The controversy among Syrians regarding the Syrian director Bassam Al Mulla, known as the “Godfather of Levantine Series”, has not subsided since the announcement of his departure. On social media, thousands of publications mourn the “creative director”, and consider that the Syrian drama “lost a new castle with the death of Mullah.” On the other hand, hundreds of publications that underestimate its value, and assume that Mullah was one of the responsible for the decline of the Syrian drama, since the opening of “Bab Al Hara”, which paved a new path in the Syrian drama, has had negative repercussions on the Syrian drama.
What can be observed within this state of controversy, is that the majority of artists and critics adopted the first opinion; Their posts in which they mourned Mullah were full of nostalgia for the romantic moments they experienced on filming sites and on screen; This applies to the majority of artists who criticized, with their previous statements, the series “Bab Al Hara” and the reactionary values it promoted and the false history it painted.
Some obituary publications sometimes contradict their content with the previous statements of those who made them, as they raise the mullah to the highest ranks today, following they had previously brought him to the bottom. The contradiction indicates that the Syrian artistic community is in a state of schizophrenia today; It is repeated with the departure of every Syrian artist who left a real impact on the drama, as Al Mulla did.
Al Mulla’s artistic career began in 1981, when he worked as an assistant director in the series “Family Experiences” with the late director Alaeddin Kokash. During the eighties, he remained with Kokash in most of the series he directed, and took turns playing the role of assistant director and executive director in them; To weigh down his experience before he presented his first work as a director in 1991, when he directed the series “The Poppy”, which seemed similar to the work of his teacher at that period, and bears the same color and thought in dealing with social issues.
But Bassam Al Mulla quickly got out of context when, the following year, he directed the series “Kan Ya Ma Kan”, presented to children. At that time, Bassam Al Mulla seemed a different director from all those around him, able through simple cinematic tricks to tell folk tales to provide a lesson to children. Although the series has a major problem, which is its promotion of the values of conservative Islamic societies, on the technical level, it was enjoyable and not without excitement and suspense.
With the same conservative thought, and with a nostalgic tendency towards the life of the old conservative Damascene family, Bassam Al Mulla wove his third series, “Ayam Shamiya” in 1993, which is considered the first Syrian series belonging to the Levantine environment style. Thus, Al-Mulla opened the door to a new genre in Syrian drama, contributing significantly to the Syrian drama’s subsequent dominance of the Arab satellite TV market at the end of the nineties and the beginning of the new millennium.
“Ayam Shamiya” was a turning point in the career of Bassam Al Mulla himself as well, following him he became a star director in the Arab world, and in 2000, Bassam Al Mulla collaborated with writer Ahmed Hamed to bring back the drama of the Levantine environment to the front, through the portal of the series “Al Khawali”, which achieved Unparalleled success. He made Al-Mulla believe that he was on the right path, to repeat the same partnership in the series “Nights of Salhia” in 2003, the series that can be described as the most perfect and quality series of the Levant Environment to date.
In 2006, Al Mulla entered into a new partnership with writer Marwan Kawouk, to start the series “Bab Al Hara”, reaching the highest peak of mass success achieved by a Syrian director historically. However, this success had a negative impact, as the mullah was dragged behind the financial success and huge revenues, and presented, through the first four parts he produced, what the audience wanted, with a much smaller margin of creativity, and turned to production to increase the value of material gain, and he opened the “Maysaloon” production company. Technical.
These differences made the series “Bab Al Hara” a model to be raised when mentioning any bad work that spans a very large number of parts. Al-Mulla did not emerge from this shell until the last years of his life, when he tried to find himself once more in the series “The Silk Market”.
With a comprehensive look at Bassam Al Mulla’s career, it can be said that he was not a bad director as some think, and he was not a reason for the collapse of the Syrian drama or the decline of its level, but rather he was one of the best directors in the Syrian arena, until he chose the easiest path in which he earns the most money , to fall prisoner “Bab Al-Hara” and imprison himself in the nostalgic Levantine neighborhood that he made himself.
