The Hand of Fatima

Short Synopsis

In this time-traveling cross-cultural documentary, the daughter of Rolling Stone writer Robert Palmer travels from Mississippi to Morocco to investigate her father's transformative encounter with an ancient Sufi brotherhood, The Master Musicians of Jajouka.

Description/Treatment

TREATMENT
A poetic family road trip through rock history to the square root of the blues, The Hand of Fatima is a feature-length documentary structured by two parallel journeys to the remote Moroccan village of Jajouka, where a hereditary band plays music older than history.

The first journey begins in the 1960s, when critic Robert Palmer uncovers “cryptic allusions” to Jajouka in the novels of William Burroughs. On assignment for Rolling Stone in 1971, Palmer finds the place where the musicians spend their days smoking kif, playing music, and “driving possessed tribesmen into mass Dionysian frenzies.” In 2006, filmmaker Augusta Palmer makes her own pilgrimage to the village after inheriting the Moroccan necklace her father wore as an emblem of his connection with the Master Musicians.

On her quest to understand her father’s initiation into this ideal musical family, Augusta interviews Yoko Ono, Anthony DeCurtis, legendary producer Bill Laswell, and singer/songwriter Donovan about her father's musical legacy and the uniqueness of Jajouka. The filmmaker also visits Palmer’s four wives to get their perspectives on the music, magic, and madness Jajouka brought into Palmer’s life. Bachir Attar, the Master Musicians' current leader and a close friend of the elder Palmer, welcomes Augusta to his mountain village and provides a glimpse into the musicians' rich history, replete with pan worship, rock stars like Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, jazz legends like Ornette Coleman, and Beat writers like Burroughs and Brion Gysin.

Animated sequences based on Robert Palmer’s writing about Jajouka are intercut with the live action of Augusta's 2006 trip to the village. Equal parts Romare Bearden and Monty Python, these animations mark the filmmaker’s progressive immersion into her father’s hallucinatory experiences, literally allowing audiences to see what he believed about the village while Augusta experiences the village's contemporary reality. Together with her infant daughter and one of her three stepmothers, Augusta makes peace with Robert Palmer’s life and legacy through the ritual sacrifice and trance music of Jajouka.

CURRENT STATUS OF THE PROJECT
The Hand of Fatima is currently at fine cut and completion is expected in April 2009. In January 2009, the film was selected to screen as a work-in-progress at DocuClub, a New York workshop series that has featured films such as Born Into Brothels and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster . The film was selected for the IFP Documentary Rough Cut Lab in 2008 and has received grants from the New York State Council for the Arts, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The Wellspring Foundation, and the Lucius and Eva Eastman Fund. The Hand of Fatima was the only work-in-progress selected for The Oxford American’s 2008 Best of the South Film Issue. The film has recently been selected to particiapte in Stanford Law School's Documentary Film Program, a subset of their larger Fair Use Project.
We’re very excited to note two new developments that add to the film’s marketability in the U.S. in 2009. A collection of Robert Palmer’s writings edited by Anthony DeCurtis been bought by Scribner’s, a sizable commercial publisher whose editors plan to bring the book out in the summer of 2009. In addition, the Master Musicians of Jajouka have signed with a new booking agency and are planning a major U.S. tour and album release in the summer of 2009. The filmmaker hopes to make use of this synchronicity to bring the film out to audiences who have heard about Palmer’s writing from the anthology and to world music fans likely to attend concerts by the Master Musicians. We hope to follow the Master Musicians on tour and to create academic symposia on college campuses that include musicians, academics, writers, and artists inspired by the culture of Morocco. Using this multi-pronged approach, the filmmaker hopes to enable The Hand of Fatima to reach the widest possible audience in the U.S. and the world.

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

A poem by the Persian mystic Rumi talks about a place where people go “back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch.” In Rumi’s poem, this door is “round and open,” a reminder to stay awake to the wonders of the universe. The two worlds he speaks of may be the worlds of the dead and the living, of men and women, the magical and the real, or the Islamic world and the West. Jajouka was a place where this door became "round and open" for people like my father, the writer and critic Robert Palmer.

On a very personal level, The Hand of Fatima is a journey to make peace with him in the place he loved best. my father was both a genius and a difficult man whose ambitions and addictions overshadowed those closest to him. In willing me a necklace that symbolized his encounter with Jajouka, however, he gave me the most valuable thing he had: a connection to the place whose music and culture made him feel at home in the world. He also gave me a connection to my three amazing stepmothers, who became my most important guides on this journey. However, it is my strong hope that this very personal story of music, mysticism, and family history will also open other doors.

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, I have been shocked by the ways in which the doors between the U.S. and the Islamic world have been sealed off by political rhetoric, fundamentalist religion, and old-fashioned fear of the Other. The village of Jajouka is a place where that door remains open. During the past hundred years, The Master Musicians of Jajouka have played not only for Morocco’s sultans, but also for a host of Western visitors - from Ornette Coleman and William Burroughs to Mick Jagger, Donovan and Lee Ranaldo.

In the course of many interviews about Jajouka, I have been struck by the way each subject’s face lights up when they describe the village. Record producer Bill Laswell told me that it is a place entirely apart, where our normal concerns don’t apply, a sacred, hidden space. Donovan said in an interview with me that the trance rhythms played by the Master Musicians put you in touch with your hidden self, with the unified field that connects us all. I feel very privileged to have experienced the place and the music for myself, and to have been given access to make a film there.

In 2006, my crew and I filmed the Master Musicians celebrating their biggest yearly festival, Eid el Kabir. My infant daughter and one of my stepmothers came along for the ride, providing a feminine balance for Jajouka’s intense masculinity. The music took me to a place where I could understand and make peace with my father. Anchored by my voice-over, augmented by interviews, and enlivened by animated versions of my father’s writing on Jajouka, I hope The Hand of Fatima will re-open Rumi’s door between the two worlds, building a musical dialogue that helps bridge our ideological and cultural divides.