We have just learned that Tunnel Trade, the film I co-directed with my friend and colleague Saeed Farouky of Tourist with a Typewriter Ltd, in 2007, has won a Noor Award for Outstanding Short Documentary at the Arab Film Festival in San Francisco.
Michel Shehadeh, executive director of of the AFF, says of the Festival: “Each year [it] offers inspiring stories and images through films that illuminate Arab lives and present authentic narratives as well as provide insights into the beauty, talent and diversity of Arab culture. The Noor Awards shine a special light on filmmakers from the Arab world and from the Arab diaspora who break new artistic and cultural grounds. This award recognizes their artistic excellence and their work at building cultural, artistic and human bridges. These are filmmakers who receive little visibility in the United States.”
We finished shooting the film in early June, amidst heavy Palestinian infighting that paralyzed Gaza City for days at a time, only a few short days before the Hamas-Fateh riff came to its ugly conclusion; as Saeed and I like to point out, we filmed the tunnels at a time when filming tunnels was “real”-when even talking about the tunnels was still a very dangerous business. In fact, we had our tapes and gear confiscated on two separate occasions, and Saeed got a gun to his head once (had it not been for the quick thinking, adept skills of our driver & occasional security adviser Maher, and our dear Friend and consultant on the film Fida, one of us surely would have been at least injured, and the film non-existent) all while I was pregnant with Noor (I guess that makes the award all the more appropriate!). People trusted no one in tunnel territory-not their neighbors, not the tunnel diggers, not the Israelis, not the Palestinian security, and certainly not two random Palestinian filmmakers from abroad.
Nowadays, filming tunnels (or facilitating the filming of tunnels) is as profitable a business as digging them; hand any Ahmed a few greenbacks and your good to go (of course the higher up the ranks in the system, the more they ask especially if you are CNN or BBC, as we kept getting asked). The tunnels themselves have since also become a necessary trade route what with the ongoing siege, transporting everything from sheep to deconstructed cars and even plastic chairs (before, the two most profitable and transported items were cigarettes and spark plugs, with processed cheeses a distant third).
Other winners included:
Eye of the Sun (full length fiction, Egypt 2008) by Ibrahim El Batout was selected as the Noor Award winner for outstanding fiction feature.
CasaNegra (Morocco, 2008) by Nour-Eddine Lakhmari received an honorable mention for fiction feature.
In the best short fiction category Fatenah (Palestine, 2009) directed by Ahmad Habash was selected.
The honorable mention was presented to This Palestinian Life (Palestine, 2008) directed by my friend Philip Rizk.
Tea on the Axis of Evil (Syria, 2009) by Jean Marie Offenbacher, was selected as the Noor Award winner for outstanding documentary.