Sound of the Soul at the 2006 VIFF |
by Jason Whyte
“Sound of the Soul: The Fez Festival of World Sacred Music is a mesmerizing, music-driven documentary from a remarkable festival in Morocco that brings together musical groups from Muslim, Christian and Jewish backgrounds. As our world is currently so polarized by religious conflicts and the narrow forces of fundamentalism Sound of the Soul is a timely and profound experiential journey, reverberating with unity, understanding and most of all, Hope.” Stephen Olsson, director of “Sound of the Soul” at the 25th Vancouver International Film Festival (Sep. 28 – Oct. 13)
Is this your first film in the VIFF? Do you have any other festival experience? If you’re a festival veteran, let us know your favourite and least-favourite parts of the festival experience.
Yes, this is my first time at Vancouver. I just returned from festivals in Sarajevo, and shortly before that, Jerusalem and New York City. The best part is being in the room as audiences from around the world respond to created “moments” on the screen. Then the discussions afterwards are very special, when a Bosnian woman from Sarajevo say how much of a healing force this film is, and how relevant to the religious war there.
And a Moroccan in the Tribeca screening said how important he thought it was for Moroccans to see how they are imaged alongside European groups in this film.
Could you give me a little look into your background (your own personal biography, if you will), and what led you to the desire to want to make film?
My last film was called Face to Face: Young Arabs and Americans -- joined via satellite -- five young high school seniors in San Francisco with their counterparts in Amman Jordan to discuss a range of “hot issues” like the war in Iraq, suicide bombers and inter-racial dating. Before that I made Our House in Havana about a Cuban-American woman’s return to Havana after living in the US for 40 years. This film won several festival awards and was broadcast on the PBS POV series and on television networks throughout the world.
Before that, I co-produced and directed a documentary film with Scott Andrews called Last Images of War, a homage to freelance journalists and independent filmmakers like myself who were killed covering the Afghan-Soviet war. That film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, won numerous film festival awards, as well as a National Emmy award for Outstanding Director. It was broadcast on the BBC, PBS and over 20 other national television networks throughout the world. Also with Scott Andrews, I produced the documentary School Colors for the PBS Frontline series, which portrayed the politics of ethnicity and racial self segregation in one urban US high school, 40 years after the Brown vs. the Board of Education desegregation decision. Before that, I did a film called: John Collier: A Visual Journey, about John Collier, a Marin County resident who was an extraordinary teacher, FSA photographer, visual anthropologist and mentor of mine from San Francisco State University. John was the guy who inspired me to pick up a camera and “go out and get directly involved.” He inspired me enough to come back from my wandering around Asia to go to graduate school and study visual anthropology – which is the convergence of anthropology, film, and communications, which I did at Temple University, in Philadelphia.
Growing up, you were no doubt asked the eternal question “When I grow up I want to be a …” Finish this sentence, please!
I want to be a storyteller and live a rich life, experiencing other cultures and meeting wonderful individuals who are also teachers, and pass on the learning.
While you were making the movie, were you thinking about the future release of the film, be it film festivals, paying customers, critical response, and so forth?
I always wanted Sound of the Soul to have a compelling storyline, rather than be simply a concert film. Musically and experientially, it tries to go into the depths of the mystical experience, the ecstasy which lies at the heart of this kind of devotional music whether it is Christian, Muslim or Jewish. This is where it all comes together, and where there are no divisions. That’s why I called the film Sound of the Soul because to me, all these songs and traditions are all together making one sound, and that is the universal and eternal sound of the soul.
It is true that the mystics of the world, whatever their religion, most often get along just fine. They also have the most fun. It’s the scripture-based religious types that seem to hold onto this boring notion that their book is the only holy book.
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What is also unusual is that a lot of the story of Sound of the Soul is told in the transitions -- visually or musically – on how the film moves from one group to another, from one mood or location or time of day to another. We really spent a lot of time thinking about this, and trying so many different options.
Finally, Sound of the Soul is a film which I feel really needed to be made. Ahmed Kostas, the sufi who we feature in the film, at one point told us not to worry, that despite the lack of funding, the project had “Baraka”, which is the Arabic word for “grace”.
