Logbook of a collective journey through the unpredictable creation of ludic connections
by Orianna Calderón.
MOROCCO
Saturday, November 14th
Without being cynical nor nihilist, I don’t really believe in steady jobs, long-term goals or play-it-safe routines… least would I consider that happiness and/or peace of mind depend on any them. As Friedrich Nietzsche states, when it comes to thinking about the future, there’s nothing as marvellous as uncertainty; life is not predictable, nor secure: and that’s exactly what makes its game so much fun.
With that in mind -after Mauricio, Allin and Martín’s unexpected farewells at the airport- Omar, Adriana and I set off for Morocco, the headquarters of the workshop’s second stage. Crossing the ocean was the easiest part; the real challenge was yet to come: away from familiar territory, prejudices aside, being sensitive enough so as to explore different scripts to perform daily interactions.
Sunday, November 15th
After accused of being rather noisy by an embittered passenger, Adriana and I decided to stop talking and tried to sleep with the Atlantic Ocean below us. Fourteen hours later, at Barajas airport: stairs up, customs, passports, stairs down, baggage claim, tourist information, elevator down, bus never found, elevator up (why did I bring such a big bag?) and a taxi (finally!) willing to take six bags and three young people to the centre of the city.
One free afternoon in Madrid: More than enough for us to walk along main streets, take hundreds of pictures and leave the hostel without light for a couple of minutes; lesson learned: be careful with the volts when trying to plug in your digital camera in another continent.
Monday, November 16th
4:30 am. Mouse-like sounds wake me up. Apparently, Omar’s attempts so as not to make a lot of noise while looking for his clothes were not successful, as Adriana woke up as well. All restaurants closed at six in the morning, we decide to go to the airport five hours earlier than required to get something to eat. Guillermo and Diego -having just arrived from Amsterdam- joined us in the plane to Tanger. Customs, passports, bags, permits… and a smiling Hajar with a couple of taxis ready to take us to Tetouan.
Surrounded by the Riff Mountains, the latter is a city easy to fall in love with. And despite out hostel gloomy entrance (perfect location for a crime of passion) and a single bathroom shared by five people (two Moroccans arriving tomorrow!), owning an entire storey in the heart of centre-ville, is quite a luxury. For lunch, we all went to El Reducto, a fancy restaurant inside the most beautiful maze I’ve ever been to: the Medina. Empty cup, blank page, senses awoke and open mind: I want to fill my eyes, ears and skin with Morocco’s flavour.
Tuesday, November 17th
A smile. The universal gesture that, from George Bataille’s point of view, made mankind truly different from the rest of the living creatures. The first sign that shows we are willing to get to know the other; and our first exchange with Abdelhadi and Lahcen, two workshop members that come from Agadir (a southern Moroccan city) and with whom we’ll share the flat. There was no need for icebreakers: within minutes we were already exchanging opinions on bullfighting, dreams in black and white, Woody Allen’s movies and the problems intrinsic to democracy.
Having eaten what’s officially my favourite Moroccan dish (gamba tajine) we went to Tarbiaat Alguouza, a little oasis inside the Medina, where those closer to life drink tea and those closer to death smoke kif. By this time, Hajar, Abderrahim (a friend of hers) and Mohamed -another workshop member who studies at the Fine Arts Institute- had joined us and, in a joyful mixture of English, Spanish, French, Arabic and Amazigh, we began to show some of the possible worlds inside each of us.
Wednesday, November 18th
L’Institut National des Beaux-Arts Tetouan… our Moroccan headquarters. Flashback to Mexico: Diego and Guillermo with a pile of photocopies displaying the workshop’s layout; expectant smiles on the eight members’ faces (Hajar, Mohamed, Lahcen, Abdelhadi, Mitak, Omar, Adriana and I); and the rules of a creative process that substitutes technical explanations and DIY formulas for the reflection on the encounter with the other through the possibilities created by cinematic language.
Teams are formed so as to carry out the first exercises around the three daily meals, equipment reduced to an audio recorder and a digital camera. An ingredient is added: the proposal has to be connected with Alaîd El Kbir -the Great Celebration- an Islamic ritual in which a lamb is slaughtered and eaten as a way to honour God. Food, religious beliefs, blood and sacrifice: our starting point.
