Someone is Sleeping in My Pain: An East-West Macbeth

Synopsis

Feature film. A story of an American film director (Smith) who travels to Yemen to film an Arabic version of Macbeth among Yemeni tribal warriors. "The appeal of this Macbeth adaption is in making the difficulties of its realisation into the film’s subject. The circumstances of the shooting provide the framework for the film in film, the South Arabian Macbeth," he [Hagbeck] continues. "The boundaries between the documentation of the work and the staged story become increasingly blurred. The action of the feature film is reflected in the way it is produced, in the Macbeth-like ambition of the director. What was thought at the beginning of the film as being a naïve equation of a contemporary traditional culture with a poetic invention, develops into a dramatic debate between reality and projection, reality and the mise-en-scène." [www.hagbeck.com].

Language

English

Country

United States; Yemen

Medium

Film

Technical information

Colour / Sound

Year of release

2002

Duration

96 mins

Availability

No archive copy or distributor found (2007)

Credits

Director

Michael Roes

Producer

Michael Roes

Cinematographer

Manfred A. Hagbeck

Cast

Yahha Hammod Al-Dhafeeri	Macbeth (1) (Macbeth)
Andrea Smith	Director

Additional Details

Production type

Documentary/Educational/News

Plays

Macbeth

Subjects

Drama

Keywords

ethnology; Shakespeare, William (1564-1616); Yemen; Multiculturalism

Notes

Reviews

Lehmann, Courtney ‘Film Adaptations’ in Burt, Richard (ed). Shakespeares After Shakespeares: an Encyclopedia of the Bard in Mass Media and Popular Culture. 2 vols. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006. p, 105, entry 404.

Yemen Observer (January 20, 2001 Issue 92 Vol. IV — Part 2).

Kino, no.2 (1 May 2001). p. 35.