"I said, 'Aren't you the woman who was recently given a Fulbright?'"
If you're a nerd for Paul Simon, you've been looking to drop this line at a party since the mid-80s. And you should totally do it if Shara K. Lange is in the room.
Around this time last year, the Fulbright committee granted her an award and shipped her off to Morocco to film a documentary. She had recently graduated from UT's Radio, TV, and Film Department’s MFA program in production.
Her thesis project, "The Way North," was in a stage of mid-completion, but that project is now finally wrapped up (much to our delight)! It premieres at AFS this Wednesday along with other UT films.
"The Way North" follows the complex lives of several North African women living in Marseille, France. Their turbulent immigrant experience unfolds as a tapestry of politics, personal struggle, community and the often-ignored sensuality of culture.
The director talks more about it all after the jump.
Your film "The Way North" is about to debut here in Texas at the AFS. What's it about?
It's about Maghrebi women in Marseille, France. Here's the official description from my website, "...from Marseille, come the stories of...North African immigrant women cultivating new lives for themselves and their families in contemporary France."
This is really a documentary about people. The Way North is a portrait of a wonderful, strong, talented woman -- Fatima Rhazi --who survived upheaval and trauma and now chooses to help other women who are struggling. The film is also a portrait of other women who have benefited from Fatima’s efforts, and also of they city they live in. Marseille is not only the place and the context, but also a protagonist in her own right, since she represents a unique part of France, and struggles to redefine and assert herself, not unlike the women in the film.
[Ed. note: Fatima established an organization called Femmes D'Ici et D'Ailleurs (Women From Here and Afar) which provides essential services to North African women, often in exchange for their work making authentic North African clothing or food]
When did you first start working on "The Way North"? Where did you get the idea? Did you have to learn French?
I lived in Marseille for five months in 2003 before graduate school at UT to learn French, and it was largely because of having fallen in love with the city that I went back there to make "The Way North".
When I was thinking about what my thesis documentary would be, I was aware of a lot of news and films about immigration in the US and I thought about Marseille. This is a place dealing with a lot of the same issues—large numbers of immigrants looking for work, people so desperate to move north that they risk their lives, human rights abuses of undocumented persons, identity issues, etc.—and my hope was that by looking at some of these issues through a less familiar lens, American audiences might be able to think about them differently, or at least they might gain some new insight.
Besides dealing with immigration, I was aware that I was making a documentary about Muslims. Although the documentary deals very little with Islam explicitly, I thought it was important to contribute a sensitive, non-sensational documentary to the dialogue about Arab cultures, since on the whole, Americans know very little and are exposed to very little that is not about war and sensationalized difference.
Tell us a bit about the films main characters. Who is your favorite? Why?
I can’t have a favorite character! They are all great in different ways— Fatima is so strong and admirable. She is complex and beautiful, difficult and big-hearted. Itto is joyful and opinionated. She defies stereotypes—she chooses to wear the headscarf and really loves her new life. She seems simple, but it is clear that there is a lot she keeps to herself, that she has cultivated a public persona (for me? For the French?) and since she is so young, one wonders how she will weather the future in her adopted country. Hadja and her story are really the heart of the film. Hadja is honest and sincere and expressive. She is strong and caring and despite immense difficulties, manages to be a great, thoughtful mother and keeps her family together.
How is Marseille different than the rest of France?
My perspective is that Marseille is truly a special place, unlike any other city in France, and that it is imperiled. Unlike other big cities in France, the city center in Marseille doesn’t only belong to the rich—there is a real mix of people that live there. Rich, poor, immigrant, tourist, Marseille-natives, etc. Marseille recently built an above ground tramway, however, that looks nice but doesn’t extend the coverage of mass-transportation. It seems that the city is trying to polish its image, presumably to attract money and/or tourists. If this were to lead to a completely gentrified downtown, it would be a shame. Besides displacing people, this momentum threatens the unique character of Marseille.
How did you become interested in the North African population?
Really this interest came from my interest in Marseille, since an enormous percentage of the community of Marseille is of North African origin. If I hadn’t met Fatima, however, and thought she was such a fantastic character, the documentary could have been about another immigrant group since there are Turks, Italians, Senegalese, Iranians and others that live in Marseille.
