Short film
تحت سماء دمشق
Ismail Anzour · 1932
Synopsis
Subhiyya and a Damascus doctor have become engaged, and all goes well until the day a man she introduces to no one begins demanding money from her. She pays, and keeps paying. The fiancé eventually finds out, convinces himself of the worst and breaks it off. She could explain everything in a word, and she stays silent; she will have to decide whether what she is protecting is worth what she is losing.
Context
Produced by Hélios Film, a company founded in 1931 by Rashid Jalal with merchants of the city, the film runs about thirty minutes, in black and white and without dialogue, and was released on 6 November 1932 at the al-Abbassiya cinema in Damascus. The actors played without fees, the women excepted. It shows the old city, the Ghouta, the Hejaz railway station and the palace of Emir Said al-Jazairi at Dummar. To compete with the first Egyptian singing film, the exhibitors played records of Arabic music; the mandate authorities suspended the screenings, then authorised them again.
Who it is for
Half an hour without dialogue. One should know that the interest today lies as much in the city filmed as in the story told, and that the acting is that of the waning silent era.
Prizes and reception
The first Syrian film to survive complete, screened again in Damascus in 2018; today it is worth as much as a document on the city as a work of fiction.