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| Hakim Bellabes has just completed his first fiction feature, ?Threads.? |
Hakim Bellabes was at work last year on a documentary about the impossibility of financing an independent film when he decided to take the leap and go into production on his first fiction feature, ?Threads.?
?When we got to Morocco we didn?t have a dime, but five days before we started we got $40,000,? he said. ?In Morocco you can shoot for $1,000 a day with a crew of 60. Running after money has gotten me to only one conclusion: I don?t have to have the whole budget in hand to start shooting, I just have to decide on a date.?
Ultimately Bellabes raised the $550-$600,000 budget from private investors in the U.S. who put up $200,000, and $100,000 supplied by TV Morocco (TVM), which will have broadcast rights in a year. The rest of the film?s total budget came in crew and equipment deferrals.
The accomplished documentarian and commercial director didn?t find fiction filmmaking to be much of a stretch for him.
?People think of documentary as reality, but it?s still going through a point of view, so it?s storytelling,? Bellabes said. ?That point of view is more important than the genre of documentary or fiction.?
Bellabes cites an example from ?Threads.? ?We have a story about a five-year-old boy who is about to be circumcised,? he said.
?So we found a boy in my home town of Boujad who was going to be circumcised. We put on the party for his parents and filmed the actual circumcision. That is documentary, but it falls within a narrative that?s fictionalized. That?s what I find fascinating about storytelling, playing back and forth between those elements.?
?Threads? follows six interwoven stories, centered around the tale of a girl in Chicago who reunites with her estranged, terminally ill father and returns with him to their family home in Boujad.
?The underlying theme of the six stories is that in spite of our best intentions in wanting to love, we fail to do that, or in the name of love we still hurt each other,? Bellabes said.
When Bellabes finished the English and French subtitles at Bulletproof Film, he completed post for the project, which was five years in the making. ?Other than the shooting and processing in Morocco and the optical printing, we did everything in Chicago,? Bellabes said. ?We wanted to prove that you can start and finish a movie here.?
Bellabes came to Chicago to study film at Columbia and got his MFA in 1993. His documentaries, ?Boujad: A Nest in Heat,? and ? Whispers,? are distributed by Arab Film. He?s been directing commercials for Lake Forest manufacturer Salton for ten years and has freelanced with Luminair for five years. He also makes frequent trips back to Morocco for commercial work.
He wrote the script for ?Threads? five years ago. He left his teaching post at Columbia College in 2001 to focus on development of the film.
A print of ?Threads? is now at the CCM government granting agency in Morocco, being considered for a grant that Bellabes estimated could come in at around $200,000 to $250,000. He expects word by the end of June. Bellabes is beginning the festival submission process and looking for an American distributor.
?Threads? shot for five weeks in Morocco and a week in Chicago starting in May 2002. DP was Maida Sussman (?Stricken?). Bellabes produced with Don Smith.
The bulk of post for ?Threads? was done at Filmworkers Club. Audio mix by Rick and Corey Coken at Avenue Edit, and CRC. Lupic conformed. Chicago gear was supplied by Fletcher and MPS.
?Ironically, MPS was also the name of our main supplier in Morocco, Moroccan Production Services, the largest production studio south of Casablanca,? Bellabes said.
Bellabes is choosing among three literary adaptations for his next feature: seven love stories from ?1001 Arabian Nights? set in seven different countries; ?The Year of the Elephant? by Moroccan author Leila Abu-Zeid, to be adapted by former Columbia film chair Michael Rabiger; or ?The Season of Immigration to the North? by Sudanese author Taid Salah.
Reach Bellabes at bhakman@yahoo.com”.?by Ed M. Koziarski,