During the evening session, Babel and culture shock proved their effectiveness in creating conflicts: from the price of a salad during lunchtime to the proposal of shooting people smoking kif in Tarbiaat Alguouza, the atmosphere became highly dense due to misunderstandings that, despite being negligible, managed to poison creative energy. One single drop of anger numbed today’s artistic sensitivity. Still, the discussion made it clear that, in teamwork with people from completely different backgrounds, you can’t take anything for granted; prudence, patience and repetition in as many languages as required, might help.
Thursday, November 19th
He has never slaughtered a lamb, prefers to celebrate life through art and believes in love as the best way to approach a God that doesn’t punish people… but his way of thinking is the exception of the rule. For the breakfast exercise, Hajar and I decided to visit a friend of hers: Samir. Meeting a man with such transgressive ideas -a God that accepts happiness as enough worship is not within the orthodox lines- was deeply touching and reassured me that judging by preconceived ideas is a huge mistake that prevents you from seeing what does exist around you.
However, partly due to the lack of technical resources (electricity, editing software, know-how), partly because it’s not easy to get ones’ messages across when working in an unknown place, in a foreign language, with people you have just met, the three exercises had several faults. Besides, the not-that-positive energy was still around, and as a result, the class discussion was slow and too passive, on the verge of indifference and boredom. If Mexico was a challenge, it’s easy to realise that the workshop in Morocco will be far more difficult (starting with the fact that we are together the 24/7). Now we are nine: Abderrahim was accepted in the team.
Friday, November 20th
Once we finished watching part of the material from Mexico’s workshop, Lahcen, Abdelhadi and I began to look for a construction site… our lunch project’s location. Working with two natives in Morocco, knowing no more than two words of Arabic, is an excellent way to become humble: you have to trust the others and you really feel the necessity of working as a team. You also become more intuitive; you begin to read glances and to decipher gestures due to the fact that language has reached its limits and is no longer useful. Without such mediation, you are more present with your senses than with your mind.
Misunderstandings finally faded away and discussion in class got much better; a thinking tank in charge of the Morocco’s proposal was appointed (Hajar, Adriana and Lahcen) and a list of possible characters was drawn. The breakfast project raised the topic of children’s innocent perversion when it comes to death and pleasure: without an inner police made up of ideology, religion, authorities, society and borrowed ideas, kids have no problem in seeing the world as a whole in which everything is interwoven: beauty and ugliness, death and life, the sacred and the profane. Putting such concepts into extreme categories is not a predetermined necessity; it’s a choice that we have accepted as a way to place ourselves in the world.
Saturday, November 21st
In the heart of Tetouan’s Medina, there’s a place where time stops, movement freezes and space embraces you. There you find a bittersweet taste and the sounds of running water… you might as well encounter a smell of nostalgia, the sound of memory and a taste of eternity. Alí Gouza’s teashop is not a place; is elsewhere: a refuge for outsiders and sentenced to death that use hashish to mock time… it’s a strange site indeed.
Thus, for the third project we decided to look for a way in which we could convey this spatial feeling by means of formal strategies, but without forgetting the most important thing: once you manage to cross the maze, once time stops and movement slows down, the ultimate goal is to destroy the barrier that separates you from the alterity.
Sunday, November 22nd
The lunch project presented today was the rule from which Samir is the exception: a list of guidelines dictated by Islamic religion on how to eat properly. After a polemic discussion, we had something clear: we don’t want to make a documentary about politics or religion; our goal couldn’t be farther from preaching in favour of an ideology or convincing people of a single truth. No dogmas, nor propaganda, nor moral judgements; art’s freedom is always making fun of definite statements and absolute certainties.
Moroccan-Amazigh (i.e. North Africa early inhabitants) theatre director, teacher and filmmaker Chaib Massaoudi, arrived today from Amsterdam; he’ll be in charge of the workshop during the next week. Mystery surrounds what this stage will be about, but it is known that there will be a special trip and that Omar will be the cameraman registering the experience. Unpredictability takes over.
Monday, November 23rd
Look at a four-year-old child staring at an insect (s/he becomes eyes) or eating an apple (s/he becomes mouth). At a certain point, s/he even becomes the animal and the fruit: connected with his/her core -without masks, ego or taboos- the child merges with the outside world through the body, experiencing life without mediation.
Bringing us back to that centre so as to recover the capability of being aware of our bodies was the main goal behind pretty strange exercises -walking in space, laughing and crying, singing Lala Buya, calling mama and papa- carried out today. We also had to introduce ourselves in awkward ways (in terms of Chaib, we had to let the clown inside of us emerge) and we made a mental trip to the mountains as preparation for a coming excursion to Sidi Chaîbe (I deeply enjoy this voyage… for a moment, I felt as peaceful as I normally feel only when being on my own).
