Qudad: Reinventing a Tradition Caterina Borelli, 2004

Qudad takes place in the town of Rada, during the conservation work at the Amiryia, a XVI century mosque and madrasa. This unique project has lasted almost 20 years so it has been a longstanding presence in town. It has provided work for most of the local male population and on its site the men have been trained with new techniques that will help them find work in the future. In the case of Qudad, what interested me was how the conservation work changed the attitude of the workers toward the monument. So I decided to use the excuse of documenting step by step a recovered building technique, to portray the workers, the real protagonists of a project that has given back to Yemen its single most important monument. In 2012 I donated to the British Library the recordings of the qudad workers song taped while filming the documentary. They are now available at the BLs World and Traditional Music section which has the url