Genre: Feature Documentary (1 x 95′/1 x 52′)

Directed by Francois Verster
Produced by: Neil Brandt, Francois Verster and  Lucas Rosant, Mandra Films.
Status: In Production, Delivery March 2012
Sales Agent: Spier Films
Funded with assistance from the NFVF and the Sundance Documentary Fund

Most people around the world know at least something about THE NIGHTS – of Ali Baba, Aladdin and his lamp, Sindbad the sailor and more.  For some, this famous collection of stories merely amounts to children’s fantasy; for others, it represents a problematically exotic (“Orientalist”) and sexualized view of the Middle Eastern, Arab or Islamic world, or simply vulgarity and pornography… Yet for many people around the world – and especially in the Middle East itself – it has for centuries been an ongoing source of creative inspiration and wonder, and has also been employed for radical social and political critique.

In the frame story of the NIGHTS, the princess Shahrazad saves lives through creativity.  The cuckolded Sultan Shahriyar has promised to marry a new virgin every night and then to execute her the following morning – by telling stories to him night after night, Shahrazad prevents herself and others being executed.  She embodies initiative and resistance to oppression through the power of the imagination, and teaches the murderous Sultan to become a better person.  THE DREAM OF SHAHRAZAD celebrates the legacy of Shahrazad and of the NIGHTS today, exploring situations where they are brought alive in either direct or metaphorical sense.

Leading us through a richly kaleidoscopic blend of music, fable, politics and filmic vision are four main stories that weave in and out of one another, much in the manner of the stories in the NIGHTS themselves: a Turkish conductor leads a youth orchestra through a rehearsal and performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s SCHEHERAZADE suite, using the piece as a tool for democractic education; a young woman who has escaped recent horrors in Lebanon by coming to Cairo makes peace with her experiences by learning the art of storytelling; three stories about Harun Al Rashid from THE NIGHTS provide a context for protest poetry from Iran; a lonely older artist and a younger politically radical storyteller in Cairo form an intense friendship and find new creative inspiration from each other. Interconnections between the personal, the political and the fabulous all become clear as the film develops.

Actively exploring the possibility of dream and fantasy within the political documentary form, THE DREAM OF SHAHRAZAD is at once observational documentary, concert film, political essay and visual translation of an ever-popular symphonic and literary classic.  It is a documentary homage both to THE 1001 NIGHTS and to Rimsky-Korsakov’s SCHEHERAZADE symphonic suite itself, as well as to the rich creative and political legacy of a vast culture too often reduced to religion only, and currently impacting directly on global change.