ASFF Extra Credit - Option 1

ASFF: Short Film Screenings

The first event that I attended was the screening of the short film festivals. The night started with the showings of the documentary features, followed by the fiction features. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality and the creativity that was displayed. The documentary subjects were all very touching, and I liked the diversity of the subjects going from electronic festivals to hacking to an orphanage to the individual personal journeys of people.

I was very proud of what AUIers made and particularly of Soulaima’s documentary, especially because she was actually my teammate all throughout the introduction to filmmaking class that we took, so seeing her progress from the beginning was great. I thought her documentary was the best story-wise.

The fiction short films also showcased the talent of young filmmakers in Morocco, who were able to tell great stories with such a limited budget and time length. I especially noticed the influence of Western ideas from Western productions, but I thought they were well-adapted to the Moroccan context in general. 

Overall, I thought this event was very successful.

ASFF: Burnout Screening

The next event I attended was the screening of Noureddine Lakhari's movie, Burnout, followed by a discussion with the director and some of the actors.
The movie was great, and followed Lakhmari's tradition of telling individual stories of pain and tragedy with Casablanca as a backdrop. Although this movie was certainly more daring than his previous ones, it is consistent with Moroccan filmmakers pushing away from the limits of censorship more and more.
I also noticed here the pattern of depicting the rich, privileged elite of Casablanca as living like Westerners, using foreign cars, displaying foreign art, and speaking French almost exclusively, while the working class was the one depicted as speaking the local language, wearing traditional clothes, and listening to local music. This movie did not shy away from showing the huge influence of the West in what our society considers as "high class" culture.
I really enjoyed the talk after the movie, and getting the opportunity to hear about the behind-the-scenes feelings and impressions of the cast while filming the movie, and after its reception by the Moroccan public. It was also a very important discussion when it concerns the state of Moroccan cinema.

Paper sources

reaction paper 7

In Chapter 6, the author showcases the efforts that Western media conglomerations have made to penetrate foreign markets and to create the “global popular”, through various strategies. With the help of Western globalization, they were able to reach beyond the elites and into mass foreign audiences in developing countries, helped with the creation of a multitude of satellite and cable television channels. This had positive consequences, since it led to a huge growth in the media industry and the creation of many jobs in all areas that are related to media and media production. Another positive effect evoked is the potential for the promotion of democratic principles, freedom of speech, equality and universal human rights. Opening up to foreign markets also allows citizens of developing countries to discover a wide variety of programming and have more choice. It has also influenced journalism, since news organizations started to adopt a liberalist, independent (from the government) format in many areas of the world. Moreover, content creators such as authors and filmmakers had platforms that were willing to publish/broadcast their work, sometimes in multiple languages.

All of these changes are undeniably positive and have served to greatly improve the media industry. Ultimately, because of the huge influence of the media, it has contributed in changing people’s daily lives for the better. But nevertheless, all these positive changes remain the product of Western involvement, and is the result of Western dominance when it comes to technology and media infrastructures.

I think this is similar to the dependency theory, as the credit for the development of culture and production of content in developing countries is only attributed to either their adoption of Western models or to the Western influences themselves directly investing and involving themselves in that market, making any development depending on Western states.

This personally reminds me of something that is common in Morocco, with the fact that the overwhelming majority of Moroccans that are internationally known or have succeeded on a global scale, are either born abroad or have been able to succeed because they had an opportunity that came from abroad. Still, Moroccans take credit for them as Moroccan success stories and proof of the development of Morocco on the international scene. I think it is the same logic as thinking entertainment and media platforms in developing countries are improving when the sole reason for that improvement comes from outside Western involvement. It might be considered development, but it will always be seen as a development that was dependent on a Western model and on Western thinking.

Reaction paper 6

Chapter 5 explores the effects of the rapid evolution of international communication and its relationship with globalization. The chapter particularly talks of the way globalization can be said to have become synonymous with Americanization, and how this Americanization impacts global communication.

The Americanization trend involves the sheer number of imported products, especially entertainment-related programs, from the major Western states and most notably from the United States to other countries. Case in point, in Latin America almost all imports are from the US, and even in the UK and the EU, which already have fairly solid production systems of their own, there is a lot of reliance on US imports for entertainment programming. Here, the chapter talks of a “Hollywood Hegemony”, which the author proves through statistics showing the dominance of movies coming from the United States in foreign markets, as they take a huge chunk of that market even compared to locally-produced movies. 

When it comes to Europe, the market for movies is usually considered when it comes to statistics as homogeneous, which is one of the explanations that can be offered for US domination: since Europe is an eclectic mix of languages and has no official “lingua franca”, English is one language that “works” all throughout the continent. When it comes to movies that are locally- produced, it is evident that they would not profit from the same distribution as English-language movies since they can only target a much smaller portion of the population worldwide. In general, this is an issue that concerns all non-English movies. Usually, people tend to stick with the languages and the culture they know, and since everyone is so exposed to the American/English-language culture, and considering the enormous quality of Hollywood productions that cannot be compared to any other market today, US domination in entertainment is only natural.
I think this can be changed by encouraging people to open up to other markets, cultures and other genres of movies away from "blockbuster" movies that are intended to mass audiences. The language barrier can also be improved by promoting the use of subtitles and dubbing.
But I would not qualify the Americanization trend as hegemony, as I believe each market does allow space for other trends as well. In Morocco, as much as the U.S. has a huge influence, there were also trends that were very influential coming from Mexican productions, Egyptian productions, and most recently Turkish productions. These trends have not translated to the filmmaking industry, but their presence on television, which is the biggest media influencer in the country, is undeniably impactful.