Long one of the least-watched slots in Arab TV, today there’s a wave of hard-hitting home-grown documentaries sweeping the satellite airwaves thanks to outfits like Assaad Taha’s Hot Spot Films.

With years of experience as a journalist, TV reporter, war correspondent and documentary filmmaker, Taha, a 51-year-old Egyptian, began laying the foundations for Hot Spot Films in 1999 in Dubai. The company is named after his successful documentary-style program Noqta Sakhena (Hot Spot) which aired on Al Jazeera in 1997.

Taha’s work with Noqta Sakhena took him to volatile regions such as Somalia, Serbia and Bosnia and had him interviewing politicians and leaders such as Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan, the late Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia-Hercegovina, the Dalai Lama and Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah.

He was a regular contributor to international Arab publications such as El-Majalla, Al-Hayat and Asharq Alawsat before becoming a war correspondent for London’s Worldwide Television News Corporation (WTN) in Bosnia and Croatia and then piloting Noqta Sakhena, making it only natural that Taha focus on documentary film production.

He had the bright idea of engaging budding young Arab filmmakers to tackle a variety of subjects. So, since 2001, Hot Spot Films has independently produced and marketed documentaries geared toward providing an Arab perspective on topical regional developments as well as global events that resonate with local audiences.

“Hot Spot Films is more than a company for documentary production,” Taha said at the Eighth Arab Cinema Biennale in Paris. “It is a vast project, a project which proves that we, as Arabs, [can] competently produce documentaries [up to] international standards. These films were made so we can be better understood and so we can better understand others, through our own perspective. We have a duty to make films which reflect the dreams but also the sufferings of those that we film.”

Although the outfit has a number of its own ideas for projects which it plans to take to satellite channels, Hot Spot also accepts proposals from aspiring filmmakers.

Even with transportation, permits and paperwork arranged in advance, making a documentary is no easy feat. Working without a prepared script, the crew more often than not finds that they have to do much of the research themselves on site, even though there is usually a research team responsible for setting up meetings in the field.

Challenging as the enterprise might be, Taha’s outfit has really opened the door for many professionals starting out to make a name for themselves in the film world. Ahmed Rashwan, a graduate of the Higher Institute of Cinema in Cairo and struggling to make his first feature film, snapped up an opportunity from Hot Spot and traveled to Argentina to make two outstanding documentaries on the Arabs of Latin America.

The first was entitled Maria, Abadi and Cohen and documented the relationship between three women friends of Arab descent (a Christian, a Muslim and a Jew) living in harmonious existence far away from the conflicts in their respective homeland. Rashwan’s second film, Arabs, Golf and Politics, included a rare interview with Argentina’s ex-President Carlos Menem, who is of Syrian descent.

Tamer El-Said’s Ghaeir Khodoni (Take Me) is a powerful story which revisits the harrowing memories of a group of Moroccan men who as young activists were kidnapped, tortured and held in isolation without explanation or a trial. The film was chosen to participate at the CinemaEast Film Festival 2005; another of his documentaries, On a Monday, was screened at the same event a year earlier. The up-and-coming filmmaker nabbed the award for Best Long Documentary Film at the Eighth Ismailia International Film Festival in 2004 and also took part in the Rotterdam Fifth Arab Film Festival in 2005.

Through his project Taha supports fellow Egyptian film graduates and sends them all over the world, giving them a once-in-a-lifetime experience writing, researching and directing their own films. And whether he is directing his crews to go in search of war veterans, re-examine issues such as political assassination or delving into topics such as prison literature, among many others, Taha has brought together a wealth of Arab talents tackling a variety of topics. Directors, cameramen and editors from all over the Arab world have gotten their breaks thanks to Taha’s initiative.

The growing list of ambitious filmmakers includes Hala Lotfi, who traveled to Panama, Costa Rica and Honduras; Ahmed Abuzeid (Chili); Suad Shawki (South Africa and Nubia); Yasser Howidi (Colombia); Rasha Kordi (Spain); Sherif Fathi (Italy); Ali Shawki (Senegal); and Baha Ghazawi (Mauritania, Ukraine and Bosnia).

While documenting the effects of apartheid, reporting on writers and their prison experiences, war trials and tribulations or interviewing survivors who witnessed political assassinations, what Hot Spot perhaps unwittingly does is offer confidence and hope to the Arab world’s filmmakers, each with a dream that needs fulfilling.  et

In a career that has spanned nearly 30 years, Mohamed Khan has helmed some of the nation’s most memorable films — and commanded some of the most prominent actors in the region. A regular Egypt Today columnist, he may be reached on his personal email at mokh42@gmail.com.