And it turned out to be true. This is only the second film I’ve done where I’ve had this strong feeling that the film itself “wanted to be made”. As though there is this film that is actually much bigger than all of us, all the musicians, the festival organizers and the filmmakers. Good things continued to happen with this project and the film found the right people often enough for me to believe the Sufi’s observation and prediction was really true. And also, that kind of thing is really a nice inspiration for one’s work, especially during those long and lonely months of editing.
How did this project come to fruition? If you could, please provide me with a rundown, start to finish, from your involvement.
The journey of my new film began in San Francisco in the Spring of 2002, when a friend brought an inspiring Moroccan Sufi teacher, Dr. Ahmed Sidi Kostas, to my film studio. After a wonderful, rich conversation, Ahmed invited me to come visit him during the Fez Festival of World Sacred Music, taking place a month later. I remember the warmth in his voice: “So come, brother, come, with or without your camera.”
This was truly an offer I couldn’t refuse, and a week later, free plane tickets, hotel and ground transportation vouchers ‘miraculously’ arrived. Two weeks after that, I was on my way with two crew members to North Africa, packing credit cards and small digital video cameras. The documentary journey that would become Sound of the Soul unfolded from there – fuelled in large part by what Dr. Kostas called the “baraka” (Arabic for grace) of a divinely human story that seemingly “wanted to be told.”
The setting was truly magical: a walled city, labyrinthine streets full of people from all over Africa and around the world. We learned that Fez was founded as a religious sanctuary in the 9th century A.D. by a Sufi saint, fleeing persecution in Baghdad. Since contentious differences of religion lie at the heart of over half the world’s major armed conflicts today, it felt right to me to be filming in an enlightened, Islamic center of acceptance and tolerance.
For ten days, beginning every afternoon until the following dawn, rhythms and lyrics of different cultures poured forth from the most fantastic medieval locations throughout the city. Afghan, Russian, Portuguese, Jewish, among others – each creating an almost trance-like “opening of the heart.” After sunrise, we unexpectedly discovered an amazing gathering of scholars, musicians, scientists, U.N. & World Bank leaders, and spiritual teachers from all continents, deeply listening and talking with each other in an international symposium called “The Soul of Globalization.” We witnessed real dialogues about global poverty, war, debt, religious strife, and more. The film portrays breakthroughs in empathy, compassion and respect – driven by the fact that art is one of the few pathways we have as human beings to really understand that “we are all connected”.
Finally, my vision for Sound of the Soul is multi-faceted: to entertain, inspire and pull people "into the tent" for a unique conversation which will help heal wounds, address misunderstandings, and lay forth a new groundwork for inter-faith acceptance and world peace. My dream is that this film will act as a catalyst to promote the power of music to "open the heart" for dialogues between people and leaders of different religions around the world.
What was the biggest challenge in the production of the movie, be it principal photography or post-production?
The biggest challenge is to make a film which deals with the mystical experience, but isn’t trite or esoteric.
This film is my first music-driven documentary. It is an attempt to use sacred music to delve deeply into the source of all world religions: that is the mystical experience. Moses had his on the mountain; Jesus had his in the desert and Mohammed in his cave. The religions, citing their Holy Scriptures and condemnations of the other faiths, followed. Here with this film, music is a doorway to that direct, transcendent experience, because it has the power to heal, and to affirm that we are all in this world together… singing different songs in different languages but together creating essentially One Sound – the sound of the human soul.
One of the challenges here was to not just make a concert film, but to find the balance between experience and giving important information and context. In that sense, I tried to develop and lie out the most compelling elements from each culture, language and faith into an interesting and viable narrative, and let my audience connect the various dots and ultimately make their own movie. I can only hope that they recognize in the process something new about the human spirit, the human condition and about themselves.
My attraction to the mystical goes back to deep childhood reflections on St. Francis of Assisi and his mystical connection to animals and to all creation. Perhaps because my middle name is Francis, or because I grew up in the city of Saint Francis, there is this affinity to the “direct connection” with animals, nature and life. During the wanderings of my early 20s, I met and studied with a sufi shaykh named Bawa Mujahideen in Sri Lanka. And while living and working in and out of different Muslim countries over the next two decades, I stayed connected to the “divine intoxication” of the sufi mystics, in Iran, Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan, through occasional “zikr” practices and through the poetry of Rumi, Hafiz, and Ansari.
