Kuwait antes del petróleo
MAR CRUEL (1972)
IMDb
Créditos:
TÍTULO: Bas ya Bahar / فيلم بس يابحر / The Cruel Sea
AÑO: 1972
PAÍS: Kuwait
IDIOMA: Árabe
DIRECTOR: Khalid Al Siddiq
INTÉRPRETES: Mohammed Al-Mansour (Moussaed), Amal Bakr (Nura), Saad Al-Faraj (Abdellah), Hayat El-Fahad (Latifa)
ARGUMENTO: Moussaed quiere dedicarse a bucear en busca de perlas y conseguir así el dinero que necesita para casarse con la mujer que ama. El padre se opone, no desea para su hijo su mismo destino...
Khalid al-Sidick’s independently produced first feature, made after a number of short films, looks at Kuwait’s past, before the explotation of the oil which was to make it rich, and specifically at the struggles of the pearl fishermen against the sea, which is depicted as savage and all-powerful. The film begins and ends with long-held images of the waves, and, throughout, the hardship of the men battling against natural forces is emphasized. Moussaid’s father was crippled both by the sea, which has ruined his eyesight, and a shark, which bit into his shoulder. But the films is also a merciless depiction of a traditional society structured according to wealth rather than merit, in which there is no place for women’s individual wishes or desires. Al-Siddick’s approach is basically realistic (visually more in the manner of Visconti than Rossellini), and some of the strongest sequences have a documentary-style authenticity: the cramped life of the men during their 4-month voyage on board the tiny fishing boat is parallelled by the ceremonies on shore organized collectively by the women - the noisy ritual of a wedding ceremony (where the bride’s desires are of no concern) and a chilling sequence on the beach where a kitten is drowned to ensure the men’s safe return. The narrative set against this background is a simple and conventional one: two young people, Moussaid and Noura, are in love, but they are separated by the social forces which keep her cloistered at home and by the poverty which drives him out to seek his fortune at sea. His efforts lead seemingly inevitably to his death but would in any case have been in vain, since Noura is married against her will in his absence. Her wedding night with a rich, much older merchant is depicted unambigiously as a socially sanctioned rape: her own mother signals to the musicians to play louder, so as to drown out the daughter’s screams. The generation gap is also revealed in Moussaid’s struggle against his father for permission to become a diver (parallelled, al-Siddick tells us, by his own struggle to become a filmmaker against his own father’s wishes).
Por si esto fuera poco, "Mar cruel" critica despiadadamente una sociedad mercantil feudal anclada en sus privilegios, la condición de la mujer y el sometimiento a la religión. Quizá el hombre sea más cruel que el mismo mar...
Este verano, en vez de ir a la playa, me he quemado las pestañas para reconstruir una de las películas más importantes del mundo árabe. El material de partida no era demasiado alentador: Dos copias en VOSI colgadas en YT, incompletas, con texto a menudo ilegible y no sincronizado. Y la VO, ya veis, como un logo es poco, pues con dos.
En fin, la cinta lo merecía, y con paciencia y la inestimable ayuda de HulotD -usuario de KG que amablemente completó lo que yo no pude transcribir-, llegamos a puerto después de superar todas las pruebas a las que nos sometió este Mar Cruel, y con la perla (en forma de VOSE) tan ansiada por el protagonista.
Algunas capturas:
Datos técnicos:
Enlaces:
ed2k (VO en árabe)
The Cruel Sea (1972).mkv [788.93 Mb] 
Subtítulos en español
The Cruel Sea (1972) esp.srt [35.6 Kb]
Subdivx (español, english)
English subtitles
The Cruel Sea (1972) eng.srt [35.4 Kb]
MAR CRUEL (1972)
IMDb
Créditos:
TÍTULO: Bas ya Bahar / فيلم بس يابحر / The Cruel Sea
AÑO: 1972
PAÍS: Kuwait
IDIOMA: Árabe
DIRECTOR: Khalid Al Siddiq
INTÉRPRETES: Mohammed Al-Mansour (Moussaed), Amal Bakr (Nura), Saad Al-Faraj (Abdellah), Hayat El-Fahad (Latifa)
ARGUMENTO: Moussaed quiere dedicarse a bucear en busca de perlas y conseguir así el dinero que necesita para casarse con la mujer que ama. El padre se opone, no desea para su hijo su mismo destino...
