploration:

―Over the five days, debates and workshops run

in tandem with exhibitions, parades, concerts,

and camel races. All the artistic events are

filmed and played to an audience at the end‖

(Newbery). Since its inception, the Sahara Film

Festival has proved to be an enormous display

of identity and pride, and an opportunity for

everyone, from schoolchildren to Polisario

soldiers, to participate in the building of a

national consciousness.

While FISAHARA festivities aim to

unify the community—a community which has

become increasingly more fragmented as a new

Saharawi generation grows dissatisfied with life

in the desert, and many Cuban-educated youth

find it hard to call themselves Saharawis at

all—the presence of cameras and emphasis on

filmmaking ensures that traditions will be

recorded for both the outside world and future

Saharawi generations. The fact that this display

of ―forbidden Saharawi culture‖ so boldly

occurs in the backyard of the oppressive

Moroccan regime, is a political statement in and

of itself.

The human need for a culture-specific

artistic expression is evident to art therapist

Bernie Warner, who points out that ―the

individual creative output—the individual‘s

right and ability to state ‗I am here‘, ‗I am

unique‘—is a sign of a healthy individual‖

(Warren 3). Similarly, a society free to output

creative manifestations of culture is a thriving,

healthy society. For centuries, the non-literate

Saharawi people have relied on folklore—the

part of culture transmitted by word of mouth or

by custom and practice—to ―relate the history

and wisdom of a society; reinforce custom and

taboo; teach skills by example; explain the

mysteries of the universe and man‘s place

within it; amuse and entertain; offer solutions to

personal and practical problems‖ (Watling 24).

Traditional tales, proverbs, poems, dramas, and

crafts, as well as dances, music and ballads,

have acted as history books, etiquette manuals

and rough ―how-to‖ or ―how-not-to‖ guides to

life.

Yet Sandblast‘s Danielle Smith believes

that these days, ―there are a lot of things that

are undermining the arts and culture‖ in the

Saharawi community. Unfortunately, says

Smith, a lot has changed since she first visited

the camps in the early 1990s. Saharawi

aesthetics, memories and traditions are rapidly

disappearing due to a number of internal and

external factors: foreign influence in the area—

the Spanish and Algerian imprint is now joined

by the allure of the West—and a lack of

traditions being passed down are stunting

Saharawi culture and identity.

While Saharawi husbands fought at the

Moroccan frontlines, their wives struggled to

singlehandedly raise a new generation of

Western Saharans. Without father figures and

male elders to pass down certain teachings and

traditions, many have lost touch with Saharawi

values and have opted for their own version of

Western etiquette: teenaged boys cruise the

dusty camp roads in Land Rovers, sporting

knock-off designer jeans, studded belt-buckles,

skin-tight t-shirts, and hints of cologne and hair

gel; a chance encounter with a foreigner sparks

either an outburst of cat-calls or an attempt to

secure some alcohol, a drink strictly prohibited

in Islam and unavailable in the camps. The

behaviour of women, too, has changed in the

last few decades: many have developed

problems with attitude and respect, showing a

lack of the latter and a more obnoxious,

disobedient brand of the former.

For a smaller portion of the new

generation—the children and youth who leave

the Sahara for a multi-year Cuban education—

the Saharan identity becomes a figment of the

past, and often something more easily left

behind. Instead of gathering oral traditions and

methodologies from Saharawi elders, students

stay in their host countries, sometime

immersing themselves in Spanish or Cuban

cultures for over a decade, only to come back to

the Sahara and, in the words of Danielle Smith,

―feel like strangers within their own blood

family.‖ For those Saharawis who choose to

return home—and rumour has it that some stay

on in their host countries illegally, often

marrying while there—a severe lack of white

collar jobs in the camps, coupled with

memories of a more comfortable life elsewhere,

adds to the impatience and dissatisfaction that

many already feel for the current Saharawi

situation. Because the camps have little use for

the skills of its professionally trained citizens,

returning Saharawis are often idle and

disconnected, while their families feel that they

have lost their children to Cuba, for nothing.

