Karama Has No Walls (2012), is a documentary film made in 2012 by the Yemeni-Scottish filmmaker Sara Ishaq. Made as a part of her course at the Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland, this film is a 26-minute take on the violent state-backed repression that rocked Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, in 2011. The incident is supposed to have given an irrevocable thrust to the then Yemeni Revolution. This film was nominated for the Oscars and has participated in many Human Rights Film Festivals, including the one conducted by Aljazeera. Without much ado, I’m going to get into, what I think, how the documentary articulates what it does.
The beginning of the film establishes the space now called the ‘Change Square’ where hundreds of students of Sanaa University indulge themselves in a long sit-in protest against the long-standing President of the country, Ali Abdulla Saleh. It is the 18th of March, the Friday of Karama or Dignity. As the peaceful protestors are praying unarmed, we see a few armed thugs assemble on the other side of a wall. The wall itself is constructed by the regime to reign in the protestors and is now laced up with inflammatory substances like petrol.
The peaceful protestors, who now sense danger, are pelted with stones from across the wall. With the exposition and the inciting incident for the film thus set, it is now time for rising action and conflict in the plot. The wall is set on fire by the thugs. There is mayhem as the protestors try to break down the wall, braving rooftop snipers from the other side. As the wall is breached, the unarmed protestors march towards the armed thugs, who by now have taken refuge behind the might of the military personnel. There is absolute pandemonium as bullets and stones fly all over in a targeted manner. As bodies fall, a call is given by the protestors to fall back.
The climax of the plot thus achieved to the detriment of the protestors, it is now time to brace oneself for falling action and a location shift. After an intermediary sequence of a TV News clipping that blares out the bloody chaos, the focus now shifts to the nearby hospitals where the dead are brought in and the injured get treated. Worried relatives and friends frantically look out for their dear young ones only to find them dead or critically injured.
There is a great sense of individual and collective loss as we see the grave tragedy unfold in front of us. And then, when the nature of the personal and collective loss is well established, the falling action – unable to go down beyond where it has settled down – leads itself to a resolution. We are back in the ‘Change Square’ looking at the sit-in. It is the same as in the beginning of the film except that those participating are the relatives of the dead and those who have been physically impaired.
For a documentary film of human rights repression, if I am dwelling too much on its ‘plot’ rather than the matter at hand, it can’t be helped. If one manages to shake oneself off the shock element of the expression of the brutal repression that the film throws at you, you are by and large left with the highly compartmentalized ‘dramatic narrative’ structure. It is this very structure that leaves me with a certain sense of uneasiness. Why should a documentary film mimic its fiction counterpart?
The ‘dramatic narrative’ form mainly focuses on the drama or the emotional excitement that arises from the conflict between two opposing forces – in this case, the protestors and the thugs backed by the military might of the regime in power. By designing the film in such a manner, the maker sorts to captivate the audience by concentrating on how the conflict unfolds rather than the why. Such a format could be perfect for a tight Hollywood blockbuster that would seek to mesmerize its audience into rich box office collections.
In this film, the viewer experiences the feeling of the impending doom of the protestors, their helplessness at being massacred, the sadness of the relatives of those killed or seriously maimed, and the melancholy of the survivors, who are just about coming to terms with their loss. The film takes the point of view of four people – two videographers who have captured the unfolding event despite being in a state of shock, a father who has lost his young son and another man whose young child has lost both his eyes.
The interviews of these men were filmed much after the event had unfolded. They talk about the events that unfolded on that day from their emotional point of view. Their voices are overlapped on the candid footage of the actual events, giving a personal edge to them. These interviews themselves have been shot in quiet, interior locations, in dimly lit tight close-ups with a shallow depth of field. They contrast well with the bright handheld, shaky footage of the massacre laced with a sound design that sounds chaotic.
It is often said that the choices made by a film in its expression define its very politics. The mise-en-scène identified in this film does not allow it to venture beyond the emotionally exciting drama that it evokes. For a person who is already initiated to the politics that engulfs the Middle East, Karama Has No Walls might be a welcome opportunity to initiate or take forward the dialogue. For the uninitiated, the film can be identified and emphasized with the victims of violent repression. This in itself is no mean achievement.
But what is it about the Yemeni revolution that made university students nonviolently brave guns and stones? Does the film dwell or even hint upon the other pressing causes of the revolution, apart from the fact that it arose because of a dictatorial President who refused to give up power for 30 long years or so? What role did the various armed tribal groups, including the Houthis, play in the revolution? Or the two religious groups – the Shias and the Sunnis? What about the internal strife between the North and the South Yemenis? What was the role of the United States of America and its said proxy, the Gulf Corporation Council? What about the geopolitics of it or the recently discovered oil reserves or the fact that about 15% of the world’s shipping traffic is routed through the Red Sea that stands alongside Yemen?
One could turn around and say – well, the film is not dealing with all these. It deals with the personal rather than the charged political. ‘Humanism’, one would argue. In India, filmmakers love being tagged as ‘humanists’ and have won many Government-sponsored awards for their ‘humanist’ films. Their fanboy ‘critics’ also might have made a living out of this word and its ecosystem. But is it so that hiding behind this ‘humanist’ tag is merely an excuse and a cover-up for a lack of cinematic ability or the courage to take a clear stand on the matter at hand?
Why, for example, should Karama Has No Walls not even hint at some of the issues that led to the Yemeni Revolution, within the body of the film? Or for that matter why should a film on Umar Khalid, unjustly jailed for four years without trial, focus on the emotional efforts of his friends in dealing with the situation? Wouldn’t we rather see him out of jail? And in my own film, The Unbearable Being Of Lightness (2016), why anyone should be bothered by my reflective thoughts on caste repression? Rohit Vemula is dead and caste repression is as rampant as ever.
If it is acknowledged as such, a personal angle to a film does have its utility of negating the ‘all-knowing’ attitude of the documentary filmmaker that is so evident in the expository mode of filmmaking. While one is not negating such personal expressions for such a purpose, some questions do pop up. Just how political is the personal and at what stage do we make the hardcore shift? These are some pertinent work-in-progress questions for sure.
Karama Has No Walls can be viewed here.