In Dynamic Africa:
South african filmmaker Francois Verster is no stranger to social consciousness. His most recent project “Dream of Shahrazad” follows the lives of various individuals in Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey as they come to terms with the events we’ve come to know as the Arab Spring through the art of story telling.
Shahrazad becomes omnipresent in this film through various incarnations. We meet an impassioned Turkish conductor running a two week rehearsal program for a youth philharmonic orchestra’s performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade suite. He uses the orchestra as extended metaphor for democratic participation, reminding the students of their role as agents for change. An Egyptian theatre troupe uses traditional storytelling methods to bring to life the testimonies of mothers who lost their sons on the January 25th revolution. A visual artist with a lifelong obsession with the 1001 nights finds himself re-inspired to create and share his art through new friendship with a Shahrazad-esque storyteller and a young Lebanese actress begins to heal from the effects the horrifying images of war she witnessed during the political instability in her country and emerges a popular internet activist...[continue reading]