Unfortunately, according to afrol

News/Futuro Sahara (―the only independent

news agency dedicated exclusively to Africa‖)

reporter Salek Saluh, the Saharawi regime ―is

unfit to offer employment to its youth and

really incapable of convincing them to stay

behind its lines - this unfortunately is the most

extended opinion among the majority today‖

(Saluh). In a recent survey conducted by Futuro

Saharaui hundreds of Saharawi refugees

between the ages of seventeen and thirty-five

disclosed their thoughts on foreign visas and

emigration: 470 out of the 540 youth

interviewed, an astounding eighty-seven

percent, said they desired a visa to a foreign

country to be able to emigrate. Many cited

reasons such as ―improved material standards,

access to medical treatment and even

availability of entertainment and plain fun‖

(Saluh). According to Saluh, the current visa

dream may warn of ―a disaster for an unstable

state, governing an estimated 200,000 refugees

in exile‖ (Saluh).

If the FISAHARA can in any way mend

the growing cultural rift, it must do so gently.

In order for film, a new form of visual art to the

Saharawi people, to serve as an expressive tool

rather than a modern obstruction, festival

organizers must keep in mind a sense of

history, of culture and of continuity. In his own

experience, art therapist Rob Watling has found

that ―we must insist that our modern-day

material takes a lesson from its traditional

counterpart […] creative therapy must work as

an expression, not as an imposition […]

folklore, the carrier of wisdom, faith, joy and

learning for thousands of years, has never

successfully been imposed on anyone‖

(Watling 32). Thus, the FISAHARA‘s hands-on

workshops offer men and women, youth and

elders, the opportunity to learn modern skills

that can be coupled with traditional art forms

and cultural customs in a bid to enhance and

preserve the Saharawi identity.

Because the larger part of Saharawi

history has been an illiterate one, artistic

traditions have been passed on orally and most

lack written record. Saharawi women pass on

the folk poetry ―which in Bedouin society

constitutes historical record since it is

composed of comment in the major aspects of

day-to-day life of the group‖ (Amoretti).

According to Amoretti, ―[t]he importance of

[poetry] composition on the political level and

in the process of national identity should not be

underestimated‖ (Amoretti 189). At the

FISAHARA, the mere recording of such poetry

and of other artistic traditions, such as dance

and song, on video ensures that the Saharawi

culture will live on, registered on a (film)

document for future generations. At the

―Digital Postcards‖ workshop, one which

blends the more

traditional

concept of

postcards with

modern video

technology,

Isabel

Santaolalla

insisted that the

women‘s

messages

needn‘t be

verbal at all.

―We want for

you to think:

what do you

want to say?‖ she explained, adding that

Saharawi songs, stories and images of the

family were just as good as the spoken word.

Besides recording cultural performances

on film and video and teaching locals to do the

same, the Sahara International Film Festival

works to bring the clashing older and younger

Saharawi generations together in a massive

display of solidarity and pride. According to

Anne Lippert, in the case of the Saharawi, ―the

focus of much of this creative activity, although

rooted in traditional forms, is the struggle for

independence […] In acting out or celebrating

[historical] events, the refugees come to grips

with their present history and sustain the

courage to continue the struggle‖ (Lippert 161).

At the festival, film is more than a moving

image on an improvised screen; it becomes a

way of participating and of asserting identity,

even of recovering that crucial sense of

purpose, of passion, that can easily get buried in

the old Saharan sands.

Though generations may not see eye-to-

eye on matters of Saharawi politics and culture,

both young and old welcome the FISAHARA

as a celebration with ―something in it for

everyone.‖ For Saharawi youth, the night-time

concert in the dunes as well as the more family-

friendly musical performance near the end of

the festival, are refreshing opportunities to

party, dance and simply have fun. (The often

political messages in the songs revive any

dormant nationalism.) Events like the camel

race, the Saharawi dance performances, the

Awards Ceremony, and the actual film

screenings themselves are widely enjoyed by

locals and visitors of all ages. ―The best thing

about the festival is the coming together of

people‖ a young Saharawi woman declared at

the 2009 event. ―I love the festival very much,

because there are a lot of people, there are

many things to do, there‘s music. Everybody

comes together. It‘s very cool.‖

With director Steven Soderbergh‘s two-

part CHE screening to a mammoth audience at

the 2009 festival, film may well have narrowed

the gap between another two factions within the

Saharawi society: the Saharawis and the

―Cubans.‖ Throughout the film, and well after,

unified cheers for Che Guevara rang through

the camps; eventually the film won the coveted

First Place prize—a living white camel.

