Diez años de EFA Abidin Kaid Saleh, un proyecto con mucho futuro

Cuando en 2009 se puso la primera piedra de la que se convertiría en la Escuela de Formación Audiovisual (EFA) Abidin Kaid Saleh, hubo quienes pensaron que aquel proyecto, nacido en el seno de FiSahara, no pasaría de ser un bonito sueño. Sin embargo, un año después se inauguraba y en 2011 comenzaba a echar a andar la primera promoción de cineastas saharauis. Se acaba de cumplir el décimo aniversario y aquel bonito sueño no sólo es ya una realidad, sino que tiene ante sí un futuro prometedor repleto de nuevos proyectos.

En nuestro último viaje a los campamentos de población refugiada saharaui tuvimos oportunidad de conocer a la nueva promoción que ha iniciado su formación audiovisual en la EFA Abidin Kaid Saleh, situada en la wilaya de Bojador. Chicos y chicas saharauis, llegadxs de diferentes campamentos, que aprovechan la residencia con que cuenta el centro y cuyo objetivo es poder dedicarse profesionalmente al mundo audiovisual, ya sea en cine, televisión, radio, fotografía…

Minatu es una de las alumnas más nuevas, apenas lleva dos meses y nos cuenta con una sonrisa en la cara que “estoy aprendiendo muchas cosas; ya sé conectar todos los equipos y he aprendido a proyectar”. Otras, como Jadiyetu, está en su segundo año y ya se encuentra inmersa en las asignaturas de edición de audio y vídeo. Lo mismo sucede con Aza, que nos explica que “estoy aprendiendo muchas cosas de montaje con toda la informática aplicada al cine”.

El responsable de ello es Zanadi, el profesor experto en informática. Durante nuestra reunión, resulta emocionante escucharle referirse al grupo como “una gran familia”… y vaya sí lo es, porque al encuentro no ha faltado nadie, incluyendo a Deiga, la cocinera; Brahim, el vigilante y conserje; Malainin, el conductor; y Daday, el responsable de logística. Zanadi no sería el único que emplea ese concepto, “familia”, para referirse al grupo humano que tenemos ante nosotras, con esos rostros de ilusión y esas ganas de comerse el mundo: lo harían también Malainin, Abdala o Muna, la profesora de Guión amante del teatro.

Hassan es otro de los miembros de la familia, está en su primer curso después de haber estado mucho tiempo intentando conseguir plaza en el centro y se le ilumina la cara al relatar que “estoy descubriendo un mundo nuevo, aprendiendo el sonido en el cine, a mirar las películas de otro modo”. En su punto de mira están realizadores saharauis salidos ya de esta escuela, como Brahim Chagaf, Lafdal Mohamed Salem o Ahmed Mohamed, cuyos cortometrajes recorren festivales por todo el mundo.

La escuela, 100% gestionada por saharauis, cuenta ahora con la dirección de Tiba Chagaf, director nacional de Cine y Teatro en el Ministerio de Cultura de la RASD que, tomando el revelo de la magnífica labor realizada por los equipos anteriores, tiene en cartera un alud de nuevos proyectos alrededor de la EFA Abidin Kaid Saleh. Proyectos que ya iremos publicando y, claro está, entre los que se encuentra nuestro festival de cine FiSahara. Ya lo dice Hamudi, fotoperiodista que ha colaborado en el proyecto de Solar Cinema y que, según advierte, “llevo dos años esperando la celebración de otro gran FiSahara en los campamentos”, que por el impacto de la pandemia de COVID-19 se ha tenido que ir posponiendo… algo a lo que habrá que ir poniendo remedio.

After almost two years of pandemic and a year into the renewal of the decades-old armed conflict in Western Sahara, FiSahara‘s Desert Screen will finally light up November 28th-December 1st with the festival’s 16th Edition. The Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria, home to indigenous people of Western Sahara who fled the Moroccan invasion of their homeland 46 years ago, will host an edition dedicated to #BreakingTheSilence on the forgotten conflict, featuring Sahrawi-made short films, international screenings, roundtables, workshops, concerts and a Sahrawi traditional cultural fair in the Ausserd refugee camp. Originally slated to take place in April of 2020, FiSahara had to be postponed due to Covid-19 shutdowns.

Central to this edition is the Abidin Kaid Saleh Audiovisual School in the camps, born 10 years ago from FiSahara’s film workshops and whose student and staff will organize FiSahara’s screenings and debates. The school, an incubator for refugee-made films that capture and transmit Sahrawi oral narratives between generations and tell stories about the lives of Sahrawi youth, is pioneering Sahrawi cinematography as a new art form, and short films by its former students and other Sahrawi artists will compete in FiSahara’s official section.

