Reem S Al-Bayyat has chosen for herself an artistic framework from which it will be difficult for her to retract. Her eight-minute short film entitled “Shadows” was featured recently in the 2009 Dubai Film Festival.
The film depicts the last moments of a man who loses his sweetheart and commits suicide, but not before he endures without her through a series of uneventful moments in his life symbolized by shadows and empty landscape. She employs the words of the famous poet Ahmed Al-Mullah to touch on the sentiments of loss and loneliness.
Reem, a graduate of film studies in Britain, employed a number of her British colleagues in her movie. Ruth Torjussen and Rosanna Mennar are credited as assistant directors while David Simpson is credited for the montage and Daniel Mccormick is cited for the photography.
In one scene, the hero, in his last moments of life, starts talking his lost love; her shadow appeared on the walls of an empty room. This was done against a musical background consisting of the sound of the sea and a song titled “Le Pas Du Chat Noir” played on Oud by Anwar Ibrahim.
The camera rolls on to show nature void of any human element followed by scenes of wild weeds, forests and vacated shores. This was life in his eyes. The loneliness and absurdity of life in her absence was shown a building serenely buried behind trees and covered by clouds.
Reem, herself a photographer, has been very careful in her choice of pictures. Director of photography Phil Peel assisted her in this work.
The film starts with the hero, British actor Bill Hutchens sitting lonely and devastated in his room while the breeze, which comes through the window, moves the curtains around him. He starts talking to the shadow of his beloved, played by actress Katy Balfour. She reads his mind and says to him: Back off from what you intend to do. He will not listen. He jumps to his death from the window while we hear the siren of the ambulance.
A colored cloth hanged on a robe between the trees is hovering. The cloth represents the colors of the missing life. Katy appears dancing the dance of meeting her lover in the after life. It may also be the dance of happiness that Bill missed during her absence.
Whatever explanation you may think of, the funeral dance completes the dramatic meaning of the meeting between the shadow and the material of the body.
Though the film is short, yet it leaves an imprint of a great director in the offing.
