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August 28, 2010
By Jennifer Karchmer
In These Financially Trying Times, We Need Assertive, Go-Get ‘Em Storytellers, Like Anna Kipervaser…
… and a team of talented, professional, pioneering reporters, photogs, editors, and filmmakers who will tell the untold story.
In this issue of my blog, “At Its Best” I’d like to bring attention to the work of Anna Kipervaser, the producer of “Voices and Faces of the Adhan: Cairo” documenting the story of a religious tradition going by the wayside, thanks – or due to – technology.
I first learned of Anna and her documentary project in May of this year while listening to NPR, which carried a report on the Islamic call to prayer. I was fascinated to learn that this 1,000-year-old tradition in Cairo, Egypt was being altered. Originally it was to be replaced by an electronic, version. Now, Anna reports that the call to prayer will continue to be live but announced by one muezzin from a radio station, spread throughout Cairo by wireless receivers – a big change indeed.
Cozied up in my apartment in Bellingham, Wash, getting informed by radio in the Northwest corner of the United States, why would this journalist be interested in a long-time religious tradition thousands of miles away going through a major metamorphosis?
“The first rough draft of history,” I thought.
I’ll let Philip Graham, former publisher and co-owner of the Washington Post, take the credit for this phrase having said it in a 1963 speech to reporters in London “...so let us today drudge on about our inescapably impossible task of providing every week a first rough draft of history that will never really be completed about a world we can never really understand.”[i]
I believe Graham was referring to our obligation and our duty to tell the whole truth with an open mind using the best journalistic tools we possess in our quiver. This includes an inexplicably high level of ethics as what we write, shoot, photograph, say and produce will go down in history, serving as history.
As the NPR piece I caught that afternoon came to a close, I managed to scribble down some notes, and although spelling Anna’s last name incorrectly, located her Facebook page and subsequent link to On Look Films, the production company putting together the documentary.
Anna, based in Chicago, is backed by a slew of talented and professional reporters, editors, writers, photographers, videographers and filmmakers. I’m impressed with this diverse team who are passionate about cultural topics of significance and informing themselves through research and first-person reporting: http://www.onlookfilms.com/about.html
Having completed several trips to Cairo, Egypt, the team is documenting the story of the muezzin, the people who recite the Islamic call to prayer, known as the adhan, which is called out five times a day from thousands of mosques in Cairo. Apparently, the beauty of a variety of muezzins is becoming obsolete as only one will be assigned to do the call to prayer disseminating the message via wireless receivers. This change began this year.
To get a sense of the story and what the team has gone through to gain access and complete their interviews, viewers can watch an impressive 8-minute short that features some of what Anna and her team hope to accomplish with a full-length documentary. Yet another angle they explore shows how the traditional adhan creates a melodious sound in itself, like a musical instrument. See “Harmonies of Cairo” on their webpage: www.onlookfilms.com and for more on the history of the adhan and Egypt, go to: http://www.onlookfilms.com/history.html
It’s no secret that US journalism is in a critical period as news outlets face dwindling budgets and devote less and less resources to international bureaus. Anna’s first-person, eye witness reporting is required to keep today’s news provocative and diverse. Otherwise, we’re limited to press release journalism -- government and commercial outfits spoonfeeding stories to newsrooms that churn out verbatim drivel.
According to the On Look Films’ website, the project is being funded, at least in part, by support from the Hartley Film Foundation, National Geographic’s All Roads Films Project and the Lucius and Eva Eastman Fund. Of course it takes time and effort to apply for such grants and funding is never guaranteed.
In fact, Anna corresponded with me via email saying, “We have raised less than half of what we need to make the thing happen… although we have been fortunate enough to have the support of these organizations, we are still struggling to get the funding necessary to complete principal photography.”
If you’re committed to a democracy that thrives on freedom of speech, diversity of ideas and open access to information, you will appreciate the work and spirit of On Look Films. Thankfully, Anna and her team is documenting the story, serving as a first rough draft of history, that could disappear before it’s too late.
Hopefully, stories like the this one from Cairo will help further our understanding of a way of life, religion, spirituality and tradition in a way that no single press release could do justice.
December 1, 2009
By Jen Reinhardt
A documentary film and audio archive project, Voices and Faces of the Adhan: Cairo aims to tell the story of the adhan, or the Islamic call to prayer, as it has been recited in Cairo for 1400 years. Supported by the Hartley Film Foundation and National Geographic's All Roads Film Project, the film is being produced by On Look Films and director Miguel Silveira, producer Anna Kipervaser and field producer Jeremy Johnson.