Khalid al-Sidick’s independently produced first feature, made after a number of short films, looks at Kuwait’s past, before the explotation of the oil which was to make it rich, and specifically at the struggles of the pearl fishermen against the sea, which is depicted as savage and all-powerful. The film begins and ends with long-held images of the waves, and, throughout, the hardship of the men battling against natural forces is emphasized. Moussaid’s father was crippled both by the sea, which has ruined his eyesight, and a shark, which bit into his shoulder. But the films is also a merciless depiction of a traditional society structured according to wealth rather than merit, in which there is no place for women’s individual wishes or desires. Al-Siddick’s approach is basically realistic (visually more in the manner of Visconti than Rossellini), and some of the strongest sequences have a documentary-style authenticity: the cramped life of the men during their 4-month voyage on board the tiny fishing boat is parallelled by the ceremonies on shore organized collectively by the women - the noisy ritual of a wedding ceremony (where the bride’s desires are of no concern) and a chilling sequence on the beach where a kitten is drowned to ensure the men’s safe return. The narrative set against this background is a simple and conventional one: two young people, Moussaid and Noura, are in love, but they are separated by the social forces which keep her cloistered at home and by the poverty which drives him out to seek his fortune at sea. His efforts lead seemingly inevitably to his death but would in any case have been in vain, since Noura is married against her will in his absence. Her wedding night with a rich, much older merchant is depicted unambigiously as a socially sanctioned rape: her own mother signals to the musicians to play louder, so as to drown out the daughter’s screams. The generation gap is also revealed in Moussaid’s struggle against his father for permission to become a diver (parallelled, al-Siddick tells us, by his own struggle to become a filmmaker against his own father’s wishes).
La primera película realizada en Kuwait y un hito nunca igualado por esa cinematografía. En palabras de su director, el éxito de la cinta fue su autenticidad. No sólo desde el punto de vista de la línea argumental o el contenido dramático sino por incluir antropología e historia, vida social y vida económica de las gentes, ritos y canciones tradicionales. Nada era superficial. Era una película muy rica.There was no experience in filmmaking in Kuwait and so I had to finance, produce, direct, write and distribute the film. When the movie was ready, I met several distributors around the Arab world, and everybody turned me down. They wanted stars in the movie. I could have had stars, but I knew that the Kuwaitis would not accept an Egyptian star as a pearl diver. I needed to have real Kuwaitis. When all of them turned down my movie, I played the trick through festivals. I started participating in festivals around the world, and it clicked. Continuously, the film picked up award after award. Two years later, the Arab distributors contacted me, but I told them it was too late. What I also did was I introduced the concept of a director’s movie and not a star’s movie, because in the Arab world even today, movies are star driven.
It was the first movie to be shot underwater ever in Asia. That was the greatest risk I took. In fact, I didn’t know how to do it only till the last minute. Also, I made the film black and white. Commercially speaking, the film should have been in colour, but before oil, I feel, colour didn’t exist. Kuwait and the Gulf was a dull, poor community and the best way to express this would have been in black and white.
Khalid Al Siddiq
Por si esto fuera poco, "Mar cruel" critica despiadadamente una sociedad mercantil feudal anclada en sus privilegios, la condición de la mujer y el sometimiento a la religión. Quizá el hombre sea más cruel que el mismo mar...
Este verano, en vez de ir a la playa, me he quemado las pestañas para reconstruir una de las películas más importantes del mundo árabe. El material de partida no era demasiado alentador: Dos copias en VOSI colgadas en YT, incompletas, con texto a menudo ilegible y no sincronizado. Y la VO, ya veis, como un logo es poco, pues con dos.
En fin, la cinta lo merecía, y con paciencia y la inestimable ayuda de HulotD -usuario de KG que amablemente completó lo que yo no pude transcribir-, llegamos a puerto después de superar todas las pruebas a las que nos sometió este Mar Cruel, y con la perla (en forma de VOSE) tan ansiada por el protagonista.Algunas capturas:
Datos técnicos:
Spoiler:
ed2k (VO en árabe)
The Cruel Sea (1972).mkv [788.93 Mb] Subtítulos en español
The Cruel Sea (1972) esp.srt [35.6 Kb] Subdivx (español, english)
English subtitles
The Cruel Sea (1972) eng.srt [35.4 Kb] 
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