Saif Alsaegh
Bitter with a Shy Taste of Sweetness entangles the past and present, dreams and reality, in a surreal visual experience that leaves the viewer wondering if the narrator ever really made it to their destination.
Hi! Welcome :) Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
SA: I’m an experimental filmmaker that works in different cinematic modes. Much of my work deals with the contrast between the landscape of my youth in Baghdad growing up as part of the Chaldean minority in the nineties and early 2000s, and the U.S. landscape where I currently live. I try to draw from my memory of Iraq and my present in the US to find those kinds of harsh or romantic moments, and contrast them with the strangely calm and uncertain life I have in the US or let them stand as pleasant memories like antiques in a museum. Creating such cinematic poetry is the most satisfying part of making films.
With the use of “you”, the viewer is immediately wrapped up in the disorientation of the narrator. The narrator seems to be talking to their past self, unsure if that self followed them to where they are now. In other moments, the viewer is almost guided as a stand-in for the past self of the narrator.
SA: The second person distances the narrator from their past--and even their present--self. I am looking back on a time that is bleak to remember but also inescapable, part of me. Second person also brings the viewer in to make them part of the experience, to ask them to share the disorientation of these worlds splintering and colliding.
The lopsided images complement this narrative of disorientation. At the first image of the ocean, we know we are in California..but have we really made it?
SA: Visually I wanted to represent California through non-traditional modes of cinematic expression where my current landscape becomes foreign yet familiar, disrupted by my childhood memories. The camera tilts or spins, making the beautiful Southern California beaches and mountains jarring while the sound distorts the bright colors of the landscape. Through second-person writing and shrilling visuals, the film aims to make the viewer feel off-balance, disoriented, and estranged from the landscape and content, offering them the dislocating feeling of survival and immigration.
I love the ending of the film with the manicured streets and upbeat music. An embrace of the weird, uncertain, and odd future.
SA: I really enjoyed ending this film in a strange, whimsical way. There is something jarring to me but also wonderful about the shift from the dark ways that the past, that suffering can tangle with the present. Even the suffering I have tried to leave behind I can’t put down, and in some way it’s present for everyone, the dialectic paradox of all the horrible and amazing things that share space. But I wanted in the last moments of the film to shift from this paradox as a sort of haunting to this paradox as a strange wonder, something that creates a surreal moment that is bright and holds the possibility and the ridiculousness of redemption, of a new life.
What have you been listening to, watching, reading lately?
SA: I have been listening to Gnawa Diffusion, Riff Cohen, Chopin, and Mozart. I went record
shopping and found some great classical music in the $5 bin!
Saif Alsaegh is a United States-based filmmaker from Baghdad.
Recipe of the Week:
Saif Alsaegh’s Family Recipe Maqluba
Ingredients:
2 Medium size eggplants Ingredients:
2 Medium size eggplants
1 Large onion
1 Large tomato
1 Green pepper (the above should be cut into rings)
2 ½ cups Basmati rice (washed and soaked for 30 minutes)
2 tbsp Tomato paste
2 tbsp Olive oil
2 ts Salt
1 ts Black pepper
1ts Paprika
1 ts Crushed red pepper
½ ts Cinnamon
1 ts Onion powder
1 ts Garlic powder
Prep:
1- Heat oven to 450F.
2- In an oven pan covered by parchment paper add the (eggplant, onion, and green peppers) and brush/spray it with oil and a pinch of salt, cook them in the oven for 45 minutes or until they look crispy and golden. When done, take them out and put them aside.
3- In a large pot, add the olive oil and let it heat, then add the tomato paste and all the spices, cook them for a couple of minutes.
4- Add the tomato rings.
5- Layer in this order: eggplant, green pepper, onions and the rice
6- Add water 2 ⅔ cups of water and cook on high heat for 30 minutes and low heat for 15 minutes.
7- When done, flip the pot on a tray, garnish it with some chopped parsley and fried pine nuts (optional).