By the end of the day, I had the feeling that I was truly beginning to know the multi-layered people with whom I had been sharing the roof for the last days. Still, there was some anxiety around due to the fact that we were recorded all the time in a kind of Moroccan reality show; however, we showed interest in the activities and willingness to (pretend to/strive to) become children again. Not an easy -but definitely worth trying- task.
Tuesday, November 24th
Acting exercises, focus on the body and moments of trance through voice and movements, continued today. I feel that we are all enjoying ourselves and that the energy between us is much more positive than before, but there’s still a feeling of awkwardness: looks like we are spending too much time filming ourselves in a kind of theatre class… how are we using this for the documentary? What about the thinking tank, the list of characters and the Great Celebration?
Wednesday, November 25th
7:00 in the morning outside INBA. Bring sleeping bag, lanterns and warm clothes because we are going to the mountains: that’s all the information we were provided with. Once in the tourist’s van, we find out that we will stay in a holy place -Sidi Chaîbe- in Nador, the whole experience will be filmed and a goat is travelling with us.
Throughout the long and winding road (eight hours of curves around the mountains –the mesmerizing landscape is worth daring to look down!) half awake half asleep, I can’t help thinking about how thin the line between reality and dreams is: Pasolini meets Jodorowsky within a highly mystical frame, in this place located in the middle of nowhere, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, with a saint buried in the backyard. To make matters even more surreal, Muftah -the goat we brought with us- manages to run away and the search committee fails to find a trace.
Meanwhile, the feelings among us are not relaxed at all. After being called actors, following instructions such as get slowly into the building and touch the walls with both hands, we all begin to think that there’s something too bizarre going on. All of a sudden, it looks like we have become the topic of the documentary… something that makes us rather uncomfortable; the two-days theatre-like exercises were understandable, but acting in mise-en-scéne shots not planned by us at all, is slightly weirder.
From George Orwell’s 1984 to Animal Farm: Intuitively, Diego feels that something is wrong and asks me to talk with Chaib in front of the camera held by Omar. In a matter of minutes, the latter explodes: he says he can’t keep on filming this voyeuristic material that doesn’t seem to have any connection with the original idea (breakfast, lunch, dinner). The rest of the team joins the discussion: Abdelhadi asks for an explanation, Guillermo complains about being the boom operator, Adriana expresses her confusion with tears… Diego turns the camera off.
Tension had been accumulating since the beginning of the workshop, and after the back-to-the-centre exercises, a catharsis was bound to happen. A crisis of trust that led to a more sincere and committed work afterwards; a brief argument that helped me overcome my fear of confrontation, since it showed me that disagreement is not a problem but a symptom that, if addressed, provides with solutions.
Thursday, November 26th
After the storm… another thunder: Authorities from Nador banned us from shooting due to the fact that we didn’t have a special permission. Frustration and anger lead nowhere; therefore, we resorted to plan B: record on the road outside Sidi Chaîbe -we still had the Mediterranean Sea as background- while Hajar tried to get a permit.
Despite the fact that Omar decided to leave his place as cameraman and secluded himself in his room, we kept on recording, and thus, we got beautiful spontaneous stories interwoven with personal portraits that gave us a mirror in which to look at the character we have built with ourselves. This was way beyond a Big Brother: Chaib’s intriguing questions on one hand, the holy place taken from One thousand and one nights on the other… and in between, a multicultural group of people willing to bare their souls.
We had a meeting with the thinking tank, whose proposal has images as starting point: people eating tagine with their hands, sharing a huge plate of couscous and chatting around a table covered with mint tea glasses. The concept that links the three moments is contact: food bringing people together, but also awaking the senses. There’s only one issue: what happened with Alaîd El Kbir?
Another goat was bought and slaughtered in the name of God. Sacrifice: a brutal moment that reveals the sacred, in that it allows the contemplation of the transition from the existent’s discontinuity to the continuity of existence. However, there’s no need for long philosophical explanations: passing from life to death, from beauty to brutality, from shrieks to silence… everything was summarised in its dead eyes and its quivering corpse.
