A Zoom Call with Deema: My Rooftop and the Sky

Deema is a 20-year-old artist (and airbender) from Saudi Arabia, practicing art in all of its forms. I wish I could tell you exactly how and when I met Deema, but I’m sure I had stumbled upon her work on Twitter or Instagram and was from there on out completely entranced.

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to arrange a Zoom call with Deema to ask her a few questions not only about her first film, My Rooftop and the Sky, but to get to know her more as an artist and creative. Arranging the Zoom call was a more complicated affair than either one of us had anticipated: confusions over the timezones erupted (Deema is Saudi-based and I’m UAE-based), our younger siblings both decided that a Zoom interview was the best possible time to slip into our rooms and wreak havoc, and, of course, we lagged and lost our connections and struggled to hear each other. But even with all of the quintessential struggles that come with trying to interact virtually, Deema and I were able to spend our afternoon having a thoughtful conversation about her films and the things that invigorate her to create and tell stories.

FATIMA: The first question I have laid out is pretty… simple. Who are you?

DEEMA: Umm… holy shit. That’s a hard question. I’m Deema—just Deema. That’s it. A lot of people know me by “deemag” but that’s literally my PlayStation name and I’m quite embarrassed by it. I’m 20 years old and I do art. I don’t call myself an artist—I mean I do on my Instagram bio so people take me seriously but, in general, I do different types of art and I‘ve just started with film.

F: Tell me more about “My Rooftop and the Sky”—where did your inspiration for it come from?

D: I’ll just be honest! It was such a weird time because it was when the whole quarantine thing started. I felt this strange surge of freedom to create, and the first thing I wanted to do was a film. I’ve been wanting to make my first film for a long time. I’ve done the stupidest shit before, all private though. I made a video about a date seed (إنها فصمة، ولكن ليست أية فصمة!) with my cousin, but I wanted to make my own official public short film so I can join that creative space.

Obviously, as soon as you decide to start something, you don’t know how to. I didn’t know how to go about it and I kept overthinking things like, ‘do I need actors?’ ‘Do I need people to help?’ And one day, I just came across an article on Sumou about a young female filmmaker called Sayna. I watched her experimental film—almost all of them—and I was very intrigued by her different and unique approach to film. The day I discovered her, I was shot with newfound inspiration. I was like, “Shit, I can really do anything!”

So I decided to do something that was really simple, but something that still had influence or impact of some kind, and I really wanted to do it my way. I also wanted to make sure it was in Arabic because it really felt like that was a necessary part of my project when joining the local film space.

F: What was the filming process like? How long did it take? What was your vision for it and was it any different from the final product?

D: There was a vague vision. All my visions are vague; I always experiment in the process itself because I love experimenting. I just took videos of birds off of YouTube, it was really that simple. There were some things I wanted to do but couldn’t. And there were some things I didn’t even know I could do.

Do you know when you’re first excited about doing something new? That rush? Like you do the thing in two days? That was what it was like for me.

F: Your film’s visuals are accompanied by a stunning recitation of a piece. When did you write that piece? And how did you know that this was the piece that you wanted to transform into a film?

D: That’s so weird because I had so many vague ideas that I wrote in my journal and it was a bit overwhelming. The pressure got to me so much that I was just like, fuck it. I found an old piece that I wrote on my Instagram. It was the first Arabic ‘poem’ that I wrote that I was so proud of. It was personal too, and very close to my heart, so it was perfect. And after reading it, I was like, “This will be the film.”

F: I am interested to know more about your existence as not just an artist but also as a filmmaker. Do you feel like that now that you’ve started doing film, your art is enhanced in some kind of way? How do you decide if something should be an art piece, and when it should be a film?

D: I’ll be honest—I don’t think about these sorts of things too much. I just do whatever comes when the time is right.

F: I agree! I agree! Art just comes out—you don’t always have to think too much about it.

D: Yeah! Whatever feels right, I just go ahead and I do it. But, yes! I feel like film did enhance my art. I feel like previously I would just doodle anything, like my hand had a mind of its own, but now that I’ve gotten into film, I’ve learned a lot. I was watching a Youtube video where someone was saying that a film engages all the senses using mixed media and it all comes together to tell a story. And I’m like, holy shit, storytelling. Storytelling is so powerful and so inspiring. After learning that from film and film experience, I decided to incorporate that into my drawings too, even if it’s just a portrait.

F: And tell us, Deema, what are you looking forward to in the next five years? Or just the next year?

D: I’m not going to lie. The future is really vague for me and I don’t like to expect much. Probably more films. Probably more animation. Hopefully, Insha’Allah, I get to create more stories through writing, drawing, film, whatever. I just hope I get to make more stories that reach people and resonate with them.

A shot from “My Rooftop and the Sky”. Courtesy of Deema.

F: And if there was a Deema crash course, if I was going to go and study a course about Deema, what are the films that I’ll have to watch? The art I’ll need to study? The authors I’ll need to read?

D: Alright here’s my list y’all:

Films:

Spiderverse
A Lebanese film called “Where do we go now?” “هلّأ لوين؟”
ALL Studio Ghibli films
A bunch of short animated films from the french youtube channel “gobelins”
Cheesy, but the Disney film Coco.., and Tangled, and Mulan, and Princess and the Frog and... I could go on.
Oh, and She’s The Man. Couldn’t leave that out.

Books:

The Harry Potter AND Percy Jackson series. Magic and imagination are important to me.
Nelson Mandela’s autobiography: Long Walk to Freedom
Malcolm X’s autobiography
Anything to do with Islamic history
Arabic literature

Artists everyone MUST follow:

Dana Al Rashid
Farida Mehasen
Muhammad Al Jumaiah
Lynnie Z
If I’m forgetting anyone, that’s literally on me.