Alazeef

In a minimalist collage with a rich soundtrack, the stream of consciousness of an unknown Iraqi soldier, just before the Gulf War.

A minimalist collage with a rich sound track, Alazeef (“spirits of the desert” in Arabic) plunges the spectator into the stream of consciousness of an Iraqi soldier, one week before the Desert Storm operation of 1991 (Saif Alsaegh’s year of birth). In reply to the fragmentation of Baghdad, which resembles an “asthmatic woman”, come the voice-over fears of the unknown soldier – a generic figure of a sacrificed youth. The simpler the image (a small plastic G.I. is repeatedly buried then taken out of the sand in a coloured interplay of light) and the more poetic and richer the monologue, the more cinema appears to be returned to its foundations. Inflamed to the point of surrealism, the mix of metal guitars, Edith Piaf’s “Le Noël de la rue”, Bugs Bunny and the beautiful chanting of the singer Filfel Gourgy fittingly reflects the contradictory whirlwind that sweeps up the narrator. “I was told that the Americans were my enemies. But I love them… Batman, Superman, Marlboro…” The shiny skin of a model dressed up as a cowgirl on a Playboy cover embodies the desirability of the Other who must imperatively be reviled, just as tea and not wine must imperatively be sipped. This story of a literally hellish sensorial experience slides towards a sort of elegy of protest, a modest yet provocative resistance.