Thursday 12 / December / 2024
Visuals have always been a passion for Maitham. First it was still images. He began to capture every moment in life through a camera. Later on he moved to shoot videos and started filming thematically and uploading it in YouTube. Those were simple things such as ‘how you are doing in college’ and all. A graduate of Oman Medical College and working for the Ministry of Health as an orthopaedic surgeon, Maitham Al Musawi has been pursuing his passion. He was into writing, directing and editing home made films in 2004 and his family and friends gave him the much needed support for his passion. “I got some momentum of applause after people told me they liked my work on You Tube. At that time Omani filmmaker Amir Al Rawas, who is working with Oman TV, called me after watching my videos online and told me that ‘we can together do some films’ and I started that way.” Maitham had his first break when his film Reminiscence, a horror film, won the 4th best film in the 2nd edition of Sheikh Majid Youth Media Awards in Dubai.
Maitham’s next big project was a short adventure/drama short called Raneen. “The film is a short narrative which talks about a little boy who spends his whole life in a hospital. It is about a boy meeting a sick girl in hospital and she helps him recover. The story is about deserted kids in hospitals. It was inspired by true events. There are cases of kids being abandoned in hospitals. When I was studying medicine we got an abandoned child from the Emergency ward of the hospital and we at the Paediatric section raised him, taking shifts to look after him until two years of age. Later he was shifted to an orphanage. The film was helping address an issue which is a taboo in our society,” he said. The film was well received around the region and also shown in international festivals in Abu Dhabi, the US and Europe along with The International Film Festival for Peace Inspiration & Equality in Indonesia and in Hong Kong. The eight-minute film has bagged three awards in the 7th Muscat International Film Festival in 2011 including, Best Scenario, Best Actor and Best Film to win the Golden Dagger Award in the Omani Short Narrative category. Raneen means ringing sound.
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Popcorn came in 2012. It is an experimental film with a narrative craft of symbolism; it talks about the four stages of life. It starts with the Omani tradition of Hol Hol, the first birthday of a kid. “We have a special celebration. We cover the baby boy with cloths. It’s a tradition and in the movie the boy gets transported into the future under the veil of the tradition. He sees himself go up growing from an infant, to, adulthood, and become old. The movie talks about the life cycle and I used symbolism and special colours to depict the nature of the Omani life. It didn’t get a lot of attention because it was difficult to understand owing to the symbolic narrative used.” Maitham bagged the Best Young Director Award for Popcorn at the third Malmo Arab Film Festival in Sweden. Popcorn had won rave reviews when it was screened at the San Francisco Film Festival, Oregon film Festival and the Gulf Film Festival. Moreover, it became the first Omani film to be selected for the famous Soifa Menar Film Festival in 2014.
Another important work of Maitham is a documentary, Living with Thalassemia, on a doctor who has thalassemia, a blood disorder in which the patient needs blood transfusion three days in a week. The five-minute film deals with how the doctor is coping with the disease and being as a doctor as well. The next big step was Reflection made in 2014, a short narrative which had won six awards, including the one in Muscat International Film festival. It talks about a homeless girl living in the streets of Muttrah and gathering metal cans to make a living for her sick mother.
Most of Maitham’s films are focused on the emotional aspects of children. “Children are representation of innocence and the society. Also they depict one of the purest forms of emotions,” he says.
Maitham says, “In the beginning it was a one man show. I write, direct, shoot, edit and publish. But later on I got some assistance in the form of photographers and editors. A Bahraini friend I met once in a film festival later helped me edit one of my films. But mostly I am doing it on my own. And I upload it on YouTube and get the response from my viewers.” But, Maitham is not a satisfied soul.
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“I always think that I can do much better. I am very restricted owing to my medical career and for me filmmaking is a hobby. I actually want to be a full-time filmmaker, but in Oman it is difficult to live with filmmaking as we don’t have a cinema culture. As of now my medical career supports my film career,” Maitham smiles.
As an artist Maitham is always experimenting with his craft. “But in the next five or ten years I will make a full length movie.” This young Arab filmmaker, who has many laurels, never had been to a filmmaking course to learn it. He learned the art, the camera, the making process on his own watching YouTube videos and movies.
“Movies are like poetry. You don’t need to learn how to write poetry attending a course. Watching more movies is a great way of learning. Even the great director Quentin Tarantino didn’t learn filmmaking from an institute. Actually he was a dropout from such an institute. He is a role model for me in filmmaking,” Maitham added.
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Filmography
Raneen (2011)
Popcorn (2012)
Crossing (2013)
Living with Thalassemia (2014)
Reflections (2015)
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