Shubbak 2021

By Beverly Andrews

The Middle East is perhaps one of the most widely misunderstood and misrepresented regions in the world. Often lectured by those who write about it, for the region’s human rights abuses, while many of the same journalists, sometimes ignore similar abuses in their native countries. The Shubbak Festival in London, a biannual arts festival which highlights the work of artists from throughout the region seeks to challenge this. And in the process of doing so, offers an all too rare opportunity, to see the Middle East from the perspective of those who actually live there. Below are some of this year’s festival highlights.

Adnan Joubran is one of the most acclaimed Oud players in the world and his sold-out concert at London’s intimate Jazz Café was not only a highlight of the festival but a musical highlight of the year so far. Joubran is a composer as well as an extraordinary musician and on that evening transported those lucky enough to be there, back to the region. It was very moving to see the audience filled with members from the region’s diaspora. All clearly moved to be there.

Joubran himself comes from a musical family, both his mother and his sister are renowned singers in their own right, while Joubran’s father actually makes Ouds, the instrument his son plays. Joubran himself produces music which is a blend of the east with the west, while also gently reminding those who listen of the Palestinian cause. Joubran’s music has graced the soundtracks of films from around the world, most famously the Oscar nominated documentary Five Broken Cameras. A film which charts the impact of the Israeli/ West Bank barrier on a tiny West Bank community. The film was directed by Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat and his Israeli co- director Guy Davidi and it takes its title from the number of cameras broken or shot in the process of filming. Five Broken Cameras upon release has been acclaimed throughout the world.

Joubran’s concert was one of the first in the capital after the country’s long Covid lockdown and it felt very much like a privilege to be there.

Another of the festival highlights was the promenade performance piece, Every Act of Recognition Alters What Survives. Created by multi-disciplined artist, Rand Abdul Jabbar and located in London’s beautiful but sweetly hidden, Chelsea Physic Garden, the piece is a journey through these beautiful gardens, where art objects have been placed and on several days’ co-creator Entissar Hajali is present to lead audiences through and recount her own tale of migration. Every Act of Recognition Alters What Survives, is a haunting meditation on the pain of migration and asks this question: when we are forced to leave our native homes what is it that we keep in our memories as well as in our hearts? Hajali’s performance as the storyteller is enchanting and this haunting piece reminds any who attend, that people forced to leave their homes carry with them a wound which rarely heals.

Running in conjunction with the Shubbak festival was the Safa film festival and the festival showcases films from throughout the Arab world. One standout production which was screened was the acclaimed Egyptian feature, SOUAD by Ayten Amin. SOUAD is a haunting, beautiful film which looks at Egyptian youth in the shape of two sisters who live in the conservative region of Zagazig, on the Nile Delta. There the oldest of the two sisters, lives a double life. On the surface Souad, a breath-taking performance by Bassant Ahmed, is a quiet obedient daughter to her loving but conservative parents, while also carrying on a clandestine love affair with a young man from Alexandria mainly through her mobile phone. When tragedy strikes, her younger sister, Rabab, played beautifully by Basmala Elghaiesh, goes on a hazardous journey to understand why. SOUAD paints a searing portrait of a generation caught between two radically different worlds, a division which is only exasperated by their use of social media. It’s a tragic indictment of a culture in which young people are pulled in polar opposite directions and where some ultimately lose their way.

An honourable mention to this list would be The Return of Danton, performed by a group of Syrian actors living in exile in German. The actors are rehearsing Georg Büchner’s masterpiece Danton’s Death, a play which explores the conflict between French revolutionary heroes Danton and Robespierre. The Return of Danton though is in fact a play within a play and in it we watch has life imitates art, when we see the actors themselves begin to argue about the Syrian revolution. Produced by Collective Ma’louba, an intercultural theatre lab, the production illustrates how the actors’ arguments in fact mirror the real life conflict between Danton and Robespierre, with Robespierre ultimately ordering the execution of his former friend and in doing so underscores the sentiment which is that revolutions often consume their own children.

The Shubbak festival is a welcome counter weight to the media images we so often see of the Middle East. The festival offers its own nuanced, compassionate portrait of a fascinating region.

form-idea.com London, 2nd August 2021.