Still Recording

When the first tremors of the revolution swept through Syria, Saeed Al Batal and Ghiath Ayoub were still students in Damascus. Soon, Saeed decided to move to Douma, in Eastern Ghouta, the agricultural plain surrounding Damascus. He took part in the revolution with a camera in hand, filming what was happening—this marked the beginning of the making of Still Recording. The film primarily deals with daily life in a city besieged by the regime (from 2013 to 2018) and the role of art in times of war. The documentary is also a profound reflection on the power of images as much as of sound. One of its most powerful sequences depicts the chemical attacks launched by the regime on Ghouta in 2013. Silent and odorless, these chemical weapons were no less deadly: hundreds of people died, and those who survived suffered horribly; yet the wounds were invisible and the buildings intact, unlike in a bombing. What, then, remains to be shown or heard when tragedy manifests itself silently and immovably? Abandoned by the filmmaker, who rushes to aid those affected, the camera—left on the ground—continues recording on its own, against all odds and beyond the filmmaker’s control.

Justine Pignato
Researcher in film and media studies
and programmer