They tell powerful stories: a Sahrawi girl’s anguish during the 1975 flight from Morocco’s brutal invasion (Toufa by Brahim Chagaf, named best short international film by the Montes de María Audiovisual Festival in Colombia); the plight of two unemployed youth who gamble their savings to search for buried treasures in the desert (Searching for Tirfas by Lafdal Med Salm Haimuda, winner of the Uruguay Film School audience award); the beauty trap suffered by Sahrawi women (The Price of Beauty by Ahmed Moh Lamin) and the 60 year-old silenced story of French bombings against Sahrawi nomads (The year of balls by artist Mohamed Suleiman).

International screenings include The Idol (Ya Tayr El Tayer) by Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad, Il Muro (The Wall) by Italian filmmakers Fiorella Bendoni and Gilberto Mastromatteo, about the Morocco-built 2700-kilometer separation wall in Western Sahara, site of the current armed conflict between the Polisario Front and the Moroccan military, 143 Sahara Street (143, rue du désert) by Algerian filmmaker Hassen Ferhani, an intimate portrait of an Algerian woman vendor in the heart of the Sahara Desert, Lalgam on the Western Sahara minefields by Spanish filmmakers Clara Calvet and Sebastián Riveaud and News From Laayoune, the story of Sahrawi musicians who flee Morocco-occupied Western Sahara by Croatian Đuro Gavran, which won Special Mention by the Václav Havel jury at One World Human Rights Festival in Prague.

“With this edition of FiSahara we are saying that we exist as a people, that we resist against injustice and that film and culture are our means to call attention to our plight and struggle”, said Tiba Chagaf, Film and Theater Director for the Sahrawi Ministry of Culture, co-director of FiSahara and director of the film school. “While other festivals were able to move online during the pandemic, FiSahara only makes sense when its screens light up before Sahrawi audiences, so we waited until now to hold this edition”.

In the past decade the Sahrawi film school has become a financially sustainable project that is one hundred percent Sahrawi-run — no longer dependent on outside instructors and able to multiply the impact of film in the refugee camps. “Years ago, when FiSahara’s screens went dark, film would disappear from our lives,” remembers Chagaf. “Today, film is present year-round thanks to the film school and to our mobile film project Solar Cinema Western Sahara, which takes workshops, screenings and roundtables to all the camps year-round”.

“This edition truly demonstrates the resilience of the Sahrawi people, who are still standing strong despite the pandemic and the war”, said FiSahara Executive Director María Carrión. “As our theme says this year, FiSahara is breaking the silence. It is condemning the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara and its human rights violations. It is asking for freedom for the people of Western Sahara”.

Mini FiSahara and Much More

For this edition’s Mini FiSahara, the festival has strengthened its collaboration with the Bubisher network of community libraries, which will host children’s screenings in Dajla, Bojador and Smara. Thanks to Miyu Distribución, Sahrawi children will watch 15 short animated films by film schools from France, Denmark, Finland and Czech Republic. Libraries will also screen The Idol and News from Laayoune in all the camps for youth and families.

For four days, the festival will also offer roundtables on the role of film in inter-generational cultural transmission and on the use of film to document human rights violations in occupied Western Sahara, photography workshops and trainings on how to edit video and photos on mobile phones for Sahrawi elders, as well as concerts and a traditional Sahrawi cultural fair known as Le Frig. In its closing ceremony, the festival will give an audience award to the best film, as well as prizes for the best workshop, traditional tent (haima) and cultural performance.

This edition is supported by Bertha Foundation, Movies that Matter, Dimes Foundation and Nomads HRC.

FiSahara’s International Echo in Madrid

Because the pandemic still does not permit international travel to participate in FiSahara’s 16th Edition, the festival will hold the Second Edition of FiSahara Madrid on December 17/18/19 with the aim of raising awareness on the conflict. Located in the heart of Madrid, it will offer screenings and debates centering on the conflict, the plunder and cultural resistance. It will honour Spanish actress Pilar Bardem, mother of actor Javier Bardem, who dedicated much of her life to supporting the Sahrawi struggle and died this past July.

FiSahara (the Western Sahara International Film Festival), a festival that is usually held in the remote Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria whose 2020 edition had to be cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic, will hold a special editionin Madrid from the 17^th to the 19^th of December and will be dedicated to renowned Spanish actress Pilar Bardem. The award-winning actress and activist, who died this past July and whose son is actor-director Javier Bardem, dedicated her life to the Sahrawi cause and was one of FiSahara’s greatest supporters.

