Credits
40 minutes, 2001
Correspondent, BBC2
Producer-Director: Amir Amirani
Editor: David Howell
Camera: David Scott and Hadi Pouyan
Series Editor: Fiona Murch
In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the BBC series Correspondent commissioned two films, called respectively Letter from America and Letter to America. I made the latter, and it was presented by the Syrian writer Rana Kabbani. The aim was to gauge feelings and opinion in the Middle East in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, in an effort to address some of the questions raised when George Bush asked, “Why Do they Hate Us?” In fact, we did not find a single person who hated the US, but rather many who disliked US Foreign Policy.
It was filmed in Egypt, the UAE and Iran, where we were the first team to film inside the former American embassy in Tehran when it was reopened in 2001.
Contributions include:
Ahdaf Soueif, Egyptian novelist.
Naseer Shamma, Iraqi musician.
Khaled Youssef, Egyptian film maker.
Atef Helwa, Palestinian journalist, Dubai, UAE
Dr. Ebtisam Al-Kitbi, Emirates University,
Hisham Kassem, Publisher, Cairo Times
Essam Al-Aryan, spokesman, Muslim Brotherhood,
Prof. Abdulkhalegh Abdullah, Emirates University,
Hossein Shah-Hosseini, caretaker of former Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh’s home.
Bijan Khajepour, Political Analyst, Atieh Bahar.
Dr. Ataollah Mohajerani, Centre for Dialogue of Civilizations.