Not only do the festival and its many

Spanish visitors serve as a temporary

occupation for the foreign-educated

―Cubans‖—if their professional skills are

unused, their knowledge of the world and

mastery of the Spanish language are much

needed, much appreciated at the FISAHARA—

but the often political messages of the films

work to re-develop a group and nationhood

consciousness. Revolutionary films, such as

CHE, become even more spectacular when

played mid-desert, to a largely disenfranchised

audience, on a giant screen attached to a semi

truck. For several hours, in an explosion of

sound, light and colossal onscreen figures,

Che‘s cause becomes the center of the world,

and those Saharawis that were once skeptical

feel the drive towards freedom once more.

The influx of visitors during the festival

week gives the Saharawi a reason to display

their culture and identity proudly. ―Mira!

Mira!‖ (Look! Look) is commonly heard from

those wanting to urgently show off a part of the

Sahara—whether a lazy camel, a brewing dust-

storm, a malfah, a friend‘s haima, a yellow

schoolhouse, or the burnt remains of a setting

sun. Often, locals are not fully satisfied with

their demonstrations until visitors have snapped

a photo of the ‗Saharan thing‘ in question. If

this sort of pride in all-things-Saharawi can live

on past the festival closing ceremonies—and

not fade into the self-pitying ―refugee role‖ that

many in the camps have only recently begun to

play and to take advantage of—then the

Saharawi nation may stay firm enough to see its

eventual freedom and revival. In the end, the

FISAHARA is all about the gathering: the

Saharawis come together because they have a

show to run, and hopefully, once the festival is

over, they stay together to run something much

bigger—a unique nation in a bid for its

freedom.

FILM FOR THE SAKE OF FILM:

CINEMA AS JUST PLAIN FUN The need to make art is a basic human urge, trait

of our species as natural as language, sex, social

interaction, and aggression.

–Cathy A. Malchiodi,

The Art Therapy Sourcebook

Nation building is not so serious that the

Saharawis can no longer laugh.

– Anne Lippert, ―The Saharawi refugees: origins

and organization, 1975-85‖

Seeing films also helped provide what was most

denied Sarajevo’s citizens, an ordinary feeling

unnoticed during peacetime, the sense of being

simply normal.

–Kenneth Turan, Film Critic

Its functions may range from the cultural to

the political, but during the festival week, the

FISAHARA is all about entertainment. For

the thousands of Saharawis who have lived

more than thirty years as exiles in the Algerian

desert, film is a way to normalize life. Whether

the refugees enjoy the mere sights and sounds

of the big screen, or further engross themselves

in filmmaking and film analysis, cinema

provides an opportunity for the ―forgotten

people‖ to, for a moment, forget the camps,

forget the Algerian desert, forget the fact that

they have been forgotten at all. ―If the Saharawi

seem glad to have finally received global

attention, they are perhaps more pleased about

the diversion of the Festival Week films

themselves,‖ writes journalist Samuel

Loewenberg. ―For many, this is one of less than

a handful of times that they have seen moving

pictures fill a movie screen‖ (Loewenberg).

The FISAHARA gives local desert

dwellers a chance to participate in the events

they choose, because they choose to do so:

children‘s classes are cut short to make room

for song and dance practices, sing-alongs, or

workshops; men ready camels for the

anticipated race through town; women leave

their tents in celebratory black malfahs to join

others in dance rehearsals; and vendors stock

and set up stalls around the open stretch of dust

that serves as the town square. Handicapped

Saharawis, who in the past were sent away

from their families for better care abroad, now

actively participate in the festivities and art-

making. Even visitors to the festival arrive with

groups of friends and an ongoing chatter.

Despite its obvious quirks, many treat the

FISAHARA as they would any other social

event; some film-buffs even claim to have

come purely for the film festival.

For a week every year, Saharawis can

enjoy cinema for the sake of cinema, and with

it, the simple act of coming together. Ask any

Saharawi if they find the FISAHARA‘s brand

of cultural tourism disturbing or in the least bit

irritating, and they give you a puzzled look. So

much is happening, they declare, how could it

bother anyone? While Americans ―create the

world‘s most popular films but look on the

medium as a weekend diversion that can easily

be done without‖ (Turan 104), the Saharawis

are grateful for, and cognisant of, every minute

spent in front of the screen. In her 2009 festival

welcome, Minister of Culture Khadija Hamdi

acknowledges what can only be described as

true movie magic:

This idea has represented for the

Sahrawis an extraordinary human

experience, fruit of the work of

writers, directors, and artists who,

through the large or small screen,

transfer styles and forms of life with

all they can transmit of happiness,

sorrow, hopes, love, and hate.

