(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
In the previous issue of Ny Tid Lars Birkelund criticizes my article about the movie Cries from Syria for being uncritical of the claims made in the film, and asking what requirements should be placed on us who discuss documentaries.
My field of study is film (I have a master's degree in film science, in addition to several practical and theoretical courses in film), and would like to think that this qualifies me to evaluate documentary film. Nevertheless, I constantly face challenges in considering documentaries that deal with areas in which I do not have special expertise (this may also apply to feature films). I have discussed this before in an article Ny Tid, in light of the fact that I had written about the documentary India's Daughter, and willingly admit that it can be difficult to give a proper assessment of how accurate and balanced a film's presentation of its theme is (to the extent that it is a point that the film must necessarily be balanced, as there are many approaches and sub-genres in documentaries ).
The specific article Birkelund criticizes is an interview with the director of the documentary Cries from Syria – not a film criticism. This is important to point out, since in such an interview I express my own opinions about the film to a much lesser extent than I would have done in a review.
At the same time, of course, I have tried to give the reader an impression of what kind of film Cries from Syria is. I mention in the text that the film "draws a clear picture of developments in the country from the riots in the Arab Spring in 2011 to the present, told by Syrians in opposition to Assad's regime»(My highlight). Director Evgenij Afineevsky admits in the interview that he "had to exclude certain aspects of the conflict" for both space and educational reasons, and I also write that "one can suspect that his form of communication is characterized by the fact that the Syria conflict has been even more deficient covered in the United States than for example in Norway ».
Birkelund is right in that Cries from Syria is an agitating movie. In the interview, the director discusses both his desire to make the audience feel, the film's focus on children and the use of tearing material. He says that with his documentary he wants to inform people about the situation in Syria and create more compassion for refugees from the country.
Cries from Syria is a film with the potential to reach out wide (I mention it is distributed by HBO in the US) with an easy-to-understand and outrageous review of the situation in the country in recent years. It should certainly be able to arouse compassion for refugees from here. In a time when Syrian refugees do not always meet with open arms or across borders, this documentary is, in my view, a sympathetic – and perhaps necessary – contribution. However, with the ambition to communicate broadly, there is an obvious danger of being over-simplified, and Afineevsky's film undeniably misses some essential aspects of its portrayal of the conflict – its extensive material despite.
In the article, I first and foremost conveyed the filmmaker's views, not my own. This does not mean that I am free of critical sense, but I would have made much more clear my own objections if I had written a critique of the film. At the same time, I realize that there are definitely people with more in-depth knowledge of the Syrian conflict than me – which I really appreciate contributing to the debate on these films.
