Warsaw 2015 Interview: "I Am A Bit Of A Troublemaker," Parvez Sharma On Shooting Forbidden Doc A SINNER IN MECCA

Contributor; Slovakia (@martykudlac)
Warsaw 2015 Interview: "I Am A Bit Of A Troublemaker," Parvez Sharma On Shooting Forbidden Doc A SINNER IN MECCA
Three sold out screenings of A Sinner in Mecca, a documentary by New York-based, India-born activist and filmmaker Parvez Sharma, proved the importance of the film, even in a predominantly Catholic country, as we like to label Poland. The director patiently endured and answered the deluge of questions flying from the auditorium, from the expected ones this kind of documentary is bound to evoke to more exotic queries, such as the technicalities of Sharia in regard to capital punishment for sodomy. 

Almost an hour-long Q&A session affirmed the public is eager to familiarize itself with different cultures. In the case of Muslim culture, those questions are even more urgent as refugees surge into Europe. Filed under 'European migrant crisis' in mainstream news outlets, recent events have stirred mixed emotions and forced politicians to scratch their heads. ScreenAnarchy had an opportunity for a private interview sessions with the director, who already has minor fatwas imposed on his head. 

ScreenAnarchy: Was it worth it? 

Parvez Sharma: It was absolutely worth it. It's very important film that can actually create a lot of change and not as many filmmakers are as committed as I am. I did it with my previous film, to get some activism out there, so I will spend the next few years making sure that this film has its full potential and that it can reach Muslim audiences. For me, that is the most important thing, to get to Muslims, and I have to figure out how am I going to do that. 

When did the decision to film your Hajj arise? 

In 2011, I spent some time as an activist writing about the revolution in Egypt and reporting on that and Osama bin Laden died at that time. I am bit of a troublemaker so I thought that this would be the perfect time for me to go to Saudi Arabia and see if anything was going to change. Of course nothing did. And of course, there were very personal reasons to go on the pilgrimage that are explained in the film. 

It feels like a personal film. 

Yes. It is very personal film and that is deliberate. Initially, when I was starting editing, it was not going to be this personal but later on we decided that it would be very important to create a personal narrative of the character so that people would be interested in going on the journey with him. If you do not feel any connection to the person, you do not want to spend the next 79 minutes being in this journey with him. That´s why it's personal but it's also very political. And I tried very hard to reach a balance between the two things. 

Were you thinking also of non-Muslim viewers whilst filming your journey? 

Absolutely. I think there is a lot of education in the film for non-Muslim audiences. As I said in the film, non-Muslims have not been allowed to enter Mecca for more than 14 centuries. So the film is opening up a world they have not seen before, it has not been done before. That's why it´s really important for non-Muslim audiences as well. For Muslims, you know the phrase holding up a mirror to yourselves, that's what the film does. It makes Muslims question critically some very important issues about Islam, Mecca and Saudi Arabia. 

Did the self-reflection in Muslim society happen already? 

It's too early. The film has just been out for six months and I cannot make a general assumption right now. I will have to wait and see if that happens or not. I mean, there is a lot of hate mail, death threats, all that crap but it's coming from people who have not seen the film, obviously. So maybe then people will get to engage with the film, and I gave several interviews in media saying the film is not an attack on Islam, it's an attack on Saudi Arabia's version of Islam. When that distinction becomes clear, hopefully Muslim audiences will react differently. 

You shot the film on an iPhone. How did that go? 

I had my iPhone 4s back at that time in 2011. Technically, there was not much I could do. I had to unlearn everything they teach you in film school. I had to go back to this whole idea of making a feature of which 85% was shot on iPhone , is not an idea that has been done at that time even though people are increasingly using it. Especially in that time, it was completely new. So it was about unlearning all the rules of filmmaking. The nature of the footage that came out as a result of being shot on mobile technology was that it was fragmentary. It was not always carefully planned sequences and stuff like that, and because of this, it was hard to edit it, having pieces here and pieces there. It was a big jigsaw puzzle that had to be constructed. 

Did you train yourself somehow to get used to shooting with a smartphone? 

No. I started recording my life six months before I left. So I was already recording a lot of it

How did you choose what or when to shoot, since you were limited by batteries? 

I had also two other little cameras on me which basically looked like flip phones. So I had three devices that I used interchangeably according to battery. Obviously, I did not film all the time because I knew I was on a spiritual journey. There is lot of passages that are very personal and I was not filming those. I was only filming when I was filming. Early on in Saudi Arabia, when the journey starts in Medina, religious police took my phone away. This actually happened several times. They swiped through the footage and deleted it. What you see in the film is the footage that survived. And there were many attempts to delete the remaining footage. 

What happened when they caught you? 

Which they did and then erased my footage. 

No other punishment was imposed? 

No. They did not take me to prison. Everybody has now a smartphone, so people are taking selfies all the time. 

That means it's allowed? 

It's allowed as they don't want it to happen but they simply cannot control it. There are two million people taking selfies in Mecca, so how are they going to control it. They can't. As a visitor, you stand there, take a quick selfie and you are out but as a filmmaker, you are standing at the same spot for a long period of time. 

But you had your iPhone hidden. 

But also in my hand many times. Up here. 

When you shot yourself. 

Yeah. When you see the Kabba sequences, some of them are beautiful pans and all that kind of stuff and that attracts attention because you are behaving differently. You are not like a regular tourist. And then I would get into trouble. 