Friday, November 27th
We left Sidi Chaîbe early, heading to Sidi Boukhiare, the Amazigh Mecca that is not recognized by Islamic fundamentalists. The contrast between the two different pathways towards the sacred was impressively clear: from the observant silence of the first one to the intense yelling and dance of the second one.
Once again, the obstacle of the permits prevented us from shooting. The formula unofficial religious site + bureaucracy + foreigners with a camera and a boom + my astronaut outfit (sorry, I had to wear such a big jacket, I was freezing!) resulted in just a couple of shots and a group of –slightly frustrated- people heading back to Tetouan. Another eight hours of curves, again the breathtaking view… just like driving trough clouds.
At INBA, an important announcement is made: Abdelhadi and Mohamed will not continue on the second stage of the workshop, since they have no role in the production team. The decision doesn’t come as a surprise for Abdelhadi, since he had even thought of leaving the project voluntarily due to a feeling of not belonging.
Saturday, November 28th
Alaîd El Kbir, The Great Celebration, a holy ceremony in which blood flows. No contradiction: binomial oppositions are nothing but categories to classify reality. Beyond our rational stubbornness, everything is fused in a calm sea; in Bataille’s terms, nothing proves the -perfectly logical- holism better than the sacrifice.
So as to give a frame to what we recorded throughout Chaib’s workshop –from the exercises in Beaux Arts to the experience in Sidi Chaîbe and Sidi Boukhiare- we decided to shoot just one character -Mustafa, the school guardian- and three spaces (Mustafa’s house, the Medina and Tetouan from the roof of Mitak’s house). The thinking tank proposal will be stored for the next project or for a further step.
In spite of minor arguments due to entropy in the communication, and the feeling that collective work was being replaced by a dictatorship, the work was carried out and discrepancies were clearly explained. No more Babel tricks while celebrating Lahcen’s birthday in a teashop next to the king’s palace.
Sunday, November 29th
Chaib, the theatre director and filmmaker: He didn’t plan to work in theatre or cinema, but he knew he wanted to be an artist. From his point of view, art is more powerful than religion, since the latter has its origin in fear, while the first one is based on freedom, joy and beauty. He loves creating frames -a Mountain, a goat, a song, a group of students- and letting reality surprise him.
Chaib, the teacher: His goal is to leave something positive behind; to help people to go back to their centres, find their inner clowns and get rid of the ego.
Chaib, the outsider: He was born near Sidi Chaîbe, in a house between two rivers; there he stayed until the age of 18, when he went to live to The Netherlands with his family. But his body was constantly calling for its roots; therefore, when he was 28 he went back to his hometown… and he didn’t find anything apart from memories there. Since then, he’s a wandering soul looking for ground to grab.
Chaib, the father: To experience God, he doesn’t consider it necessary to pray or go to church; looking at his seven-month-old son’s smile is more than enough.
After an interview with this rhizomatic character, I began to understand what his workshop was about: a search for different ways of making works of art, an experiment that provided us with strange –though real- material, and his desperate attempt to overcome existential despair. He is not the know-it-all guru that could be thought of at first glance… he’s just as confused and vulnerable –powerful and brilliant- as any other human being.
Monday, November 30th
It’s like trying to explain how coffee tastes to someone who has never tasted it, said the Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges when asked about his mystical experience with Buddhist monks. Many times, language is surpassed by reality -Marguerite Duras couldn’t write about Hiroshima, for words would betray its horror- and other ways of expressing what’s inside of us, have to take over. Thus, spontaneous poetry and tears emerged when expressing our conclusions on what happened in the trip to Sidi Chaîbe.
And then, the dreaded question: how are we putting all these complex layers together in a movie about food in Morocco? With more than seventeen hours from where to choose, the sooner we start, the better. So, today we drew the shot logs of the first five hours (it’s good that INBA students are on holidays, for then we can use the space and equipment for hours). I’m gladly surprised by the strength of many of the shots we got; besides, watching yourself is quite an exercise for understanding your own neurosis. Shooting ourselves was not such a bad idea after all.
Tuesday, December 1st
Shot logs continue, and after a brief farewell, Chaib -that mixture of Charles Bukowski and Jim Morrison, teacher and joker, demon and tragic hero- left. The tough work called paper edition has started. Still without a clear guideline, our main parameter is the selection of sublime moments /aesthetic experiences/ shocking images and truly cinematic frames. This might not be enough, but it’s the best criteria we can think of as a starting point.
