Cabaret Crusades: The Secrets of Karbala

Wael Shawky, one of the most exciting artists to emerge from the Arab world, will present his film The Secrets of Karbala (2014) at the Holland Festival. It's the final instalment of his trilogy Cabaret Crusades. Using an intriguing, alienating blend of animation and puppetry, Shawky highlights key moments in the history of the Crusades, told from an Arab perspective with a voice-over in Classical Arabic.

The other two parts of Shawky's trilogy are entitled The Horror Show (2010) and The Path to Cairo (2012). In his work, Shawky uses the past to explore our contemporary culture, and vice versa.

Shawky's trilogy is based on The Crusades through Arab Eyes by Lebanese author Amin Maalouf, a narrative retelling of the crusades drawn from Arab chronicles and other historical sources. The book was an overnight sensation. Shawky showed the savagery of European knights who killed, plundered and raped their way to the Holy Land, often not sparing their fellow Christians either. He was intrigued by this story, even more so when he found out that there are four completely different versions of Pope Urban II's famous speech in which he called for the First Crusade (1096-1099). The exact words of the real speech – which started two hundred years of religious war – have not been documented and have been lost in history. With surreal means (such as puppetry) Shawky shows that there is no single historical truth. In his installations, films, narratives and performances he uses historical facts and fictions to explore the impact of history, culture and globalisation on our contemporary society.

Every part of Shawky's trilogy has its own unique style, aesthetics, sound and design. Cabaret Crusades: The Horror Show File (2010), the first in the series, was shot with two-hundred-year-old wooden Italian marionettes. Using realistic-looking spaces and three-dimensional architecture, the film tackles the period between 1096 and 1099, spanning four years of critical events that changed forever the relation between the Arab world and the West. Part two, Cabaret Crusades: the Path to Cairo (2012), features ceramic marionettes handcrafted by Shawky himself. Using scenographic landscapes collaged from famous Persian miniatures, the story covers the period between the First and Second Crusade (1099-1145). For the concluding part of his trilogy, The Secrets of Karbala, which is screened at the Holland Festival, Shawky used translucent glass marionettes set against a background made of dark clay. The film revolves around some crucial events in the 7th and the 11th century AD, including the first major rift in Islam, the division between Sunni and Shia. Blending religious gravitas and dramatic fantasy, he stages a theatrical account of history. The marionettes are the most grotesque in the trilogy, surreal creatures – part human, part unknown animal and part extra-terrestrial being – which convey the horror of war, religious fanaticism and aggression. The music has a similarly alienating effect, mixing traditional Arab hymns (Le Fijiri from the Gulf, Egyptian Sufi enshad and Iraqi Shia song) with electronic music. 

The artificiality of the marionettes and the gloomy sets create a disruptive effect. Past, present and future coincide. It's cartoonish yet convincing. Shawky delivered the first part of his trilogy in 2010, just before the start of the Arab Spring. His work shows some bizarre similarities between the events one thousand years ago and the present time. The Secrets of Karbala marks Shawky's Holland Festival debut.