Photo: Frank in Guinea (Flickr)'The adobe mosques of Mali, for example, are beautiful, on the one hand, and completely unique on the other. They demonstrate for the viewer a tradition that is related to, say, the Great Mosque of Damascus, yet very different in its materials and finish.'
A new documentary from Unity Productions Foundation — which also produced such films as Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet and Allah Made Me Funny — showcases the diverse landscape of Islamic art.
Narrated by Susan Sarandon, Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World takes viewers from Spain to India to Mali as it tells the story of the importance of art to Islam as well as how different forms of art inform one another.
The films airs tomorrow night (July 6th) at 9 pm on PBS stations in the United States.
Executive Producer Michael Wolfe took time to answer a few questions from Muslim Voices Managing Editor Rosemary Pennington about the film.
Rosemary Pennington: Why a film about art?
Michael Wolfe: Our previous film, Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think, was topical, social, and geopolitical—a film about contemporary opinion deduced from polling. It seemed like a good idea, as we were finishing that film, to consider producing something entirely different.
About the time we started, in 2010, all over the USA and Europe, museums were planning to mount shows concerned with different aspects of Islamic art. It was interesting, as we progressed, to see that we were working on an subject area that many other people shared an interest in.
We have now premiered our finished film at a number of museums around the country that are hosting shows focused on some aspect of our topic.
RP: Early on someone says, even though struggles and wars tend to be what we remember most, the legacy of any group or people is its art. Why do you think art, or more precisely the story of art, gets lost?
MW: The film says that struggles and wars are what preoccupy us in the present, but those events are actually ephemeral. Rather, it is the production of art that lasts, because we value it and collect and protect it.
RP: How did you decide what places and pieces of art would be profiled and what wouldn’t be?
MW: We tried to offer a cross-section of architecture, arts, crafts, and calligraphy that could demonstrate how different and yet unified the look and feel of Islamic Art may be. Our decisions mostly flowed from an interest in demonstrating quality and variety.
The adobe mosques of Mali, for example, are beautiful, on the one hand, and completely unique on the other. They demonstrate for the viewer a tradition that is related to, say, the Great Mosque of Damascus, yet very different in its materials and finish.
RP: The film starts with a discussion of the importance of language to Islam … why?
MW: In Western art calligraphy is a minor art form, mostly confined to books and the occasional decorative function. But in Islamic Art, the practice of beautiful writing is much more. Because it grew up alongside the Quran, Islam’s sacred book, calligraphy developed from a central root and flourished broadly, spreading to every branch of artistic expression.
Take the way Arabic writing literally jumped off the page into architecture: Any tourist visiting the Alhambra Palace in Spain, the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, or the Taj Mahal in Agra, India, can’t help being struck by the central role calligraphy plays in traditional Islamic buildings. Written Arabic emerged from humble beginnings.
Among the earliest examples, in Mecca, are crude letterings chipped into standing boulders that date from the late seventh century. They were a people’s way of memorializing significant parts of the Quran and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, who lived and had recently died there.
The very earliest verse in the Quran is a command for people to read. No wonder the word gained such primacy.
RP: Who is the audience for the film?
MW: The audience for this film is any person who appreciates art and the production of beauty and wants to know what may distinguish the art produced by Islamic Civilization from the art produced by other cultures.
Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World airs on PBS stations across the United States July 6th at 9 pm. Check your local listings for details.
Michael Wolfe is an author and filmmaker as well as President and Executive Producer of Unity Productions Foundation, a nonprofit documentary and media organization. He has co-produced nine award-winning documentaries on Muslim themes, mostly broadcast on PBS. Wolfe’s work as a journalist with Ted Koppel’s ABC Nightline and with CNN International has been nominated for Peabody, Emmy, George Polk, and National Press Club Awards and has won awards from the Society for American Travel Writers and the Wilbur Prize for Best Book on a Religious Theme. Wolfe is the author of ten published books. A collection of his verse translations of ancient Greek epitaphs, Cut These Words into My Stone, will be published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2013. He holds a degree in Classics from Wesleyan University.
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