For instance? 

Religious police comes and hit you with a stick. 

That's very old-fashioned. 

It's ridiculous. 

What was the volume of footage you managed to smuggle out of Saudi Arabia? 

It was an amazing amount. I think I ended up with at least around 300 gigabytes. And that is a lot. 

Are you planning to use the remaining material somehow, like for bonus features? 

I do not know yet. Maybe, I do not know, they are planning to make a DVD. Probably, you always have DVD extras. 

You can drop some also on iTunes nowadays. 

Yeah, but right now I am sick of it. 

What do you mean? 

I just finished editing six months ago. I do not want to look at it again at least for a certain period of time. 

Was it emotionally exhausting to edit the material? 

It's very hard to look at yourself. When a camera enters a space, it changes the relationship usually between the subject and the filmmaker. And when a filmmaker turns the camera against himself, that is a whole other case. You can write lengthy pieces about what happens. When you are filming yourself, you are thinking about how much of yourself you are going to reveal to this little device and how honest you are going to be. To make a personal film is very challenging. And the biggest danger is that it can be self-indulgent. So I tried very hard. 

For example the editing, half of it was done in India and the other half in U.S. So I told the editor that we would use a third person, I mean I was sitting next to the editor and he would not say "you" talking about the footage and I would not say "I", we would say "he" so both of us can train our minds to think that the person that was on screen was not the person who was the filmmaker. We were thinking about it just as someone living within the boundaries of the film. And I think that was a very important exercise. It took a lot of time to get used to it but by the end of it even I was saying "he". 

Your previous film, A JIHAD FOR LOVE, also generated strong reactions. One would have guessed that your face would be fairly recognized in Saudi Arabia. 

That´s what I was most afraid of when I went there...that somebody would find out. I think I slipped in through a crack. They are processing two to three million visas during the time of the Hajj and they do not have the opportunity to check everyone. I just pass through it with luck. 

I did not mean only authorities. Nobody in the public recognized you? 

No. I am not that recognizable. 

A SINNER IN MECCA is very critical towards Saudis also regarding the capitalistic boom. Did you know about it before you shot it? 

No, I learned everything only after I went there. I was always very critical of the Saudis, that much knowledge I had that this is a hypocritical, horrible place. I also knew that the ideology of ISIS comes from Saudi Arabia's Wahabi Law. And not many people talk about that because they do not know it. But that is how dangerous Saudia Arabia's version of Islam is. It's very, very dangerous. 

What is your relation to Islam? 

A good one. And it got only better after making the film and the Hajj. 

I was under impression that the last part of the ritual left you a little bit perplexed. 

Yeah, but in the voiceover it says, "It´s no longer a question whether Islam will accept me, the question is whether I will accept Islam". 

When you put it this way, did you have problem with the religion itself before? 

Not really. When you grow up in it, you cannot isolate yourself from the religion, it's part of you. I can look at the religion intellectually and talk about problems in it and not many Muslims can do it. 

Somebody unrelated to Islam might think about the religion only the terms of media construction of it. Your film broadens the horizons. This kind of discussion is lacking also here in Europe. 

Europe is in the center of it actually with all these fears. You have heard about the Arabia, right, so that Europe is going to be filled up with Arabs very soon and everything is going to get very difficult because Muslims are coming from every corner and they are going to capture the very idea of Europe. Take what happened in Paris earlier this year, that is a good example. 

The case I am trying to make in a subtle way in the film is that the Saudi Arabia ideology of Wahabi Islam is very dangerous and it is not a coincidence that Osama bin Laden was a Saudi, it is not a coincidence that 15 out of 19 hijackers on September 11 were Saudis. There is a reason for this. 

And Saudis are teaching Wahabi Islam to children in their schools and not only that they are exporting it to every corner of the Muslim world because of how rich they are. This Islam is reaching Indonesia, India, Malaysia, everywhere, and with this kind of Islam comes a particular way of thinking which is very problematic, and it is turning Muslim societies into more conservative societies wherever that influence of Saudi Islam is. The real change in Islam can happen only when Saudi's Islam is challenged. In my opinion, at least. 

Do you think the change will come? 

I am very pessimistic. I think the change will not happen for a very long time. 

But you will continue your crusade. 

I will do what I can. 

Recently, there were cases of young people being attracted to ISIS in Europe and U.S. In your opinion, why has this happened? 

The version of Islam ISIS sells is not the version of Islam that I agree with and it's not the version of Islam that the majority of Muslims are going to agree with. It is a very small minority. The people who jump on that bandwagon are maybe mentally imbalanced. I mean why would you be attracted and be part of the policy of hatred and killing? Since I am not one of them, I cannot explain why that happens.

What was the reaction of the LGBT community to the film? 

So far it's positive. We had this screening in Toronto with about 200 people in the audience and suddenly this one man stood up and basically came out and he said, "I will never be able to go" and this is so important "because I think you made the Hajj on behalf of all of us who will never be able to go". That was a powerful reaction coming from an audience member. The reactions are still developing, it's still a new film and I think it takes time to form some kind of consent about a film. But this film is not about homosexuality, my previous one was about that. I always say with the first film, I came out as a gay man, with this one, I am coming out as a Muslim. That's what it is about. 

Which one was harder? 

The second one.

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