Nahida Rammah, the once famous actress, the favourite of the theatre and cinema audiences in Iraq and most of the Arabic speaking world from the fifties to the seventies, now lives in exile in London.

She started her acting career in the 1950s, where she became a very important and influential figure in the Iraqi and Arabic film and theatre profession. She played roles that touched on sensitive social issues. Themes on the virginity of a bride were groundbreaking and Mrs Nahida Rammah became the first actress to be accepted in the industry without prejudice.

Up until the 1970s Nahida Rammah belonged to the well established and respected artistic intelligentsia of Baghdad, however the pressure from the Regime became unbearable and many of them, including her, started their exile.

Wasteland explores how Nahida Rammah tried to cope with losing her fame, her audience and having to watch, instead of perform on stage in the London theatres. It also shows her connection with Baghdad and the difficulty of getting correct information and news of one’s own country during troubled times.

As the director of Wasteland, there were three issues that I found especially important:

1. How a well know person, forced into a new environment, ripped of her basic tool/lifeline - language and communication in this case - can survive.

2. To show Iraqis from a very different angle to the usual negative light found in the media.

3. To work with a subject that has become very central in the 20th century, touching almost every country, every nation on the globe: exile.

I hope that I have been able to achieve my aims. For the second point, a friend of mine remarked after seeing Wasteland that he had known me for many years but never really realised the extent of the problems we Iraqis in exile carry. The film gave him an insight into this.

The format
Working with almost no budget, without any funding, I choose to shoot the film on a Sony V6000 Hi8 camera. To make the end "product" look as professional as possible, I did several takes, a luxury, that video allows, and in which Mrs Nahida Rammah was most helpful and co-operative. Also, taking care that lighting was the best possible, which was achieved by using a lot of extra lighting on the indoor shots and waiting for the best time during the day for the outdoor locations, also with an eye on the dress Mrs Nahida Rammah was wearing. I wanted to achieve better quality than is usually expected from Hi8...

The future of Wasteland...
The Director ...