Wednesday, December 2nd
Finally: seventeen hours watched in detail, captured and analysed in shot logs. We have enough material, even for a long-feature film; however, it has so many layers and we are so emotionally involved, that finding the structure is anything but an easy task: The Rashomon style would be to tell the three parallel stories -workshop at INBA, trip to Sidi Chaîbe, Mustafa and the Great Celebration- inserting convergences and divergences… but maybe it’s better to make a road movie, focusing exclusively on the trip… mmm, it could be simpler, just the story of the goat… Well, not so simple, the goat could be used as a metaphor of the devil.
An outsider point of view comes to the rescue: Dutch filmmakers Kees Hin and Linda Bannink arrived today so as to provide us with advice and guidance throughout the editing process. Even though we only have time for a very rough cut (the final version will be carried out in The Netherlands), we have to make some vital choices so as to give a skeleton to the film.
Thursday, December 3rd
Throughout Chaib’s workshop, we were anxious about being exposed in front of a camera. But after analyzing the shots we have in the first four tapes, it becomes clear that Chaib is the utterly exhibited character.
What we were just intuitive about, now is perfectly clear: rhizomatic and unpredictable, he is a Moroccan version of Moliere’s misanthrope, desperately searching for ways of satisfying his existential hunger. Thus, by the end of the day we reached the conclusion that it might as well be a good idea to have Chaib’s psyche as our guideline.
Friday, December 4th
Two ideas -human beings trying to fulfil existential hunger and contradictions being interwoven as a whole- incarnated in one tragic hero who decided to come back to his homeland so as to turn his dreams into reality… but the pieces with which he was playing began to take control over his fantasies and let him with more questions than answers.
After selecting the shots for the editing, this was the plot we began to picture in our head: Chaib, from puppet master to desconstructed human being. Meanwhile, a team in charge of recording Mustafa’s routine (Lahcen, Omar and Guillermo) was appointed; we don’t know yet how we’ll put this two characters together, but we want to make the best out of the precious -though gore (detailed throat being cut)- material we recorded during Alaîd El Kbir.
Saturday, December 5th
Adriana, Mitak and I began the editing process of Chaib’s material: nothing too ambitious for today… just put the sequences together. We had to leave Mustafa’s story out, since he didn’t want to be recorded anymore.
However, half the team made the shot logs of the material from the Great Celebration and we decided that, even though it’s quite impersonal, it is worth editing apart from Chaib’s story. Omar -who finally decided to stay in the team- and Lahcen will be in charge of this short film rough cut.
Sunday, December 6th
Maybe David Lynch would have liked some tableau sequences: I mean, that mama-papa soundtrack mixed with Lahcen’s laughter while the girls hide in the woods, reminded me of the rabbit people from Inland Empire… Ok, ok, I have to admit that Adriana, Mitak and I got a bit lost while editing Chaib’s first rough cut: too much cheap surrealism with no good reason. Still, it was worth analyzing, since it made us conscious of what we really want: we don’t have to overcomplicate ourselves with ambitious structures, for our main character is already complex enough; the challenge is giving the shots an adequate rhythm.
Monday, December 7th
Kees and Linda left early today and the editing continued, this time under Diego’s direct advice. Beyond technical knowledge –keyboard shortcuts for cutting and overlapping shots, separating audio from image, adding cross fades- we were learning what editing involves: at times storytelling, at times solving a jigsaw puzzle, always an intellectual challenge in which thoughts are not expressed with words but with moving images and frozen moments. A nice portrait has begun to take shape.
Tuesday, December 8th
It was not as smooth as the workshop in Mexico, but it was -by far- more intense, enriching, surprising and memorable: a multi-layered, deeply enjoyable, 24/7 challenge. Despite the difficulties and the moments of uncertainty, Morocco’s workshop reached a successful end. Hagar, Adriana and Lahcen are travelling to Amsterdam in January, to take part in the last stage (I don’t know yet if I’ll join them due to indie projects everlasting problem: lack of budget).
Having finished the two rough cuts, we officially finished at six o’clock; and, as a small celebration, we had dinner at Restinga. We were not tired, since we had worked like a heart: as Michel Tournier explains, while every muscle in our body rests while we sleep, the heart rests during the second between each heartbeat, i.e. its holydays are interwoven with its labour. That’s what happens when you find a job that is so satisfying: the word holydays makes no sense anymore.
Once upon a time, in a small city in the north of Morocco, a production team/group of friends made fun of distances, language barriers and disparate backgrounds…
