Selves and Others - Film

Review: Palestinian Revolution Cinema

Maureen Clare Murphy — 2007-05-10T20:10:00Z

Hamid Dabashi, founder of the Dreams of a Nation: A Palestinian Film Project, has said that one of the distinguishing qualities of Palestinian national cinema is that it has and continues to be produced during the throes of trauma. This stands apart from other national cinema (German, Italian, and Iranian, to name a few) which came to maturity through dealing with past national trauma. However, there has never been a Palestinian-produced feature film focusing on the Nakba. The forced expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland during the establishment of the State of Israel, the Nakba is the singular event from which Palestinians — whether living under military occupation, in exile, or under a state apparatus that discriminates on the basis of religion — can trace their current conditions. (...) - Maureen Clare Murphy / Electronic Intifada

Film on "Radical Islam" Tied to Pro-Israel Groups

Khody Akhavi — 2007-03-28T21:58:12Z

WASHINGTON, Mar 26 (IPS) - A controversial documentary on the threat of radical Islam, promoted by the two most-watched U.S. cable news networks, was marketed and supported in part by self-described "pro-Israel" groups, according to an IPS investigation.

Abbreviated versions and segments of "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" ran on FOX News and CNN, but neither station disclosed the film's connection to HonestReporting, a watchdog group that monitors the media for allegedly negative portrayals of Israel.

HonestReporting marketed "Obsession" but denies it produced or funded the project. (...)

- Khody Akhavi / Inter Press Service

Coming Home: Palestinian Cinema

Annemarie Jacir — 2007-03-01T09:40:00Z

In the late 1960s, a group of young Arab women and men devoted to the struggle for Palestinian freedom chose to contribute to the resistance through filmmaking — recording their lives, hopes, and their fight for justice. Working in both fiction and documentary, they strived to tell the stories of Palestine and to create a new kind of cinema. Most were refugees, exiled from their homes in Palestine. And additionally there were fellow Arabs who stood in solidarity with them, devoting their work to a just cause. Their films screened across the Arab world and internationally but never in Palestine. - Annemarie Jacir / Electronic Intifada

Little Birds: A Japanese Filmmaker's Devastating Window on the Iraq War

Gregory Elich — 2007-02-01T08:48:20Z

Gregory Elich wrote this review for Monthly Review's MRzine on September 7, 2006.

Filmmaker Watai is presently on a US speaking tour introducing the film and discussing the war in California, Texas and New York. The final phases of his tour will take him to New York City on February 7 at the UN Church Center 5:30-8 p.m. and at Cornell University in Ithaca NY on February 8th at 4:30 p.m. and February 9th 7:30 p.m.

“Little Birds” won the Human Rights Award at the 2005 Locarno International Film Festival, and the Grand Prize at the 2005 Japan Conference of Journalists. For more information on the film visit the “Little Birds” website.

At a time when the Iraq war continues to be a defining issue on the American scene, it is ironic that the most powerful and uncompromising documentary on the subject remains almost entirely unknown and unseen in this country. It took Japanese filmmaker Takeharu Watai a year and a half to film more than 123 hours of footage in Iraq, which he managed to edit down to two unforgettable hours. The result is the stunning Little Birds, which plunges the viewer into the middle of the war, in all its sorrow and horror, and never lets up. (...)

- Gregory Elich / Japan Focus

V For Vendetta: Understanding via Relevant Metaphors

Greg Gulbrandsen — 2007-01-07T07:52:00Z

With the DVD video release of this film...and quite possibly more people seeing it...it is time to set the meaning straight.

The Wachowski brothers, with their screen adaptation of Alan Moore's “V For Vendetta,” have given us a startling and frightening glimpse into the life under an Islamofacist Great Britain. Maybe it wasn't their original intent, but the metaphor is undeniable.

First, let me explain the principle of relevant metaphor replacement theory (RMRT), and it's importance to appreciating this film. Some authors, in order to get controversial content across to their readers, surround a story's message in a metaphor. Sometimes, however, the metaphor can't be too obvious (political correctness, you know). In these cases, the metaphor will be relevant, and thus form a replacement position. Under this guise, they can be held harmless, so to speak, for the reaction to the story's content. (...)

- Greg Gulbrandsen

Bond: Shaken, Stirred and Served Up Hot

Priyanka Gill — 2006-12-17T05:50:00Z

Film : Casino Royale
Director : Martin Campbell
Starring : Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Judi Dench, Mads Mikkelsen, Giancarlo Giannini

As a diehard Pierce Brosnan fan, I was more than ready to slam both Casino Royale and Daniel Craig as the newest James Bond. After all, who could match the suave and supremely cool Brosnan as the ultimate man about town?

But that was before I saw the film. (...)

- Priyanka Gill / Tehelka

The Best Spiritual Movie Ever Made

Martin LeFevre — 2006-12-05T23:16:43Z

The best film I've ever seen with religious themes is “Black Narcissus.” Filmed in 1947, it deftly delves into the clash between Eastern and Western traditions; the conflict between the sensual and spiritual dimensions of human being; and ultimately, the question of whether true spirituality has any relevance in the world. (...) - Martin LeFevre

Israel: shooting scripts

Levana Frenk, Shlomo Sand — 2006-09-15T23:32:00Z

Translated by Donald Hounam

Although many Israelis cannot bear to confront at the cinema the harsh reality of their own and their neighbours' lives, there is a new generation of directors from complicated and ambivalent backgrounds. They must be careful not to alienate their potential audiences.

It took a decade for the Israeli cinema to free itself from traditional Zionist discourse and literary language. But since around 2000, mainstream films have begun to speak the Hebrew of the street, office or Knesset — the parliament which expresses itself in the most popular language.

Film production has accelerated over the past four years. Filmmakers complain about the desperate lack of public or private investment, but subsidies have risen and co-productions have brought in funding from European Union countries. This has encouraged young cineastes to attempt to make careers within a local industry that compensates for its lack of size with far-reaching ambitions and enormous vitality. (...)

[September 2006]

- Levana Frenk - Shlomo Sand / Le Monde diplomatique

Truth shall set us free

John Pilger — 2006-09-15T09:44:00Z

There is a huge public hunger for incisive political documentaries. If only the media had the courage to show them, says John Pilger

The political documentary, that most powerful and subversive medium, is said to be enjoying a renaissance on both sides of the Atlantic. This may be true in the cinema but what of television, the source of most of our information? Like the work of many other documentary film-makers, my films have been shown all over the world, but never on network television in the US. That suppression of alternative viewpoints may help us understand why millions of Americans display such a chronic ignorance of other human beings. (...)

- John Pilger / Guardian

Almodóvar

Michael Wood — 2006-09-13T17:27:00Z

‘Your town,' the TV presenter says to her guest on a live talk show, ‘has the highest incidence of insanity in the whole of Spain. Do you think this fact explains the story you are about to tell us?' The guest, as it happens, isn't about to tell a story at all, since she suddenly decides not to spill her local beans and walks off the set. But we're already laughing at the mock sociology of the question, and since it occurs about two-thirds of the way through Pedro Almodóvar's new film, Volver, we know better than to take it as mere filling, or even as offering any sort of information. First, because there are probably any number of towns in Spain that could compete for the title; and second, because we don't want to align ourselves with the presenter's smug rationality. But do we want to align ourselves with superstition? (...)

[Vol. 28 | No. 18 | 21 September 2006]

- Michael Wood / London Review of Books