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A young Bahraini team of budding filmmakers, including director Ahmed Akbar, cinematographer Jaffar Alhalwachi and script-supervisor Mohamed Fareed, has made their second short film entitled Window.
The film got selected for the Scenario Production Award and won the Best Cinematography award at the Made with Passion short film festival, both organised by The Isa Cultural Centre (ICC) in support of Bahrain short film production.
Window tells a story that glimpses into the life of a middle-aged couple as they struggle with the inability to conceive. A happily married Bahraini couple live a quiet and peaceful life. But the quietness in their life is plaintive.
The script by Ahmed, Mohamed Sultan and Fareed has small poignant moments that make the story stay with you. It has beautifully captured the silence and emptiness through every sight and sound.
Short film is an art in itself and the beauty in telling a story in a short amount of time is certainly a challenge that these cinephiles seem to truly enjoy.
The legendary New Yorker film critic Richard Brody once said: “Movie theatres are like restaurants, which offer a chance for a good long talk; but there are also cafés for a chat, and the cinema needs those, too.” That’s the story of short films, in short.
Talking about keeping-it-strictly-short, Ahmed, Jaffar and Mohamed are happy to continue making short films with their limited resources, saying: “We’re hungry for good stories.”
Director-editor Ahmed believes short films are a way to tell his own story. “Our long-term dream is to make a full-length feature film and winning Oscars one day,” added Mohamed.
Not only are short films imaginative and creative, it also helps to keep a healthy pool of new techniques. The team talked about how they managed to pull resources from Serbia to do the sound design and credit goes to Ognjan Miloševid for the amazing job.
A filmmaker’s ultimate desire is to reach the maximum audience. Mohamed, being a successful content creator, has his own marketing and distribution plans for public screenings, festival visits and finally releasing the film online.
Submitting films to the international film festivals is expensive and time consuming too, especially when these film-enthusiasts can only spend time after their day jobs. In spite of it, they wish to participate in the major short film festivals around the world.
Ahmed added: “The film has been selected at the Wow Film Festival in Tunisia and we are looking forward to watching it in the upcoming Bahrain Film Festival in March.”
However, a lack of film funding is the major hitch they have faced during the making of it. They want Bahrain to encourage and promote amateur and professional short filmmakers to celebrate Bahrain film culture.
Mohamed recalls a time when a short film was shown prior to a feature, stating: “Those days are long gone.”
Mostly inspired by the European school of cinema, the self-made director Ahmed is so passionate about moviemaking with every little means that he stressed: “I make money to make films.”
Jaffar has more than a decade experience with camera and hopes his passion for film will help him more capable of making more shorts.
Mohamed, who grew up watching American independent cinema, strongly believes the short film probably does not make his filmmaker’s career, but it definitely expands it. He hopes “to introduce the cinema of Bahrain at the prestigious film festivals of the world.”