(FiSAHARA09 program 3)

For a population sealed away in the middle of

the desert, the many different lives and worlds

in these films revive feelings of potential and of

a larger human connection.

For Saharawis like Mohammad—a

young man who, earlier this year, lost a leg to

the heavily mined berm—and for those who

still remember the horrors of exodus, film and

filmmaking may provide much needed healing

after the traumatic events. Art Therapist Cathy

A. Malchodi employs the arts in mental health,

rehabilitation and special educational settings,

with children, adolescents and adults whose

specific needs have identified them as being

outside of normal society. Unquestionably, the

Saharawi are both physically and politically on

the outside. And because ―trauma often

encompasses powerful visual images through

memories, dreams, and flashbacks, art is an

appropriate means of expressing it‖ (Malchiodi

150). The non-verbal language of visual art,

with its colours, lines, and images (in this case,

ones which can even move,) speaks in ways

which words cannot. Thus, the creation of

visual art can promote insight, growth, healing,

and transformation.

Regardless of their situation, many

people find art making—with the FISAHARA

the focus is primarily on film and video—to be

soothing and stress reducing, a way to

transcend troubling circumstances, a means by

which to enhance and enrich daily life

(Malchiodi XIII). The artistic and technical

skills that the Saharawi refugees develop during

festival workshops, as well as their intrinsic

sense of expression and imagination, remain

long after the screens and reels have been

packed away. ―For many people, being able to

contain their ideas, experiences, and emotions

in art can have a positive effect,‖ writes

Malchiodi. ―For others, talking about what they

have portrayed in their images, particularly

traumatic experiences or feelings, is cathartic‖

(Malchiodi 13).

For the majority of the Saharawi

population, who may not be suffering from

trauma, but are still finding their sequestered

life in the ―backyard of hell‖ a bit much handle,

the process of art making and viewing ―can also

alleviate emotional stress and anxiety by

creating a psychological response of relaxation

or by altering mood‖ (Malchiodi 13). It is now

known that creative activity can actually

increase brain levels of serotonin—a chemical

whose depletion is linked to depression. If art

can add cheer and purpose to the daily lives of

the Saharawis who are growing restless in their

all-too permanent desert homes, then perhaps

emigration and adolescent discontent can be

eliminated from a longer list of problems.

Similarly, art can be used as a safe, free and

spontaneous outlet for the thousands of

Polisario soldiers who want nothing more than

to return to war. (Many people in the camps

disclose that a great majority of men would take

up arms against Morocco tomorrow, if the

United Nations would only allow it.)

For those who don‘t actively participate

in the workshops, the FISAHARA still proves a

welcome diversion. The festival‘s influx of

stars, screens, digital cameras, and camcorders,

opens the window to a world beyond that

barren sweep of winds and dusts. Whether the

ultimate payoff is political, educational,

cultural, or simply a matter of personal

enjoyment, the Sahara Film Festival appears to

be a worthwhile investment. In the words of art

therapist Rob Watling, ―even the simple act of

being a member of an audience can be calming

and nearly everyone loves to be told a story‖

(31). For many Saharawis, the biggest reward is

the feeling of normalcy, and a week‘s worth of

just plain fun.

MORE FILM FOR REFUGEES:

FISAHARA‟S COUNTERPARTS

Film brings hope and information

to fill the void.

–Beatrice Newberry, journalist

For those who have suffered human catastrophe

and lost almost everything, the capacity to

imagine a better future is essential for mental

well-being. Movies can provide a way to escape a

narrow, painful daily existence.

–Sarah Sheldon,

Doctors of the World

The Sahara International Film Festival is by

no means the first festival to use cinema as a

diversion and aid for marginalized people. The fact that other such film events and

festivals—what film festival-trotter Kevin

Turan calls ―festivals with geo-political

agendas‖ (Turan)—exist and have even been

known to thrive, suggests that there is demand

for them and that some primary needs are being

filled. According to Creative Arts Therapist

Bernie Warren, the concept of creative therapy

―is based on the timeless and everchanging

relationship between culture, artistic activity

and social development. It is perhaps redundant

to suggest that the arts and society are

inextricably linked and that the health of a

society is reflected in the pool of the artistic

activity the society posses—and vice versa‖

(Warren 3).

