8/7/2019 Tarak Ben Ammar and the Jasmine Revolution - Screen International April 2011

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IntervIew tarak ben ammar

The jasmine media mogulQuinta Communications chief Tarak Ben Ammar talks to Col Bo about his role in the recent popularuprising in Tunisia and what he believes are the implications for the Arab entertainment business

■ Ben Ammar createdCarthago Films in Tunisiain 1974. It servicedhigh-profle shoots inthe country including The

Life Of Brian, Star Wars and Raiders Of The Lost 

Ark . Ben Ammar went onto invest and producehis own flms; his creditsinclude La Traviata,Femme Fatale, Hannibal 

Rising and the upcoming 

Black Gold .

■ In 1990, Ben Ammarcreated Paris-basedQuinta Communicationsin partnership with SilvioBerlusconi. Initiallya production entity,Quinta moved into rightstrading and distribution,releasing  Passion Of The

Christ in France in 2004.

■ In 1995, Ben Ammarbecame a board membero Berlusconi’s Mediaset.

■ In 2005, Ben Ammarinvested $42.7m(€30m) in The WeinsteinCompany and joined itsboard. He acquired Italy’sEagle Pictures in 2007.

■ In 2007, he openedLTC-Gammarth labsand post-productionin Tunisia. Two yearslater, he launched NorthArican satellite networkNessma TV with Mediasetand the Karoui Group.

■ Ben Ammar’s digitalpost-production acilitiesempire in Franceincludes Duran Duboi,Les Audis de Joinvilleand a 43% stake in thevenerable Eclair Group.

FFl

Brking nwFo the latest flm busesses see ceeDaly.com

In February Quinta, Communications’CEO Tarak Ben Ammar was in hisnative Tunisia, overseeing production

on Jean-Jacques Annaud’s $55m Arabianoil epic Black Gold , when the nation roseup in revolt. Just 23 days later PresidentBen Ali was ousted, ending 23 years of autocratic rule and sparking the JasmineRevolution that is reverberating acrossthe Arabic-speaking world.

Helping to give voice to that popularuprising was Nessma TV, the satellitebroadcast network Ben Ammar co-founded in 2008 with Silvio Berlusconi’sMediaset and the Karoui brothers’advertising agency.

Nessma means “gentle breeze” inArabic, a name that reects one of the network’s underlying missions: touse the gentle power of entertainmentto help moderate and modernise thehearts and minds of an Arab populationthat might otherwise gravitate towardsclosed-minded radicalism. Two thirdsof the 90 million people living in theMaghreb – the North African land masswest of Egypt – are aged 25 or younger,an impressionable demographic whosecultural horizons are largely dened bywhat they see on the small screen.

Ben Ammar, whose uncle, HabibBourguiba, was the architect of Tunisia’sindependence and the country’s rstpresident, is now developing a featureabout Mohamed Bouazizi, the streetvendor whose self-immolation ignited theinitial protests.

Your Nessma network deed the

Tunisian regime by broadcasting 

protest reports. What role did Nessma

play, both on air and online, in

facilitating the uprising?

Tarak Ben Ammar Nessma was the onlymedia outlet that was allowed to goto [the town of] Sidi Bouzid, whereMohamed Bouazizi was from and had setre to himself, and interview his familyand the inhabitants of the town. SidiBouzid was where the revolution started.When we aired the programme onDecember 30, we did so without showing

■18 Screen International April 2011

en mmar: “We need to create a much more robust domestic market for rab ms.”

‘It has becomehip now to beArab, which,let’s be honest,it hasn’t beenfor some time’Taa Be mma, QutaCommucatos

‘The percepTion of TV as a fallback for acTors looking To end

Their careers wiTh a sTeady paycheck has changed’ tv drama, p23 »

April 2011 Screen International19 

it to the government or the ministry of information, despite their request. Thenwe put in on Facebook, so that peoplewho had missed it the rst time wouldstill be able to see it online.

We were threatened by thegovernment, but by then it was too late.Nessma helped open the door and withintwo weeks the revolution had spreadacross the whole country and [then-president Zine El Abidine] Ben Ali edon January 15. Never before in an Arabregime under dictatorship had you seena channel like Nessma air a completelyunedited and uncensored programme likewe did on December 30. Our Facebooksite has more than 200,000 friends.