Did it give you a different perspective on race/cultural relations in the United States? How are tensions there similar? How are they different?
This is an important and difficult question that I am not equipped to answer. France has had such a long historical relationship with North Africa because of their colonial presence there. A lot of the nuances of the current situation are tied to this history.
What was the easiest part of this filmmaking experience? The most difficult?
I don’t know if any of the making of this film was really easy, but I would say that because the subject and the characters were engaging for people right away, a number of people were willing to help with the project that might not have been otherwise. A huge number of people helped with this project in big and small ways.
Although a lot of the translators were really fantastic, the worst part was probably not having money and wasting time chasing around people that said they wanted to help and bailed at some point along the way.
This is surely a part of no/lo-budget filmmaking, however, so I try not to sweat it too much and just accept that it is part of the struggle in what is overall a truly wonderful, engaging, and meaningful process.
Did it change your life in some unexpected ways (can you cook Moroccan food,
now?)
Shamefully, I still cannot cook any Moroccan food (nor much American, for that matter), though Fatima did publish a great cookbook of Moroccan recipes and I would love for it to become more widely available.
Making the documentary certainly changed my life. I am just beginning to show the film to the public, so I am sure my feelings about the project and the process will continue to evolve. I am so grateful to the people in the documentary who shared their lives with me and also to all of the many people who helped work on the film.
Practically speaking, "The Way North" led me south to Morocco, where I am living now and working on a new project, perhaps a little wiser thanks to the experiences on the first film.
You were awarded the Fulbright last year for this new project?
[Yes,] I was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to make the documentary, "The Dressmakers," a documentary about clothes making in Morocco. I arrived in Morocco in September, studied Arabic for three months, and started shooting in January.
Right now I am based in Tangiers, where most of the documentary will be shot. Another 20% of the documentary will take place in Casablanca. Casablanca is the industrial heart of the country, but Tangiers is the new frontier in manufacturing because of the new port that was recently built, several industrial zones, and a push to develop work in this area. I am also filming artisanal craftspeople that hand-make traditional Moroccan caftans and cutting edge fashion designers.
How did you come up with the project proposal, and what did the process involve?
I was interested in Moroccan clothes because of the beautiful clothes-making Fatima Rhazi was doing in Marseille in "The Way North." I started researching clothes-making there and learned that this is actually an interesting moment for manufacturing in Morocco because the apparel industry here has been in decline over the past 15+ years. It is hard for Moroccan companies to compete with places like China and India since their labor costs are higher in North Africa. Women make up about 80% of the workforce, so it is troubling to think that these women will be without jobs if these companies continue to fail. I liked the idea of comparing old and new ways of making clothes and the stories that could come from these processes.
My original proposal was about women making clothes, but there are actually a lot of men that make traditional caftans in Morocco, so I am adapting the project somewhat to what I find while working here.
How instrumental was the state of texas in helping you win it? Or the University of Texas?
I graduated from the Radio, TV, and Film Department’s MFA program in production at UT in December 2007. It was an amazing privilege to get to study film there and to focus on projects I was interested in during the four years I was there. I was definitely restless to get out of there after spending a lot of my last year in a small, boxy, editing suite, but my experiences overall at UT were really great. There were a lot of helpful resources at the University and a lot of great people in the department.
[As for Texas, it's] obviously very different from southern France where "The Way North" is based. But both places initially felt like foreign countries to me. Texas is unlike any other state I’ve lived in and before coming here I had vague ideas about what it would be like--some clichés, some fantasies, some pictures. It has taken time to get to know the place.
I am very clearly an outsider in "The Way North" —I am not French, nor Muslim, nor North African, nor an immigrant. But nor am I from Texas. The question of being an insider or an outsider is actually a very complicated one, as is answering it.
What would you recommened to prospective Fulbright applicants?
The Fulbright is competitive, but like all grants, one ought to have a well-written, well-researched project. Some connection with the host country is important to the Fulbright Commission and the project should adhere to country-specific guidelines. It is a great opportunity and I encourage anyone who is interested to apply. It does tend to be an academically oriented grant, but they accept applications from “independents”—people not affiliated with an institution.
Thanks for speaking with us, Shara!
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