While the Saharawi develop their

relatively new festival, in nearby Burkina

Faso—a region called ―desperately, and

famously, poor‖ by one guidebook, ―not near

the top of anyone‘s short list of travel

destinations‖ by another‖ (Turan 66)—the Pan-

African Festival of Film and Television of

Ouagadougou (FESCPACO) has been showing

strictly African films since 1969. Like with the

FISAHARA, this festival has become the

national pride and display of culture of a

striving country. Critics and journalists fly in

from Tokyo, Romania, Brazil, and around the

world to take in films, festivities and even

commemorative FESPACO items such as

clothing and postage stamps.

In Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the

ten day Sarajevo Film Festival of 1993,

screened in the midst of a forty-six month

period of shelling and sniping from around

Serb-controlled hills, turned out to be, like the

FISAHARA, ―a lively and exhilarating event, a

miraculous breath of refreshing air experienced

against over-whelming odds‖ (Turan 91). While

in the far West, Americans looked on films as

an ordinary weekend diversion, Sarajevo

spectators risked their lives simply to make it to

the screenings. Film director Bato Cengic

remembers his own fears during the Bosnian

war:

Hunger is not the worst thing that can

happen to a person. As for death, I

was ignoring it. If grenades went off, I

didn‘t turn around. I was superior

compared to death. But what made me

unhappy and sad was that I didn‘t

have communication with the

civilized world. That was the worst

part. (Cengic in Turan 104)

For those living through the Bosnian War, as

for the Saharawi currently in the midst of their

own struggle, the fear of isolation and of being

forgotten has become a constant anxiety,

though one which can be and has been

alleviated through cinema.

Today, organizations like FilmAid,

whose slogan reads ―projecting hope and

changing lives through the power of film‖

(FilmAid), have also become proponents of

using ―the power of film and video to reach the

world‘s most vulnerable communities with

messages that inspire them, address their

critical shared needs, and effect social change‖

(Filmmaid.) In 1999, the organization ran eight

weeks of screenings in the refugee camps in

Macedonia and in the war-torn communities of

Kosovo; in April of 2006, FilmAid collaborated

with Listen Up! to provide a program for

America‘s Hurricane Katrina evacuees; and in

September 2009 FilmAid completed a three

month pilot project in Thailand, which is host

to approximately 150,000 registered refugees

living along its western border with Burma

(FilmAid).

Currently, FilmAid runs programs in the

Kakuma and Dadaab refugee camps in Western

and Eastern Kenya, respectively. Though these

events are not international film festivals, the

programs there are similar to those at the

FISAHARA, and include film-based

informational workshops, outdoor evening

screenings, and community-based film

production. FilmAid‘s goals are also eerily on

mark with those of the Saharan Festival: to

bring marginalized individuals psychological

relief, knowledge, skills, and a greater sense of

purpose and focus, as well as to ―offer

individuals, communities and refugees a

broader view of the world, an opportunity to

imagine other futures for themselves and a

vision for how they can make a difference in

their communities‖ (FilmAid). It seems that the

feats cinema can accomplish on the screen may

yet be rivalled by the work it can do off-screen.

FROM MIRAGE TO REALITY:

WHAT LIES AHEAD FOR

„AFRICA‟S LAST COLONY‟

At the festivals the issues of nationality or

political relations are negotiated, economic

sustainability or profitability is realized, and new

practices of cinephilia are initiated. […] [Film

festivals] accommodate culture and commerce,

experimentation and entertainment, geopolitical

interests and global funding.

–Marijke de Valck, ―Film festivals: from

European geopolitics to global cinephilia‖

Pure art is important for personal development,

but they say that a document changes the world.

Therefore, we must make documents, and we must

make them well. –Agnieszka Bielecka, VI

FISAHARA volunteer

At a certain point, it has to be that you’re this

country and not a former colony.

–Daniella DeVito,

Crucible Centre, Roehampton University

Only a few decades ago, the vision of

incandescent outdoor screens rising from

that flat Saharan khaki would have been

more of a desert apparition than a yearly

reality. Yet today, for a week every spring,

refugees young and old prepare a colourful

cultural extravaganza and bus-loads of visitors

brave the forty-degree heat, with a couple of

common goals: to provide visibility for one of

the world‘s forgotten human rights issues, and

to sit back and watch some fantastic films. It

may have dusty dunes in place of red carpets,

pull-down screens instead of large venues with

well-lit aisles and popcorn vendors, and a

living, breathing, spitting camel as its version

of a first place trophy, but the FISAHARA is

not entirely unlike any other film festival. Like

elsewhere, Sahara Film Festival audiences still

enjoy the feelings of commotion, of

anticipation, of being at the center of the

universe, and films still earn a burst of applause

at the end.

