The Syrian director Omar Amirlay has recently screened his third film “Chickens” at the French Institute’s Cinema Club for Arabic Studies in Damascus.
The film was produced by the Arab Syrian TV in 1977 and was screened once after one year of its production. This time marks the second time of screening for the public after the longstanding ban for censorship reasons rather than artistic, according to the UAE daily al Bayan.
The black and white “Chickens” two-hour film tackles the economic and social changes that take place in the Syrian village of Sadad, an ancient area that goes back to 3000 BC. and which was mentioned in the Old Testament. As for modern Sadad, it is an arid deserted village after its farmers got rid of feudalisation through the agricultural reform laws.
Water sources in the village are dried and its lands become poorly cultivated spurring its inhabitants staying there to turn to fabric and rug knitting. Then the inhabitants become crazy of establishing modern chicken farms. This phase ends with great financial losses due to the lack of protection laws for these miserable people against the imported eggs.
Omar used the press interview technologies in a daring satire style that touched on the political taboos.
The film starts telling briefly the old and modern history of this village and then pauses for a short while at the living conditions in it to move on afterwards to the main topic which is raising chickens which the village inhabitants take as a profession. It monitors the reasons for the village conditions and the periods of booming and recession. The director shoots the evidences that contain funny paradoxes between words and actions.
At times the camera interfered to make some caricature changes in the scenes -- Albawaba.com
