Film Preview

Women sewing in the Siwa Oasis, Egypt. Photos courtesy of Tamalyn Dallal

Who They Really Are
A Miami Filmmaker Delves Deep Into Islam

“This film is about listening, not telling the people in Islamic countries what they need.”

By Rayme Samuels

Award-winning belly dancer, published author, CD producer, filmmaker and world traveler Tamalyn Dallal has created her contemporary cinematic masterpiece after a year-long trek with only lofty visions and a hand-held camcorder as companions. The premise: To spend 40 days in an Islamic country and speak to the people, learn what they desire and see how they really live. The outcome: 40 Days and 1001 Nights, a beautifully executed documentary that places audiences straight in the heart of Muslim culture in Indonesia, the Siwa Oasis of Egypt, Zanzibar, Jordan and Xinjiang Province in northwest China.

“This film is about listening, not telling the people in Islamic countries what they need,” Dallal says passionately. The subject matter, she continues, “is infinitely more fascinating than the same old blood and horror stories that get regurgitated into our consciousness every day.”

The documentary instead transports viewers into scenes from everyday life that demonstrate the food, music, dances, traditional medicines and spiritual practices of the regions.

Follow the filmmaker through the post-tsunami streets of Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Explore a marketplace in the streets of Jordan’s capital city. Be captivated by dancing at a colorful wedding in Zanzibar. Enter salt and earth houses built in a Saharan oasis. Wander down the Silk Road in a multilingual province in China.

Meanwhile sporadic close-up shots showing advertisements for the omnipresent Coca-Cola remind viewers the West is hardly invisible in the far corners of the world.

Dallal, who has run a nonprofit belly dance company and studio called the Mid-East Dance Exchange in Miami Beach for many years, took a sabbatical to produce the film.

The Travel Network could not have done a better job of displaying the humanity of people in every nation struggling to retain their religious and cultural traditions.

And luckily for us, Dallal has set her surroundings to music, fascinatingly catchy local beats that accompany each country’s vignette. Perhaps one of the most poignant moments of the film occurs in Zanzibar as the world-renowned Ikhwani Safaa Musical Club rehearses in a bustling town hall. Poised and focused musicians comprise this exclusive band often referred to as “Africa’s Buena Vista Social Club,” known for creating a mesmerizing combination of African and Arabic rhythms. A prolific Dallal took the opportunity to also record and produce a soundtrack to the film showcasing the talent of these musical masters.

She explains that the “40 days” of the film’s title signifies an auspicious amount of time in both Islam and the Old Testament. An Arabic proverb says, “If you stay among a people 40 days, either you affect them or they affect you.” For this filmmaker, 40 days is the period of time in which she was able to begin to lose her identity, become more like her surroundings and produce this candid work of art.

40 Days and 1001 Nights unspools at 8 and 10 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 13, at the Miami Beach Cinematheque, 512 Española Way, Miami Beach.

Copies of Dallal’s tell-all book of the same title also will be available for purchase. Screening tickets are $15 in advance, $18 at the door.

Call 305-673-4567 or visit www.tamalyndallal.com.