In early 2010, the Egyptian government will permanently alter the ancient tradition of the adhan under the Tawheed al Adhan, or Adhan Unification Project, that plans to synchronize the adhan into a single call transmitted via wireless speakers to the city's 4,000 mosques.
This plan will also affect the economic make-up of the city, as the honored position of muezzin is traditionally the role of the blind, handicapped, aged and others suffering extreme poverty. These muezzins, historically undocumented, will disappear into the general poverty level underbelly of Cairo and become almost impossible to trace.
Cairo's thousands of adhan interpretations remain poorly documented, with little historical record to preserve them for the future. On Look Films is not only filming a documentary about the changing tradition, but will create interactive public showcases of the results and an online digital media library that will give viewers access to live recordings of these Cairene adhans alongside historical and biographical information about each muezzin. Upon completion, On Look Films will donate these archives to educational organizations such as the Library of Congress.
The greatest challenge to the success of the Voices and Faces of the Adhan: Cairo project is funding. Because the documentary film project is meant not only to raise awareness but also to generate revenue for the audio archiving and art installation phases of the project, production and post-production funding is crucial to the completion of the film as an action to realizing these important next steps.
On Look Films has been fortunate to have raised almost $30,000 in the last five months through fundraising events and support, but in order to begin principal photography and to initiate the sound archiving of Cairo's 4,000+ mosques, another $140,000 must be raised before the unification takes place.
The filmmakers seek contributions at any level through their fiscal sponsor, Hartley Film Foundation. All donations are tax deductible. Donations of over $2,000 will receive a donor credit in the film. Donations of $25,000 or more will receive a producer credit in the film.
To make a donation, visit the Hartley Foundation and type in "Voices and Faces of the Adhan: Cairo" or go directly to the On Look website.
To watch the fundraising short film put together by Director Miguel Silveira, Producer Anna Kipervaser and Field Producer Jeremy Johnson during their 10-day research and development pre-production trip to Cairo in August 2009, visit http://www.onlookfilms.com/video.html.
Click here for an earlier, more extensive report. See also the BBC report.
August 18, 2009
By Tim Horsburgh
Anna Kipervaser’s On Look Films embarked on the first of multiple trips to Egypt on Aug. 16, attempting to preserve a thousand-year-old Islamic ritual through film, sound recording and an art installtion.
Voices and Faces of the Adhan: Cairo aims to capture the diverse oral tradition of live calls to prayer before they are replaced by a digital recording in 2010.
Writer/executive producer Kipervaser’s team of collaborators will first make a feature-length documentary interviewing the professional Muezzins, the mosque official who calls Muslims to prayer, whose livelihoods and art are threatened by incoming government legislation.
They will then create an immense sound archive of the individual calls before they cease to exist.
The narrative structure of the film will take place over a single day, from the first prayer at sunrise to the last in the evening, Kipervaser states.
“During the course of the day we’ll show how calls coming from thousands of mosques affect life in the city, and how this digitization is in effect, the end of the Adhan tradition.”
Columbia College film professor and director Miguel Silveira and field producer Jeremy Johnson will accompany Kipervaser on August’s 10-day research and development trip. The 10-man main crew begins a 45-day location shoot in late September.
Other crew members include art director Rodion Ron Galperin, cinematographers Yoni Goldstein and Meredith Zielke, editor Dustin Majewski, principal Interviewer Sandra Kofler, and sound team Ryan ‘Catfish’ Chindlund and Ehsan Ghoreishi. Shooting will be on Panasonic AG-HPX300 cameras.
A team of 40 archivists will then work for 100 days to record all the Muezzins reciting the prayers. Kipervaser estimates a further 6 months of editing after that point, and hopes to secure festival entry and distribution in 2011.
The trips mark the culmination of over two years of research by multimedia artist Kipervaser, who was inspired to make this her first film project after visiting Cairo in 2007.
The project received a seed grant from the Hartley Film Foundation, which is also acting as a fiscal-sponsor. The proposed total budget for the sound archive and the documentary is $620,000.
“Securing the rest of our funding is really key. We’re asking for all the help we can get from people around the world,” Kipervaser says.
“It is really urgent. We have a time limit and have to act before the Egyptian government finalizes the plan to digitize the recordings.”
Kipervaser’s phone is 847/571-6943. See www.Onlookfilms.com. Email info@onlookfilms.com
Tim Horsburgh is an associate producer with Horizons Communications Group.
July 6, 2009
By Jennifer Reinhardt
Noisy. Chaotic. Overwhelming.
