Brotherhood at times of war

Abstract

2. Ballad for Syria, a musical ethnography made together with Maisa Alhafez, is a personal narrative of Maisa’s reflections on her own displacement. Our choice of concentrating on a single account was equally based onwanting to use the medium of cinema as a transformative tool. We had dialogues with Maisa throughout the film and these Unwritten Letters documents the story of a young Syrian man, Abd, arriving in Europe and making sense of who he is, through a collaborative autoethnography filmed by Abd Dukmak and Max Bloching. Abd is a twenty-four-year-old young man who took part in the early days of the 2011 revolution in Syria. Since his departure from Syria Abd has been longing for a day where he would stop traveling one-way routes, and gets the chance to hang his photographs on his own home’s walls. For the time being John Lennon and Kurt Cobain posters hang in his room and accompany Abd in his melancholy. The film begins with a night view in Lebanon, heavy in ambiance, the mood dark. Max, the co-director, introduces the film with his recognition of the pain of others (Sontag 2003), in his case a relatable other. He describes Abd to be someone of his own age who is similarly attracted to cinema.Max asks: “would there be a way to explore this moment of Abd’s transition together?” and the film takes us into a psychoanalytical journey, a conversation and dialogue taking place between two friends. Max further explains in his director’s statement: