Paradise Now

Paru le La Lettre AFC n°146 Autres formats

[English] [français]

Towards the end of March 2004, when I was preparing to leave for Naplouse to shoot Paradise Now, I remember seeing a pretty, stencilled tag painted on the pavement in my street, “Where are our dreams ?”

This question that arose right in front of me calmed the contradictory feelings I still had on the day I left for Palestine. I was setting off to do my job for one of the main reasons I chose it : meeting other people and sharing a common adventure.
I was pleased to be able to answer the question myself : “Coming up !”

In March 2004, eight months had already passed since I had read Hany Abou Assad and Bero Beyer’s screenplay. It had bowled me over but I had stopped hoping : Denis Lenoir, who had met Hany in residence at Sundance, wanted to make the film and Hany was delighted. Then three weeks before filming was due to start, Denis had to drop the project for personal reasons, so Hany called me.

Knowing that a population is living under occupation is one thing ; living this occupation on a daily basis gives the full measure of the unbearable reality.
As for our preparations, difficulties soon arose. Between the lists of equipment requested by Denis and the possibility of getting hold of this equipment in an occupied territory, we went from one disappointment to another.
The film was co-produced by the Netherlands, France, Israel (but not financially) and above all Germany. To begin with, Arriflex were supposed to send us a container with lighting, grip equipment, two Arricams etc. But their insurance company refused to cover the equipment for a destination such as ours. Ten days before shooting began, we were still shopping all over the place trying to find everything we needed for filming. Amir Harel, the producer from Lama Productions in Tel Aviv, put in a good word for us with rental companies for machinery and lighting. As for cameras, we were using Super 35 mm 3-perf, which made it difficult to put together two camera bodies in such a short time.
We finally found an Arri 535 and an Aaton 35 with Holland Equipment in Amsterdam and they were the only firm prepared to take the risk of sending us their cameras. Ehab Assal, my Palestinian first assistant from Nazareth and Ahmed Tan, my German second assistant, immediately left to carry out trials. They came back a week later, bosom pals, with the cameras, a Zeiss Ultra Prime fitted with a long lens, a range extender and a Cooke 25-250mm zoom. Everybody was starting to believe it was actually going to happen. Out of the forty or so people comprising our team in Naplouse, fifteen were from the city and most of them were students who had never made a film but were so keen on learning that they soon found their way. Five Palestinians from Israel with a little bit of experience and a permit for working in the occupied zone joined our party. There were only two French members in the team : Olivier Meidinger, the head decorator and myself.

My first team of electricians and grips was made up of very competent Germans, but they abandoned us along with the first assistant director when difficulties began to crop up : one evening, in our sixth week of filming, two masked gunmen stormed into the production office. At that time, Tsahal was working in the city nearly every day and people close to the film were killed. The various Palestinian resistance groups were becoming more and more curious with regard to ourselves and the screenplay. This was the beginning of a whole succession of mix-ups and intensely wearing negotiations for Hany, who gradually left aside the shooting of his film in order to save it. He poured all his energy into diplomatic acrobatics. The representatives of the various groups (FATH, FPLP, HAMAS, etc.) all visited our office, but one small, uncontrollable group systematically opposed every single negotiated, political decision. Their political arguments were thin cover for blackmail ; all they wanted was money. During the 15 days we spent without filming, we went to Nazareth for three days to find possible locations and organise Plan B. With Olivier and Hany, we convinced the producers to stay an extra week in Naplouse to shoot the essential scenes, the link-up decors that still remained to be shot.
We were under constant pressure from the Israeli incursions into the city and the last-minute “bans” issued by “anonymous” resistance groups ; in the end we only stayed for an extra 4 days and we abandoned our friendly Naplouse staff to finish the shooting in Nazareth. We were all very sad. We left our friends prisoners in their own city after two months of hard work together. They didn’t get to complete the film into which they poured so much of their energy.
In Nazareth, we seemed to be in another country altogether and Olivier - our production designer - was only there two days ahead of us to prepare the sets and in one instance, he had to rebuild a street corner identical to the one in the refugee camp where we had been filming in Naplouse. We went out looking for sets in the evening, ready for shooting two days later, but we managed to complete the film “only” a fortnight later than planned.

From an artistic point of view, Hany told me very little about the choices he had made with Denis Lenoir. I don’t know whether they were able to progress as far as they hoped.
Above all, he wanted to make his film on the very site of the occupation, with the help of people from the West Bank, in other words his own people. As soon as I arrived, we went for numerous walks together through the city. We went to the markets, the refugee camps, into peoples’ homes and cafés, during the day and at night when the Army wasn’t there. We talked a lot about these peoples’ lives and of the difficulties in dealing with a subject that is so totally a part of daily newscasts.

First and foremost, Hany wanted to make a definitely fictional film, a “show”, but close to the genuine and particular stories that are glimpsed through those of his characters. He therefore wanted to shoot in 2.35 format, reminiscent of Westerns, sometimes with big close-ups and camera movements, whilst keeping the correct distance from the whole story and not forcing the emotional side. By the way, there is no music in this film. As for lighting, we had neither the time to do tests nor the image sources to compare our respective imaginations as much as we would have liked. Hany struggled to define the texture of an image whereas he knew perfectly how to define a frame. I endeavoured to copy out his essential instructions regarding frames, using them as basic principles when it came to lighting : no “naturalism” that would take us away from fiction, but no spectacular lighting effects, either, that would transfigure the natural locations.
I used Kodak 5212 and 5218 films, developed by Geyer in Munich. There was no particular processing method, other than a slight under-processing of the 4-perf internegative by Arane-Guliver for the positive prints done at LTC.”

Technique

Film stock : Kodak 5212 and 5218
Processed by Geyer, Munich
4-perf internegative by Arane-Guliver, Paris (slight under-processing)
Positive prints done at LTC, Paris