This is a recent interview with Sammy Maamar who is from Tunisia, he talks about enrolling at FilmschoolSF and his dream of making a difference in the world thru filmmaking.

Transcript

Sammy: Hello, my name is Sammy Maamar, I’m from Tunisia, North Africa.

So yeah, I’ve been in San Francisco for a while. I just discovered this school, not long ago and signed up for the 6 Month Documentary Program. It’s been two months now in the program and it’s been great. It’s a hands on program. I’m doing my documentary on Community Gardens in San Francisco. Urban Community Gardens and I’ve got a lot of feedback and help from peers as well as from teachers. The facility great here, its downtown, in the heart of San Francisco. Easy to get to.

I went to the Art Institute for four years but i didn’t finish because of some financial difficulties. Also they didn’t offer any night classes versus here you can also have a professional life and go to work, 9 to 5 and then come to school and pursue your hobby or future career or whatever you want to do with this program.

The admission process was very easy, it was a couple of weeks emailing back and forth with the admission manager. It was very easy and straight forward. No problems. You just fill out the application, talk about the financial stuff and you’re good to go.

But it’s really up to you, if you want to be serious and pursue your documentary making you can do it. If you’re just going to blame others and be lazy, you’re not going to do it. It’s more up to you, it makes you more responsible to make your own films.

What i hope to achieve with my documentary is to produce something for my portfolio and master every equipment used for filmmaking, also I would like to make connections with other people that i could work together in a crew. Like your classmates, which i could contact for future projects.

I am letting myself discover that i think i’m more into camera operating and cinematography than anything else. So, I’m not really that into writing the scripts and doing fiction stories, i like more nonfiction subjects.

My dream goal is to go back to Tunisia or anywhere over there, and just touch some taboo issues and present them to the world form my own perspective and what i learned from here.

The project i have in mind, it’s never talked about in the media, are the original people of North Africa. They call them Berbers and because as you know form history, the Arabs came form the east and colonized the entire region, which caused them to lose their language and customs. I just want to retrace that culture and go talk to people who still speak Berber language and reveal their culture.

A while ago i did a geneology DNA test and i found that 83% of my genes are Berber. I have no Arab genes, so i’d like to retrace where my people come from because i don’t know. I’d like to do that. That’s a documentary I really want to make.

Maybe thats what pushed me to do a documentary program, to learn this stuff, in order for me to go back and do a state of the art documentary about that particular subject. I always encourage people to travel, anyway, but coming to San Francisco and pursuing your hobby and dream of being a Filmmaker in San Francisco, there’s nothing better than that.

First of all the school is great, its in downtown San Francisco. The city is very exciting. You’ll learn a lot on your own, you will discover yourself. You will be put in uncomfortable situations and in those situations you will discover yourself.