Of course my partners, the Karouibrothers, and I knew we were taking arisk but we felt it was a necessary riskto take. The government threatenedto shut us down and also to send thestation’s general manager to prison, butwe persisted. The authorities ultimatelydidn’t dare to take action against usbecause they knew I had legitimacy– rstly, through my ties to foundingpresident, Habib Bourguiba, and secondly

because I had brought so much work overthe years to my country through lm andTV productions. Also because they knewthat one of my partners was Mediaset, amajor European media company.

My guess is the newly empowered

youth movements across the

Arab world will want to see their own

stories being told on the screen. Will the

independent lm-makers from the Arab

world we see at festivals now become

a force in their local entertainment

industries? And, given nanciers’

natural aversion to uncertainty, how

long will it take for capital to back a new

entertainment infrastructure?

TBA It reminds me of the time I was astudent in the US during the late 1960s.It was the time of “I’m Black and I’mproud”. I think that’s relevant to Tunisiaand Egypt. We’re seeing the youth theresaying: “I’m Arab and I’m proud.” It hasbecome hip now to be Arab, which, let’sbe honest, it hasn’t been for some time.

The big question remains where isthe market for these emerging Arab lm-makers. We need to create a much more

the youth of Tunisia they had to work haand earn their place. That was a lesson learned myself as I was seeking to forgeahead with my career as a lm producer

Bourguiba placed an emphasis ongiving women complete, constitutionallyenshrined equality as well as ensuringthe Tunisian youth had [access to] goodeducation. Those are the foundations ofmodern Tunisia today and why I am sohopeful about Tunisia’s future as it makthe transition to democracy.

I don’t think it is a coincidence thatboth Tunisia and Egypt, the two countriewhere we have seen revolutions thisyear, do not have oil. The real wealth inthose countries is not in their soil but inthe young people who walk on its land.They are the ones who will build theircountries. That is exactly the question wask in Black Gold and why the events of this year in the Arab world have made thlm so timely – the lm asks the questiwhether oil is a blessing or a curse.

I still don’t think we have a denitiveanswer to that question, more than 70years after we rst discovered oil in theArab world.ns

robust domestic market for Arab lms,which certainly already exists for Egyptianlm-makers but far less so for lm-makers from other parts of the region, aswell as ensure the quality and vision of these lms is good enough to translateand export internationally.

Obviously Quinta is investing in Arablms, as this is important for us. You alsohave nanciers in the region, such as theDoha Film Institute [in Qatar], who aremaking positive contributions as well.

When I rst wanted to make Black Gold 

30 years ago I had interest from one of the major American studios, Paramount.One of the questions they asked me thenwas: why didn’t I have any Arab moneyon board? At that time, in the late 1970s,we had seen the rst big boom in Gulf petro-dollars, so it seemed this would bea region rife with potential investors.

Though I was still a young man withouta big reputation in the lm business, Ihad access, thanks to my family, to someof the most important people in thisregion. I met with a number of importantpeople. I kept getting the same quizzicallook and the response: “You cannot be

serious.” The name of the game backthen was banking, real estate, oil, gasand defence. More than 30 years later, Iasked myself, have things changed? Arethey still only interested in oil and gas,real estate and armaments? Or have theybegun to see the value and importance of culture and the media?

The fact that the Doha Film Institute ispartner and co-producer on Black Gold , alm lled with Arab heroes and historieson an international scale, is a measureof how things are changing and willcontinue to change for the better in theweeks, months and years ahead.

From what I have read, if the Arab

world had had more presidents

like your uncle, Habib Bourguiba, we

might have seen far more gradual

transitions and far less of the popular

anger, even allowing for the very 

different times we now live in. What are

your personal memories of him?

TBA I will never forget how my unclewould tell me in private how happy hewas Tunisia didn’t have any oil or gas. Hewould tell me it allowed him to convince

en mmar was on the unisian set of Quinta’s $55m ack God when the popuar uprising began

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