|* cinema. Osama (2003)
Recently, a movie has been issued on DVD in the Baltics about the hard life in Afganistan under the power of Taliban. "
Osama" tells the story of a 12-yer-old girl, who was forced to disguise herslef as a boy in order to go working and not to starve from hunger. As we see from the movie, during the Taliban regime women were forbidden to work or to walk in the streets alone without being escorted by a male (a father, a brother, a son or a husband).
"Osama" is the first entirely Afghan film shot since the fall of the Taliban, because before that all the filmings were banned in Afghanistan. The director of the movie,
Siddiq Barmak, used the real people and amateurs for filming. He found the main character,
Marina Golbahari, on the streets of Kabul. The movie was inspiried by the real story of a girl, who wanted to go to school, but it was banned. Then she cutted her hair and "became" a boy.
I got the strange feeling while watching this movie. Like the viewers are forced to notice the horrors of that time. I understand that it was so terrible, but in the movie all the details are put right in front of your face, you have no other choice but to look at them.
Right from the beginning I understood that the movie cannot have a happy end. The symbolic marriage and rape in the end speak loader then words or any facts. But kill me, I couldn't believe that the old guy is still capable of doing anything regarding sex. But he is a trully disgusting character in the movie. I know why he locks his wives at home each in her room, otherwise they would long time ago got together and smashed his head.
In general, I cannot say that "Osama" is the greatest movie I've ever seen. But it has a great meaning for the changes in Afghanistan.
|* cinema. Chasing the Freedom. 2004.
IMDB link about the movieDirected by
Don McBreartyWritten by
Barbara SamuelsI surely enjoyed watching this movie and had tons of my questions answered. This movie (more correctly, TV series) was based on a true story of an Afghan woman seeking asylum in the US before the September tragedy. An ambitious and busy lawyer (Juliette Lewis) has to take a pro bono asylum case of Meena (Layla Alizada), who was teaching students in Afghanistan despite the ban of Taliban. Meena has no documents. She cannot prove who she is, because the only person who can identify her is her brother. And contacting him means putting his and his wife's lives in great danger.
Before watching this movie, I didn't understand, why refugees don't have any documentation when they come to another country. The problem is that they leave their countries with fake IDs, passports or hidding. If they get caught when they try cross the border to get out and any real document is found, they are stopped and most probably put to prison or worse. When they arrive to another country, they through out the fake documents and are left totally 'armless' in front of the court system.
Before they get the asylum, which allows to stay in the country and get the status of refugee, they are 'detained' in a brusque INS center like prisoners. This woman had excaped from the terror of the tyrany regime and had to live one year (!) under psychological attack and pressure already in the free country of the U.S. I don't want to judge the fairness of the U.S. legal system in this case. But this movie openes the eyes for those, who live and don't ever think about the cruelties happenning in our world nowadays.
In the beginning the lawyer was not willing to put a lot of effort into the case, and she was asking a lot of questions. I can say, most of them were exactly my questions. Even if I heard about Taliban, I couldn't imagine all the horror. There is a good episode when the lawyer goes to Organisation for the Rigths of Women in Afghanistan. She asks about Taliban and the woman in charge says something like "Yes, there is oppression, tyrany and discrimination. People are executed on the stadium to make a show out of it. No freedom of speech, no freedom at all. And yes, nobody speaks about it so much, as nobody cares".
|* photos. Carolyn Brown.
Amazing photos, beautiful landscapes and panoramas.
Iraq, Jerusalem, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Yemen
|* music. Amr Diab, Egiptian singer
Amr Diab (Amr Abd-Albaset Abd-Alziz Diab), a new born star for his phenomenal singing talent in Egypt. Amr Diab's hard work and passion to creating quality music and new stylised musical techniques was his ultimate aim throughout the years. He has certainly and clearly delivered to all his multi-national fans around the globe and proved that he is one of the best Middle Eastern singers with extraordinary talent, determination, charisma and charming appearance.
Download his albums:The Best of Amer Diab Vol.1The Best of Amer Diab Vol.2Tamally Maik
