On Sunday I took it pretty easy, only attending the double documentary session at lunch time. The first one was 'Glitter Dust: Finding Art in Dubai' which was a fairly critical look at the art scene in Dubai. For me, I didn't quite get the purpose of this documentary, it seemed to be trying to do two different things at once. It was looking at the art scene in Dubai and saying how difficult it is for art to compete with the completely materialistic culture springing up in Dubai (where a $10,000 handbag is regarded as the ultimate in beauty). Which is strange given the deeply religious base in the UAE but it really does seem to be all about what you wear and what designer goods you hold and own. On the other hand, the doco looked at 3 artists and how they are struggling to get a foothold in the art community. What I think would have been better would have been to spend more time focusing on these people and using their experiences to reflect the wider issue. But it was a good look into the burgeoning world city - it's amazing how much construction is going on there right now.
The second doco was much more affecting. 'The Love of Books: A Sarajevo Story' was a true eye opener, telling the tale of a group of dedicated library workers who moved over 10,000 books from the main library in Sarajevo to a safe place during the siege of Sarajevo. Following Bosnia and Herzogovina winning independence from Yugoslavia, Serbian forces moved in 1992 to surround and blockade the city. The siege lasted until 1995. I remember hearing about this and occasionally seeing key moments on the news, but this doco blends re-enactment of the events with real footage, and it had my mouth literally hanging open in shock. The Serbian forces were arrayed in the hills surrounding the cities where they could fire shells into the city at will, plus they planted many snipers in outlying buildings to pick off innocent civilians at will. The way that the Sarajevan people managed to carry on with their lives in this environment is amazing, continuing to go to work and try to live normally while running across open spaces under threat of sniper fire.
As a lover of books myself, I have so much admiration for this small group who risked their lives on a daily basis to move 10,000 books (carried in banana boxes which would later cause problems due to the hunger in the city) from the main library, firstly to the madrassa (a university type institution) and then later to an even safer concrete basement. This is because the shells being fired could set any building alight at any time. The collection of ancient manuscripts at the library had not been microfilmed or copied at that stage, so these were the only copies of some of these writings and they needed to be saved. It really gives me a new appreciation of the modernisation of libraries, which in the past I have grumbled as making today's uni students a bit lazy (just look it up on Google has replaced the hard yards I had to do at the uni library looking up reference numbers and then sitting and leafing through books and magazines to find references for assignments) but now I see as a great thing for the preservation of knowledge. As long as the computers and servers are all well backed up of course!
Sadly, many books at the library were not saved and the building was eventually bombed and set on fire, destroying a large quantity of books. That this courageous group saved 10,000 very precious manuscripts at risk of their own lives is still a massive achievement, as some of the re-enacted scenes were quite harrowing. What ended the siege in 1995 I can't tell you. I'm just so glad it did end, as 11,500 people lost their lives unneccessarily and there was so much destruction of what had been a beautiful, peaceful, multicultural city up to that point. What a lucky country we live in that this has never happened and is never likely to happen.
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