Chafina Bendahman (44), founder and director of ROSE stories, discovered at a young age how much stories can bring people together. “When we still lived in the Rif in Morocco, my mother was the storyteller at home. She told me and my brothers a story at night before going to sleep, and she already knew how a cliffhanger worked, because she always fell asleep when things got tense. We then tried to wake her up, but had to wait until the next day for the sequel.” With those stories, she says, her mother lovingly brought her and her brothers together.
After the family moved to the Schilderswijk in The Hague, she had to share a room with five of her brothers. They had no money and as a young girl she had to learn to be creative. “I once crushed a terracotta pot and sold it door to door as rouge.” She laughs out loud as she tells the story. “Being poor makes you creative.” And she learned the power of good stories at an early age.
Through films and books she gained access to other lives and worlds. She devoured Isabel Allende’s novels, chimeras van Bernlef became a favorite. “Stories open your heart to others and teach you empathy. I got an understanding for other lives, thanks to chimeras I learned what Alzheimer’s does.” But it was wrong that she rarely saw people who looked like her on television and in books. “I was waiting for it for a long time, but it never came.” That’s how ROSE stories was born, first as a friends and cooking club. They decided to self-publish a book.
That became Milk & Dates, with stories and recipes from Moroccan mothers in the Netherlands. “I really wanted to see something of myself again. And I thought, maybe we should stop wanting someone else to tell our stories. It really came from my heart, from our mothers, the women around me. We wanted to capture our history and heritage, leave something tangible for our nieces and nephews.” Milk & Dates was a success and paved the way for a play of the same name and other books she published with ROSE stories.
The performance was not without a struggle, she says. “The problem is that it is impossible to make a film or theater performance yourself in the Netherlands. You need the institutions, but they think very much in boxes and with a constant mistrust: ‘what about the quality, is it not a niche’.” It tires her, she sighs, that people associate quality with white skin, ‘without realizing it’. “Then you make a children’s book in which the characters come from somewhere else and you get the question whether it will appeal to people. You have to jump through so many hoops. That’s really my Achilles heel, that constant doubt if you’re good enough.”
small gesture
That doubt is at odds with the successes that Bendahman has achieved with ROSE stories. Like the theatrical performance Milk & Dates, with stories by Dutch-Moroccan women and interpreted by Dutch-Moroccan actresses. The audience is usually mainly white and she wanted to get a different, bicultural audience to the halls with those stories. That other audience came, but “there was also a lot of interest from the white audience, who enjoyed the new stories just as much. I was blown away by that.”
She pauses, says “as long as we get to know each other,” stops again, then apologizes for her “sluggish” words. “But it is. I want to show that we are all people with the same feelings and desires, that we have a lot in common. I myself grew up with books and films by people who were far from me and who took me on an adventure. When I was first in America, everything felt familiar thanks to the series and movies I’d seen. That is the power of art in any form.”
With all those books, stage performances and now also television series and cinema films, she not only seeks connections, but also gives opportunities to new bicultural talent to progress in the cultural circuit. “I notice that broadcasters and institutes in the Netherlands do not want to take any risks here. But you have to give people a chance. You need, especially as an autodidact, the space to go nuts, to be supported and to maintain confidence.”
She is reminded of her first birthday in the first grade of primary school. Because they had no money at home, she went to school, stiff with stress, without a treat. Miss Trudy took her aside for a moment in the hallway, giving her treats to hand out. “Our secret,” she’d said. “Something like that stays with you for the rest of your life. A small gesture can mean so much. I also want to help people on their way.”
And that starts and ends with stories. Because they also helped her through difficult periods. Take the cinema hit for example Meskina, a romantic comedy with a mainly Dutch-Moroccan cast, which became a worldwide success on Netflix. It took ten years before she finally found a co-producer and the film could be made on her terms. The inspiration for it started with herself. “Sometimes you lose the lust for life and you need help. I was in divorce, my heart was broken and I thought: I want something like Eat Pray Love or Under the Tuscan Sun. I like romantic comedies, they can make you swoon and feel hopeful at the same time. I also wanted to make something like that, universal and at the same time very personal.”
Netflix
A grin appears on her face, she pretends to have a remote control in her hands, and says that she Meskina regularly looks up the Netflix lists, and then sees it there among famous other films. “I take pictures of it on my mobile every time. I really can’t censor myself, I’m so proud, I think it’s so cool.”
Netflix has entered into a three-year partnership with ROSE stories to guide new talent in their television or film careers. Chafina Bendahman already fantasized about this ten years ago. “A year ago I received an email from Christopher Mack, director of grow creative at Netflix: ‘I see what you are doing and find it interesting, let’s chat.’ Two lines, I thought it was spam.” She is happy with the collaboration: “You notice that sometimes you are no more than a tick in a grant application, and once the money is in, there is zero room for your vote. At Netflix, it’s really different for us.”
The cultural and media landscape is visibly becoming more diverse, she says. “But there are still too few makers of color, too few women who make, direct, and write programs. We try to rectify that with ROSE stories. For me it is the dream that everyone can and can participate.” Inclusion is not a profession or a fashion trend, she explains: it’s in her DNA, the realization that there are always different stories and perspectives and that they enrich everyone. ROSE stories is leading the way: except for one bicultural man, the entire team consists of women.
swallowed
Are white men also part of ROSE stories? “Definitely,” she says without hesitation. “But first the inequality has to be eliminated.” And that takes time. “Someone once said, ‘Inclusion is not a short sprint, it’s a marathon’. I hope it’s a relay race. If anyone wants to sign up, I’m happy to pass the baton.”
She is tired, she says. After ten years, ROSE stories has a solid foundation as a publisher and producer and she is working on new plans. But most of all, she confesses, she would prefer to take time off. Her father died unexpectedly from corona last year. Because Morocco did not allow covid deaths, he was buried in Zuidlaren. “Through his funeral I realized that the Netherlands is my home.”
She does not share the fear of many bicultural Dutch people for a legal climate. „You should not think ‘shit, the right is gaining more and more power, we will no longer be welcome’. This is our home. I want to help build my country, make it something beautiful where everyone feels at home. I want to grow old here.”
But first she would like some rest. “I would like to give myself the time to do nothing, to give the loss of my father a place. I would also like to spend more time with my mother. The past ten years have been swallowed up by work.”
After all these years, should she now connect with herself? She is silent for a moment and then agrees. But, she emphasizes, the ideas and plans keep coming. “The head and the heart continue to dream very big.”