Without a doubt, the festival is more of

a happening, a reason to gather, than a high-

profile cinematic event. The outdoor screens,

sweating stars and exotic reels, are as much a

serious film gala as they are a pitch to sell

human rights concerns under the guise of

cinema. ―Our army is prepared for war,‖

explained a middle aged Saharawi man at the

2009 festival, ―but before this happens, we are

petitioning the whole world.‖ Surely, the most

effective way to get the plight of the Saharawi

refugees acknowledged is to generate the

quantity and quality of ‗buzz‘ that can break

through desert boundaries, into the outside

world. Though as of yet the festival and its

effects are relatively small-scale, justice may

soon find a forgotten nation if this local festival

can push itself onto the global radar.

Fortunately, together with the

FISAHARA, several non-governmental

organizations, support networks and influential

figures have made the ignored Saharawi nation

a priority. Since 2005, Sandblast, the arts and

human rights charity founded by Danielle

Smith, has been organizing creative workshops

in the camps in order to ―facilitate

cultural/artistic expression and development,

and help develop collaborations between

Saharawis and artists worldwide‖ (Sandblast).

Projects in the camps in 2009 included an

introductory acting and film class, a master

workshop with semi-professional musicians and

a three-week workshop in jewellery design

from plastic bottles. In 2010, Sandblast hopes

to set up of a professional mobile (nomadic)

recording studio in the camps and to train

Saharawis to run it, an endeavour for which the

organization is looking to raise £50,000.

Sandblast‘s Saharawi Artist Fund

(SAF,) established to help finance the creative

workshops, has been collecting money in its

own imaginative ways: besides simply asking

for donations, this past Christmas Sandblast had

a variety of gift suggestions—―Let your friends

and family know about your dedication for the

Western Sahara cause and give Saharawi

jewellery, poetry, and artwork for Christmas‖

(Sandblast). The annual Running the

Sahara/Saharamarathon, comprised of 5km,

10km, half, and full marathon races, gives

participants the opportunity to travel to Algeria,

live with a Saharawi family and raise money for

the SAF. Last year—its ninth annual—the

Saharamarathon hosted 350 runners from

Europe, the United States and Algeria; the

twenty-two racers from Britain contributed

£10,000.

The Free Western Sahara Network

(FWSN)—a brain-child of Stefan Simanowitz,

set up after his virgin trip to the FISAHARA in

2009—is Sandblast‘s more political

counterpart. The online network aims to link

Western Sahara campaigners around the world

and regularly holds campaign meetings, sends

delegations to Downing Street (the United

Kingdom‘s Prime Minister‘s Office) and makes

the latest Sahara related articles readily

accessible on its website. The FWSN‘s intents

are similar to those of the FISAHARA—―We

need to move the story out of the film/culture

sections of a few newspapers and onto the

international pages of them all‖ (Free

Sahara)—yet unlike the FISAHARA, the

Network is adamant in mounting pressure on

decision-makers worldwide, and not only those

in Spain.

The FWSN is hardly shy in asking for

help, if that‘s what it takes to free the Sahara:

actors (A-C listers only) are urged to lend their

celebrity, ―philanthropic millionaires‖ their

funds, journalists their words, and the rest of us

our potential skills, our word of mouth and

social networks, and even our presence at the

upcoming FISAHARA (Free Sahara). In

partnership with the charity Caravanserai, the

FWSN has even organized a direct flight from

London to the desert, to fly non-Spanish

visitors to the Sahara Film Festival in 2010.

The goal is to make the isolated festival an

increasingly more international event.

Unfortunately, when it comes to hosting

cinema festivals and up-keeping their after-

effects in a scarcely reachable slab of desert,

skills and good-intent must be matched by

funds and technology. Organizations such as

FilmAid, which runs cinema screenings and

workshops for displaced peoples around the

world, know that money, used film equipment

and film stock are key in bringing film to the

forgotten. In order to raise the funds and

supplies needed for refugees to marvel at

screens or to work behind the camera, FilmAid

hosts galas, benefits and a World Refugee Day

event, and screens informative commercials at

bigger festivals such as Tribeca and Cannes.