But how do we convey some of this in a film? Sound of the Soulis a canvas to explore some of these mystical yearnings, yet still hopefully hold a general audience’s attention.
Sound of the Soul uses the vehicle of sacred music to delve into “the mystical experience”, which now, after months in the editing room, I’m now convinced is the source of all world religions. Moses had his on the mountain, Jesus in the desert, Mohammed in his cave. It seems that a mystical moment of “direct connection” took place, which led to the founding of a religion. It’s no secret that the mystics from various faiths most always get along well together. They also have a lot more fun than the scripture-driven crowd. I think simply because they know, on a deep level, that they are all connected to the same source. Like the cosmic riddle, it’s funny and brings a smile to one’s face.
And after two years of listening to this fantastic music in the editing room, I’m now convinced that with all the fear surrounding 9/11, terrorism, rising sectarian violence and this so-called “clash of civilizations”, music has a unique potential to heal, and remind us once again that our similarities are much more real than our differences. So now, Fez is not so much a place as a state of mind, a state of openness to ‘the other’. And in the final search for a title for this film, I began to feel the alchemy of Fez – different songs from different faiths, sung in different languages but taken together creating “a single sound”, a sound which I call here the Sound of the Soul. I can only hope others will hear it.[br]
Talk a bit about the festival experiences, if any, that you have had with this particular film. Have you had any interesting audience stories or questions that have arisen at screenings?
I love the comment at Tribeca Film Festival, in a cinema which was 50 yards from Ground Zero in New York when festival director Peter Scarlet introduced Sound of the Soul by saying "The music you will see in this film is extraordinary, and its message of healing is extraordinary. There is no film that is screening in this film festival this year that means more to me, and I think that means more to the possible future of us living in this city, and on this planet."
Who would you say your biggest inspirations are in the film world (directors, actors, cinematographers, etc)? Did you have any direct inspirations from filmmakers for this film in particular?
I’m trying to really express myself through a personal style. I was influenced by Chris Marker, Jean Rouch, Bill Jersey, and a few others.
Please tell me some filmmakers or talent that you would love to work with, even if money was no object.
Roman Polanski, Haskell Wexler and John Sayles.
Do you think that you have “made it” in this profession yet? If you don’t believe so, what do you think would happen for that moment to occur?
In terms of industry acknowledgement, I’ve won the national Emmy for best director -- (then I stepped outside the hotel and a pidgin shit on my rented tux) – along with the Dupont-Columbia Award and the Peabody Award. My film Last Images of War was the first alternate of Academy Award Nominations in 2002. I feel I’ve “made it”, but I say that mostly in terms of the fact that I’m still working with a lot of freedom and independence, rather than success in the traditional sense.
How important do you think the critical/media response is to film these days, be it a large production, independent film or festival title?
It can save or sink a film. Beyond that, every film desperately needs its champions, be it in the press, festival directors, broadcasters, funders and otherwise.
If your film could play in any movie theatre in the world, which one would you choose?
Venice Film Festival, on the island of Lido.
Do you have an opinion on the issue of “A Film by (Insert Director Here)” ? Is this something you use? Many people collaborate to make a film yet simultaneously, the director is the final word on the production.
Yes, but it depends on the film. With Sound of the Soul, it started from such a personal place, and I was so much involved in the editing, and the writing, and as I have an emerging oeuvre of work, it seemed appropriate.
What would you say to someone on the street to see your film instead of the latest blockbuster playing at the Paramount?
Do you like music? Are you willing to be really touched by music? Then come see my film.
No doubt there are a lot of aspiring filmmakers at film festivals who are out there curious about making a film of their own. Do you have any advice that you could provide for those looking to get a start?
Choose a subject or a protagonist that will continue to fascinate and fulfill you for at least two years, since that’s at least how long you are likely to be involved.
And finally…what is your all time favourite motion picture, and why?
Sound of the Soul…because I can’t get the music out of my system.
The 25th Vancouver International Film Festival runs from September 28th to October 13th, 2006. To see when this film is playing, and for more information on other screenings, happenings and what is going on at this year’s VIFF, point your browser to viff.org. – Jason Whyte, jasonwhyte@efilmcritic.com
link directly to this feature at http://hollywoodbitchslap.com/feature.php?feature=1957
originally posted: 09/29/06 05:44:44
last updated: 10/31/06 20:40:04
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