All three adjectives regularly describe Cairo on any given day. Home to more than 20 million people, the sights and sounds of the city often can cause a sensory overload. Yet respite from the noisy, chaotic, and overwhelming cityscape is offered five times a day by local muezzin performing the adhan, or call to prayer.
Considered an art form, this oral tradition dating back to the time of Muhammad is an integral component to the experience of the city itself. Coming from nearly 4,000 mosques all over the city, this a capella harmony of so many human voices raised in song has the power to disrupt and transform the daily lives of millions of Cairenes.
Often starting vaguely out of synch in different musical keys, tempos, and pitches, the adhan is alternatively referred to either as a symphony or a cacophony. Wanting to "put an end to this randomness," Egyptian Minister of Religious Affairs Mahmoud Hamdi Zaqzouq recently unveiled Tawheed al Adhan, or the Adhan Unification Project, to systematize the call to prayer in 2010.
Under this plan, the multiple adhan will be reduced to a single recording transmitted from al-Azhar mosque, picked up by wireless receivers in local mosques, and broadcast by loudspeakers. This plan will dramatically alter both the soundscape of Cairo and the lives of millions of Cairenes who experience the adhan.
While considered a great honor, the position of the muezzin is traditionally the role of the blind, handicapped, aged, and those suffering from extreme poverty. As soon as next year, thousands of muezzin will be forced to join the ranks of the unemployed.
Additionally, as with most oral traditions, no tangible record of the adhan exists currently.
The need to document and honor this 1400 year-old tradition before it is erased from the social landscape and collective memory forever was immediately recognized by the talented artist and curator Anna Kipervaser during her stay in Cairo in 2007. Anna sensed the urgency to create a record of each individual muezzin and their adhan, and she plans to present her documentation to the Library of Congress and other educational institutions, producing a digital library accessible to scholars worldwide.
No sound archival project of this magnitude has been undertaken since the mid 1900s when John Avery Lomax made 10,000 recordings in the Deep South, effectively preserving American folk music as we know it today.
Anna also serves as the executive producer and writer for OnLookFilms, an international team of experienced filmmakers that will begin shooting the documentary Voices & Faces of the Adhan: Cairo this September.
Following the chronological structure of a single day, this film will trace the adhan through the different neighborhoods of Cairo. Footage of the streetscape and melodies of the adhan will be interspersed with interviews of the muezzin and ordinary Cairenes (Muslims, non-Muslims, shopkeepers, residents, and tourists alike) to illustrate the impact of this tradition on the general population of Cairo.
By capturing so many different perspectives, the film hopes to create a more complete visual and aural portrait of the city, focusing on the "individual and collective journeys of the people of Cairo, their daily lives, and how they step between the madness and the beauty of life in time to this accidental symphony, the call to prayer."
Conscious of the "Western gaze" and the bias to preserve developing countries as untainted by the modern world, the film actively avoids casting value judgments on the effect of the adhan and its relationship to new technology in Egyptian society.
Rather, as executive director Miguel Silveira eloquently puts it, the film's main mission is to record a memory in such a way as to transcend cultural barriers and expose the common human connection, capturing "something not Muslim, not Cairo, but something universal to everyone."
Throughout the end credits, the film will include clips of rituals from other traditions (Jewish, Buddhist, Christian, Baha'i, Native American ceremonies) to show how some aspect of the call is included in every culture. By highlighting our similarities instead of emphasizing our differences, Voices & Faces of the Adhan: Cairo has the power to bridge many of the social, religious, and cultural divides thereby impacting politics as well as the arts and humanities.
When passionately describing the source of inspiration and broader mission of her project, Anna explains how, in her experience, a great majority of people remain unfamiliar to the world at large, and what they are exposed to on the news about other cultures (in particular Islamic) is negative. It then "becomes our job, not just on film stuff, to bring humans together on a base level as humans and inspire people to be interested in each other. Period."
If you are interested in supporting Anna and the team of OnLookFilms, or in learning more about their project, please visit their website at http://www.onlookfilms.com.
Jennifer Reinhardt is a recent graduate from the University of Chicago specializing in Near Eastern studies and Music. A member of the Middle Eastern Music Ensemble in Chicago, she also spent last summer in Syria with the Middle East Fellowship on their "Damascus Summer Encounter" cultural immersion program. She is looking forward to moving to LA in September and becoming more involved with projects sponsored by the Levantine Cultural Center!
HOW YOU CAN HELPAs we actively pursue private and corporate foundations, we are clear that without your contribution, nothing is possible.
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WATCH NOW MORE ABOUT THE FILM DISCOVER THE HISTORYVoices and Faces of the Adhan: Cairo is proudly sponsored by the Hartley Film Foundation
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