A Sense of a Maze

2010, 52’, Norwegian-Hungarian experimental documentary film

Initiatory allegory of a searching, shape-shifting creature, who seeks answers to life’s unpronounced questions, wondering in the Medieval Moroccan medina of Fez, the city of 9000 alleys. The milestones of the quest are existential, scientific, religious and artistic expressions. Colours, sounds, figures and magical musical threads lead the traveller. The verbal, visual, and sonic guidance concerns eternal truth-seeking, fear, foreignness, the sacredness of life, the Other, the Garden of Eden, inside and outside, work and worship, ecstasy and purification. The anxious-curious search leads into the core of things, then back out, and the creature who is a girl in the city, becomes a dog again at the end of the day, outside the city walls, returning into the unknown.The layered, concentric construction of the film draws an atomic MAG structure.

At its international premier, the film received the special prize of the jury “for the authors’ highly poetic cinematic message” at the 13th DeboshirFilm – Pure Dreams film festival, St.Petersburg, Russia.

Music and interviews recorded at the 2009 Fez Festival of World Sacred Music

Speakers:

Dr. Faouzi Skali, president of the Fez Festival of Sufi Culture, anthropologist and specialist of Sufism

Abdelwahab Meddeb, writer, poet, professor of comparative literature at the University of Paris X.

Dr. Robert Lanquar, president of Cordoba Horizontes and honorary Professor at the University of Cordoba

Naim Kattan, writer, novelist, playwright, essayist

Jacques Arnould, agricultural engineer, doctor of history of science and theology

Ziya Azazi, contemporary dervish dancer, Turkey

Moustafa Khalili, director of the festival of Melhun of Essaouira, member of the Hamdouchiya Sufi Brotherhood

Music:

Marcel Khalifé & Al Mayadine Ensemble (Lebanon)

Zabit Nabizadé Trio (Azerbaijan)

Divna (Serbia)               

Ensemble Razbar (Iranian Kurdistan)

Dance performance:

"Icons" by Ziya Azazi with Su Günes Mihladiz

Serge Adam, trumpet and programming

Directed by Dimitri Lurie and Zsuzsanna Váradi-Kalmár

Written by Zsuzsanna Váradi-Kalmár

Director of Photography: Dimitri Lurie

Animation by Pierre Foldes

Editor: Dimitri Lurie and Gergely Balázs Vajda

Colour correction: Gergely Balázs Vajda

Sound mixing: Zoltán Tihanyi

Second camera: Rabia Williams

Translation by Younes El Kerat

Kodak S8 processing: Szilárd Szilas and Károly Kamerda

Special thanks to: Nadia Benjelloun, Gérard Kurdjian, Marcel Khalife and Mustafa Habib, Ziya Azazi, Frédéric “Youssef” Calmes, Prijanka, Amina and Reda ; Cselényi László, President of Duna Television, Mr. Fouad Hajoui at the Moroccan National Office of Tourism, Vienna, The Embassy of Morocco in Budapest, Judit Stalter at Laokoonfilm

Produced by Dodofilm

Coproducer: Duna Television

Support from: Moroccan National Office of Tourism and Arts Council Norway