If the Saharawi are to maintain the skills

taught them both at the FISAHARA and in

their own cooperatives and collectives, they

will need to draw in generous donations of

technology and equipment. Currently, while the

camps benefit from shipments of refurbished

computers and machinery from Spain, many of

the prehistoric models arrive in pieces due to

both their age and the bumpy desert roads they

must travel to get there. The availability of

cinematic and technical equipment in the area

will be crucial in developing a Saharawi

national voice and self-reliance; it will be no

less than a necessity if the Saharawi ever wish

to run the FISAHARA for themselves, rather

than having their ex-colonisers to manage it for

them.

These days, a variety of international

organizations are helping to meet the needs of

‗Africa‘s last colony.‘ Countries from around

the world, including Canada, the United States,

nations from the European Union, and even

Japan are helping to alleviate nutritional voids

by donating through the World Food

Programme. Algeria has, since the conflict

beginnings, been instrumental in the provision

of foods, supplies, transport, and even passports

to the Saharawi that dwell silently in its western

corner. Around the world, Refugee Studies

programs, degrees and centres are becoming

more visible—Roehampton University, in

London, has the first program of its kind, and

offers mandatory courses such as ―Questioning

Citizenship.‖ Art initiatives, such as Sandblast,

are joined by other groups and individuals that

host workshops in the desert and invite

Saharawi artists back to their own countries.

Yet more can always be done. Both

Saharawi artists and their sorely unexposed

nation could profit from tutorials,

collaborations and exchanges with filmmakers,

photographers, musicians, painters, dance

groups, and artisans from abroad. Food stuffs,

medical supplies and educational materials

must be brought into the camps; a

documentation of cultural richness and material

poverty must be carried out.

For the past six years, the Sahara

International Film Festival has been paving the

way to a long awaited Saharawi exposure. The

FISAHARA may be growing, but it still relies

largely on volunteers to conduct its week of

desert celebrations: artists are urged to host

workshops, journalists invited to send out

forgotten truths, international stars asked to

lend their faces and fame, and culture-trackers

and cinephiles welcome to rid themselves of

any pre-conceived notions they may have about

refugee life in the ―backyard of hell.‖

This coming year, the seventh annual

Sahara International Film Festival will take

place from 26 April to 1 May, with chartered

flights leaving both Madrid and London to the

Tindouf military airport in Algeria. For those

looking to partake in the film extravaganza that

is rumoured to be ―more of a happening than a

festival‖ (Newbery), the trip—from Madrid

through a cinematic experience in the bowels of

the desert and back—is priced at 650 Euro per

person. The experience is as far removed from

Cannes as they get; and for that very reason, it

may well be worth the visit. While other film

festivals display a variety of red carpet rituals

and symbolic acts ―that contribute to the

cultural positioning of films and filmmakers in

the film world‖ (de Valck 37), the FISAHARA

strives to contribute to the cultural positioning

of the forgotten Saharawi people in the real

world.

Not surprisingly, many FISAHARA

visitors find themselves retuning to the festival

over and over again. Once you‘ve been there,

it‘s not easy to forget the middle of the desert of

deserts. It‘s harder still to overlook the

burgeoning oral stories, group dances, national

songs, and the colourful haimas (tents) and

malfas (robes) that break the surface of that

chapped Saharan beige. Once a year, the

FISAHARA brings in international films, stars,

visitors and highly welcome media attention to

this waiting, forgotten people. Ultimately

though, it‘s not about what plays on the screen

or sits on a memory card in your digital camera,

waiting to be developed. It‘s about coming

together to celebrate a nation and to speak for

its cause. It‘s about putting a group of dusty

refugee camps on the world stage so that

people, like Ibrahim—a middle aged Saharawi

father—can finally get their points across:

―We are not stupid; we are smart

people, sharp people. Us, we are not Algeria,

we are not Mauritania, we are not Morocco. We

are Saharawi, we are different.‖

Works Cited and Consulted

Amoretti, Biancamaria Scarcia. ―Women in the

Western Sahara.‖ War and Refugees: The

Western Sahara Conflict. Richard

Lawless and Laila Monahan, eds.

London: Pinter Publishers, 1987. 187-

193.

