The Square is one of the first documentaries to show the full breadth of how technological advances are aiding documentary cinema. We talked to Jehane Noujaim about how he documented Egypts revolutionary moment.
Here at Tribeca, were interested in delving into the myriad ways in which improving digital technology - cheaper and better-quality cameras, easier-to-use editing software, and the like - facilitates the ease of making independent cinema. Yet its easy to forget that for all the ways in which these changes are rocking the narrative world, the documentary world is being equally impacted.
Take the case of Jehane Noujaims The Square, which premiered at Sundance this past January. Charting the travails of the revolutionary moment in Egypt (which found its base camp at Tahrir Square, from which the film takes its title) over the course of the past few years - through their protests against Hosni Mubarak, the ensuing military junta, and then Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood - the film provides a visceral portrait into what its like to be in the midst of real revolutionary goings-on, with protests, street violence and danger being all-pervasive elements.
The rawness and verisimilitude of the filmmaking recalls nothing so much as, perhaps, Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvos fiction film about the French occupation of Algeria, in its palpable authenticity. Much of the verisimilitude is due to the fact that Noujaims camera constantly places the viewer in the midst of the tensest and most emotionally charged political moments in the square, present for all of the arguments, fights and confrontations with authorities.
This was enabled - as Noujaim discusses in the below interview - by the fact that cameras like the 5D are simple enough that anyone can use them, even in extremely tense situations where filming is more of an afterthought than the main purpose. As this ease of filming increases even further, we can expect documentaries to become increasingly stunning as cameras can now be operated in situations in which filmmaking was previously simply too complicated to be carried out. I spoke with Noujaim about this exciting development, and more.
Tribeca: How did you come to find the subjects for your documentary?
Jehane Noujaim: They were all sleeping next to me in the square! You choose your characters because you fall in love with them, because youre going to spend at least a couple years of your life with them, so theyd better be people that you feel like youre going to learn from. My friend was making a news piece about Ahmed Hassan, one of our main subjects, so I met him and found him incredibly charismatic. He has the ability to use his passion and voice and intelligence to gather crowds around him and debate subjects in a way they were never debated before. I mean, I grew up in an Egypt where you could not talk politics to a random person in the street without having a hesitation or hiding what you really felt. There was a strong fear. Part of the revolution was about getting rid of that fear.
Just because you can film something - I mean, just because you have a pen doesnt make you a writer.
Magdy Ashour I met because he was sleeping in the tent next to ours. He was getting into long conversations with Pierre Seyoufr, who owns the apartment building next to the square. Pierre is someone Ive known for a long time and I started going up to his apartment and meeting many journalists there, and recording some fascinating conversations. He opened his apartment to all the young revolutionaries, he allowed the news networks to film off of his balcony. He also hung the list of the protesters demands off of his balcony, so everyone could see them. Anyway, Magdy had been loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood for 25 years, and he got into some very interesting conversations with Pierre, who is a Coptic Christian, and Magdy became a fascinating character - he had to make a decision between the Muslim Brotherhood, which had supported him financially for 25 years, and the will of the people, when the Brotherhood began to come to power and he saw them putting their political power over the will of the people.
Tribeca: This being a contemporary revolution, it was interesting because not only did you have the power to record what was going on, but your subjects did as well, with their camera phones. How does that affect the exertion of political will, when the subjects are all empowered filmmakers?
Jehane Noujaim: Well, all of the subjects were effectively filmmakers, yes. I mean, Ahmed picks up a camera in the film, he uses the 5D in the film and ended up shooting about a quarter of the film - a lot of the most intense footage from the front lines is footage he shot, because he learned from our DP how to use the camera. We were all there for the purpose of changing our country, and we happened to be making a film, but there were also times where we were filming as activists, since if you filmed some atrocity that was happening, you were a witness, and we were witnesses as filmmakers and our characters were witnesses. There was also a sharing of footage between people - if we filmed something that could be used as evidence or that was important to be seen, that footage was online that evening. There was a beautiful generosity on all sides because we were fighting for something bigger than ourselves.
Tribeca: You mention that at times you felt like an activist who happened to be there filming, rather than primarily there as a filmmaker. How do you feel like the technological progress in digital cinema has enabled such a thing to occur? I mean, with the ease of digital tools today, you can film while protesting with less effort than may have been required in the film era.
Jehane Noujaim: Well, just because you can film something - I mean, just because you have a pen doesnt make you a
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The Square is one of the first documentaries to show the full breadth of how technological advances are aiding documentary cinema. We talked to Jehane Noujaim about how he documented Egypts revolutionary moment. 
