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“½ REVOLUTION” directors, Karim El Hakim & Omar Shargawi
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 9:00 am –Egyptian Theatre, Park City]
Co-director Karim El Hakim:
The challenge of capturing the spontaneity of life in all its hidden moments and glancing magic is why I am a filmmaker. What turns me on is exploring the time and space around me, following the individual threads of emotional energy in each of the characters I become invested in. The more intense and stressful a situation is, the more emotional the characters become. How will these emotional strings play out? How will they intertwine and conflict? How do they reflect the situation? What will be the outcome? I feel like a kid in a candy store just thinking about it ;)
1/2 Revolution is a completely accidental film. When the Egyptian Revolution sparked, we had a knee-jerk reaction to the massive protests erupting around us and we knew we had to film it -for history’s sake at the very least. Of course we were also living the situation, both as participants and observers at the same time.
After a few days of living and filming, we discovered the purpose of our film, who the characters were (ourselves and our circle of friends), and what the story was (living through it all). We also discovered that the film was not particularly about the Revolution -we did not run around town like reporters covering every event. We were living our lives, experiencing the street and filming along the way.
The result we discovered while editing 1/2 Revolution, is a strange cross-over that breaks the line, that merges “behind-the-camera” with “in-front-of-the-camera” planes of reality and image that somehow invite the audience to be along the ride with us, to be one of our friends in the group experiencing the waves of action in real-time.
I love to tell stories and share them with people -especially weird and wonderful things that happen to me in my life. My path to filmmaking was a complete and wonderful surprise, a spontaneous moment I experienced while hitch-hiking around France after University. I found an old Eumig Super8 camera, vintage 70’s, complete with manual and accessories -in a trash dumpster in Biarritz. The thing worked. I saw that moment as a sign and ended up shooting my first two films with it when I got back home to Boston -music videos for my buddy G. Love and his band Special Sauce.
This accidental relationship to filmmaking, to being self-taught with a found camera has influenced how I approach the filming of the stories I live to tell: to somehow capture the real essence of life and the true moments that can never be repeated.
Co-director Omar Shargawi:
The magic began as a kid, watching Charles Bronson, Bruce Lee and Clint Eastwood movies on the video recorder. I new as a 6 years old that this was the world that I belonged to. Nothing could make that little kid escape from harsh reality as the movies. When seducing man, nothing works like the movies. Far the most effective and magical way to share ones ideas, dreams and views. The day I have nothing more to say, I will stop making films.
