Meet Zeina Durra, Sundance's Most Fascinating Filmmaker

Everyone says "post-9/11," though, when dealing with films about these themes. It's such a cliché.

I hate that, yeah. I think its easy because it's a nice, defining moment. But anyone who's Middle Eastern has had these issues. 9/11 magnified them. And again, if you're on your own in New York, it's even more magnified. So I agree with you. These issues have always been there. Everything did change then, but how much did they really change? Everything just became more apparent and came to surface because people could do things with less secrecy.

It also gave us a new reason to be afraid. If it wasn't the Cold War, then it's--

The War on Terror. Totally. Because this stuff's been happening all along, but now it's just more obvious because people will support it. All these covert wars and infiltrations and coups that have been funded by America, the British, and wherever else. What people didn't realize is that all this stuff is standard historically. Now they might as well be taking the piss because everyone can be so obvious about it, you know? Using 9/11 as an excuse.

What does the title The Imperialists Are Still Alive! mean?

It's really hard to explain. I couldn't find a title that would justify the '60s kind of energy that Asya has. [In fact, the phrase is a line from Godard's film La Chinoise -- Ed.] Which again is part of the problem of being in this Middle Eastern intelligentsia as a child, because your parents often come from these '60s ideals. If you look at something like the PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization], the PLO was a non-religious organization. Now everything's super-religious. All the movements are religious, and the PLO was this secular, quite rock-and-roll movement -- whether you agreed with their violence or not. The people in the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] would get married and hang out in nightclub, which you really wouldn't see Hamas doing. So there was this whole '60s Arab nationalist kind of thing going on, and if you're a not a product of that, but you haven't lived in the Middle East, you still tend to have those intellectual ideals. That's what you had growing up.

That said, with Asya coming from an upper-middle-class background--

Upper class.

Right. An upper-class background. She's a radical conceptual artist coming from a background you wouldn't expect, and even they're radicals--

You wouldn't expect it in the U.S.. But this is the interesting thing -- and the hardest thing about making this film: People think that you can't be upper-class and left wing. But one of the best writers about socialism is Tony Benn, who's a British aristocrat. He's a aristocratic as they come; I think he's a viscount. But he's the most left-wing guy. It's a very American thing to assume that wealth takes you away from socialist ideals. It's super-complex, but when you're living in a capitalist society, you can still have socialist sympathies -- regardless of what your background is. And a lot of people in the Middle East do have socialist sympathies. Maybe not so much any more since the failure of pan-Arab nationalism, but there still is. And as an artist, most artists tend to be more left wing. There are always contradictions, but my film is all about the contradictions. Life is full of contradictions.

The first shot of the film is very shocking. It also seems to announce the uncompromising nature of what's to follow. What was your intention?

I just had this image in my head. I was like, "How do I introduce this girl?" So I decided to introduce her through her work. This is her work. That's it. I really didn't intend it to be anything else. And I never believed people when they used to say that; I'd say, "Yeah, whatever, you totally intended to shock." But I really did feel this is the way the film had to start. And as an image, it tells so much about Asya.

Pages: 1 2 3