―Closure of the 2nd International Festival of the

Cinema in Aousserd.‖ Sahara Presse

Service 6 March 2005. < http://www.

spsrasd.info/sps-e060305.html>

Culshaw, Peter. ―Sahara Film Festival: desert

blues.‖ Telegraph 30 May 2008.

< http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture

/film/starsandstories/3673756/Sahara-

Film-Festival-desert-blues.html>

De Valck, Marijke. Film Festivals: From

European Geopolitics to Global

Cinephilia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam

University Press, 2007.

FilmAid International. Official Website. 14 Dec

2009 < http://filmaid.org/>

Firebrace, James. ―The Saharawi refugees:

Lessons and prospects.‖ War and

Refugees: The Western Sahara Conflict.

Richard Lawless and Laila Monahan, eds.

London: Pinter Publishers, 1987. 167-

185.

FiSAHARA: Festival Internacional de Cine del

Sahara. Official website. 18 December

2009. http://www.festivalsahara.com/

FiSAHARA09 Program. VI Sahara International

Film Festival, May 4 2009. 3.

Free Western Sahara Network: A campaign to

support the Saharawi people. 2010.

Official Website. Jan 1 2010.

<http://freesahara.ning.com/>

Just Messaging / Mensaje Justo: Three-Way

Audiovisual Messaging. Apr 23 2009.

Official Website. Dec 14 2009.

<www.justmessaging.com>

Laverty, Paul. ―First International Sahara Film

Festival.‖ Review of African Political

Economy 31.99 (March 2004): 175-180.

Lippert, Anne. ―The Saharawi refugees: origins

and organization, 1975-85.‖ War and

Refugees: The Western Sahara Conflict.

Richard Lawless and Laila Monahan, eds.

London: Pinter Publishers, 1987. 150-

166.

Loewenberg, Samuel. ―And the winner of the

camel is…‖ The (United Kingdom) Times

3 May 2005: Features 19. < http://entert

ainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_

entertainment/film/article423059.ece>

Loewenberg, Samuel. ―Boogie Desert Nights.‖

Newsweek International 4 April 2005.

<http://www.samloewenberg.com/articles

/newsweek_sahara.html>

Malchiodi, Cathy A. The Art Therapy

Sourcebook. Los Angeles: Lowell House,

1998.

McNiff, Shaun. Art Heals: How Creativity Cures

the Soul. Boston: Shambhala, 2004

Nadeau, Roberta. ―Using the Visual Arts to

Expand Personal Creativity.‖ Using the

Creative Arts in Therapy. Ed. Bernie

Warren. London: Croom Helm, 1984. 61-

86.

Newbery, Beatrice. ―Lights, Camera,

Sandstorms.‖ Utne Reader November-

December 2008. < http://www.utne.com/

2008-11-01/Arts/Lights-Camera-

Sandstorms.aspx>

Saluh, Salek. ―87% of young Saharawis want to

emigrate.‖ afrol News/ Futuro Saharaui

Oct 4 2009. <http://www.afrol.com/

articles/21719>

Sandblast. 2008. Official Website. Dec 30 2009.

<http://www.sandblast-arts.org/>

Simanowitz, Stefan. ―Screening in the Devil‘s

Garden: The Sahara Film Festival.‖ New

Internationalist May 20 2009. <http://

www.newint.org/features/special/2009/05

/20/the-devils-garden/>

Smith, Teresa K. ―Al-Mukhtufin (the

disappeared): a report on disappearances

in Western Sahara.‖ War and Refugees:

The Western Sahara Conflict. Richard

Lawless and Laila Monahan, eds.

London: Pinter Publishers, 1987. 139-

149.

Stam, Robert. Film Theory: An Introduction.

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Thorne, John. ―Saharawi refugees form a

progressive society: Literacy and

democracy are thriving in an unlikely

place.‖ The Christian Science Monitor.

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com/2004/0326/p04s01-wome.html>

Turan, Kenneth. Sundance to Sarajevo: Film

Festivals and the World They Made. Los

Angeles: University of California Press,

2002.

Warren, Bernie. ―Introduction.‖ Using the

Creative Arts in Therapy. Ed. Bernie

Warren. London: Croom Helm, 1984. 3-8.

Watling, Rob. ―Folklore/Ritual as a Basis for

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34.

Western Sahara News November-December

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4849.htm>