Odaii, a young volunteer at the 16th Damascus International Film Festival, doesn’t watch Syrian films. American blockbusters are more his thing. He sees Hollywood only, because he’s fiercely focussed on bettering his English. For a visiting film critic, though, there’s nothing quite like catching as many films from the region, even if one has to make do with subtitles. It’s clunky, but it’s a way of breaking and entering. So I go looking for Syrian cinema, and find that there’s just not enough of it in the large spread on offer.My search leads me to several interesting conversations. There’s no real local production pipeline because Syria only produces a couple of films in a year, and the capital Damascus has only about ten cinema halls. Private funding would jump start the process (right now, the funds come from the government ), and would automatically lead to refurbishing the cinema halls, too. That’s something that’s waiting to happen. Meanwhile, Egyptian cinema is what gets watched the most: the showing of the rollicking comedy ‘Fawzia’s Secret Recipe’ is a full house at Dar Al Assad, the glittering main venue, with the city’s gentry, and the actors, all turned out in their finery. Also chock-a-block are the two new Syrian films, both premieres — ‘Hassiba’, and ‘Days Of Boredom’. The first is a historical, tracing the route a Damascene family takes from 1927 to the 50s, (it was shot at over 100 locations in the city ). The latter is more contemporary, about a country, and its people, getting used to the wages of war.

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