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Syrian Filmmaker Leaves Haunting Record of the War That Killed Him

September 10, 2012, 5:18 pm
By CHRISTINE HAUSER

Tamer al-Awam, a Syrian filmmaker and activist, was killed over the weekend in the city of Aleppo, where he was filming the bombardment of civilian neighborhoods in the ongoing war between opposition forces and the Syrian Army.

The Syrian Journalists Association said in a Facebook statement that Mr. Awam was one of 69 media activists or journalists to have been killed covering the fighting in Syria. (While the journalists association said Mr. Awam died on Sunday, a Web site that tracks the fighting in Syria, Syrian Center for Documentation, said Mr. Awam died on Saturday while working on a film about the Free Syrian Army.)

One of Mr. Awam's most recent projects on the war was a 24-minute, Arabi c-language documentary called “Memories at a Checkpoint.”

Tamer al-Awam's “Memories of a Checkpoint.”

In one of the first sequences of the film, in which he introduces his work in northern Syria with an Austrian journalist, the camera moves hauntingly up a stairwell to show the walls of a home blackened with the residue of smoke. The slogans “Down with Bashar” and “Freedom” are scrawled on the walls. “Here, the camera conveys the image, without the death and the fear,” the filmmaker says simply.

In another scene, a family with children peering out of the gloomy room in darkness, Mr. Awam says he is giving a voice to people who only want one thing: “To tell the world: stop the killing. We are a people who love life.”

Throughout the 24-minute documentary, Mr. Awam goes from the intimacy of households, where he interviews women and children, to the secret workshops of the rebels, where they manufacture homemade rockets and then test-fire them from the back of a red Toyota pick-up truck. “We made it with our own hands,” says a fighter.

Some of the film's most gripping moments come from the filmmaker's proximity to battles - one moment, under fire with rebels on rooftop, then filming a helicopter attack on a nearby building. Some of the most moving are Mr. Awam's interactions with civilians, whose support for the Free Syrian Army put them in the line of fire. “There is shelling everywhere,” he says at one point, hurrying through narrow, rubble strewn streets with the crack of gunfire nearby. “This is Syria,” he says.

He frequently pauses to ask civilians basic questions. “Where is your father?” he asks a little boy, Mahmoud, at a graveside. “Paradise,” the little boy answers, “Who killed him?” Mr. Awam asks. “The army,” the boy replies.

He asks a little boy, standing in a doo rway, how he is sleeping. He struggles to be heard from the street as he questions a man standing at an open window, the sounds of battle nearly drowning out their voices. “No electricity, no water!” the man shouts back.

Mr. Awam's death was mourned by opposition bloggers and celebrated by supporters of President Bashar al-Assad's government.

The end of his film shows the rebel fighters taking control of a Syrian Army checkpoint in Maaret Al-Noman after a 9-hour battle. The fighters celebrate, raising their weapons high, and residents follow them in the street by motorcycle. In th e final scene, Mr. Awam appears to be sitting in a peaceful courtyard garden, smiling, with a pair of white doves on either shoulder.

That image is posted on a Facebook page set up in his memory, where people have uploaded more of his video work and photographs. “We are all the martyr, filmmaker Tamer Al-Awam,” reads one of the titles on the page.

Mr. Awam, 34, lived in Germany, but traveled back and forth to Syria to work as a reporter and filmmaker with German and international media, the journalists association said. He organized many demonstrations and activities in support of the Syrian revolution in Europe.

Last year in Germany, as the uprisings in the Middle East gained momentum, Mr. Awam was a visible, outspoken critic of the entrenched Arab governments and called for change, according to videos showing him at protests.One video posted on the Facebook tribute page shows Mr. Awam sending a direct message to Mr. Assad during one demonstration.

Mr. Awam speaking at a protest in Germany against the Syrian regime in 2011

“This is a message to the Syrian authorities, and personally to President Bashar al-Assad,” he said, speaking in Arabic. “Enough killing of civilians, enough corruption, enough repressing people. We want freedom in Syria. Freedom.”

“Bashar al-Assad, you are more than 40 years old,” he continued, in another part of that video. “Cancel the emergency law. Give political detainees in Syria their freedom, immediately.”

“The time for dictatorship has passed.”