The event, with screenings and thematic roundtables, will take place at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, an art hub in central Madrid.

María Carrión, FiSahara’s Executive Director, made the announcement to an international and Sahrawi audience during a special FiSahara event in the Bojador Sahrawi refugee camp this past 15^th October – the first public event that FiSahara has been able to hold since the start of the pandemic.

Carrión said that “Pilar worked tirelessly to denounce the great injustice that the Spanish government and the international community are committing against the Sahrawi population, and in gratitude we will pay tribute to her.” She added that “the pandemic continues to prevent us from holding an international edition in the camps, although we hope we can organise one soon. In the meantime, FiSahara Madrid will act as a loudspeaker to shed light on the devastating situation affecting the Sahrawi people through screenings and debates about the conflict, human rights and Sahrawi culture.”

The one-day FiSahara event in the camps, which included a surprise greeting to the audience by Sahrawi human rights defender Sultana Khaya from her house arrest in the Morocco-occupied Western Sahara, brought together hundreds of Sahrawis with an international audience that traveled from Europe on the first international flight to the camps since the start of the pandemic and the resumption of armed conflict in Western Sahara.

FiSahara also celebrated the 10^th anniversary of the Escuela de Formación Audiovisual (EFA) Abidin Kaid Saleh(Sahrawi Film School), a project founded by FiSahara in 2011. During this past decade, dozens of young people who attended the school have become the first generation of Sahrawi filmmakers, giving birth to a new art, Sahrawi cinematography.

The school is now locally run, and its students produced the FiSahara event led by the school’s new director Tiba Chagaf, who also heads the Departments of Film and Theatre of the Ministry of Culture of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (RASD).

The evening included the screening of three short films made by film school alumni and produced by the school, which is part of the Sahrawi Ministry of Culture, with the support of international organisations like Nomads HRC, Prince Claus Fund, Dimes Foundation and Bertha Foundation:

• Searching For Tirfas, by Lafdal Mohamed Salen, recent winner of the Audience Award in the International Film Schools Festival in Uruguay.
• Toufa, by Brahim Chagaf, who won the While Camel award at FiSahara in 2016 for the film Leyuad: A Journey to the Origin of Verses.
• The Price of Beauty by Ahmed Meh Lamin, which, along with two previous films, will compete in the 10^thEdition of the del Festival Audiovisual de los Montes de María (Colombia).

The screenings concluded with the short documentary film Occupation S.A; a project by the Basque NGO “Mundubatand the Brazilian production company Forward Films that denounces the plunder of natural resources of Western Sahara carried out by a group of Spanish companies.

 Sahrawi Cinema, Celebrated

The evening, which included musical performances and dances by the regional Bojador group, concluded with a roundtable moderated by Carrión. Chagaf highlighted “the role that a brand new tool, cinema, plays for the Sahrawi people, not only in defence of our cause, but also to help preserve our culture.” Aicha Babait, a filmmaker from the Occupied Territories who crossed the Wall of Shame to study film at school and who has made the short films War of Peace and My Society, echoed Chagaf’s sentiments, stating that “we use cinema as a constructive instrument to carry our message of peace around the world ”.

Bachir Dkhili, a member of the Nushatta Foundation that, through cinema and journalism, denounces the Moroccan repression from The Occupied Territories, recounted how his organization “was created in order to fight against the blockade that even prevents travel to The Occupied Territories”. Dkhili’s team is exposed every day to torture, imprisonment and even death at the hands of the Moroccans; Dkhili himself had to flee to camps recently after being persecuted, detained and mistreated by the Moroccan police. “To carry a camera in The Occupied Territories is to risk imprisonment,” he said. Nushatta Foundation actively participated in the filming of Occupation S.A.

Sidahmed Jouly, a camp-based Sahrawi activist who co-founded the campaign “Western Sahara Is Not For Sale” that focuses on reporting and denouncing the plunder of Western Sahara, highlighted the success of these types of initiatives: “Thanks to the solidarity movement, the efforts of the Sahrawi people and the Polisario Front, the number of companies that plunder phosphates from Western Sahara has decreased from 11 in 2017 to only three today – two from New Zealand and one from India”.

Closing the evening, Chagaf assured that “the Film School is open to all young people, and the Ministry of Culture will provide all the necessary resources”. Carrión then added that “now you are going to see Tiba and all the students of the Film School taking the cinema to all the dairas [neighborhoods] and all the wilayas [camps]. See you at the next FiSahara”.