|* cinema. Voices of Iraq VS Turtles Can Fly.
During
the POFF festival in Tallinn this year, we were able to see the movie from Iraq called "
Lakposhtha hâm parvaz mikonand" ("Turtle Can Fly"), 2004. I was lucky to watch another movie of this director before - "
Zamani barayé masti asbha" ("A Time for Drunken Horses"). I can say that his style of movies really appealed to me. It is different from any other movies, which show the difficulties and horrors of the war.
The director
Bahman Ghobadi is an Iranian Kurd and has a strong emotional bound to the issues of events in the Middle East. In his interview he said that while he was on his trip to finish and promote "A Time for Drunken Horses", he was shocked by the things he saw and decided to film as fast as possible. The movie was done in the very short period of time. I think that is the reason for it being so concentrated, powerful and touching. The story of "Turtles can fly" unfolds near the Turkey-Iran border and tells about the lives of orphans village. Children earn their living by collecting and selling the mines. I liked how the beginning and the end form the circle: in the beginning all chidren wait for the Americans, one boy asks: "Do you want to meet Americans?", in the end we get the same phrase, but the meaning is completely different. Now the American troops represent not the bright and perfect future, but the same hard times for Iraqi civilians again. I think that Bahman Ghobadi wanted to show that under the Saddam Iraq suffered. Then Iraqi people were promised future and fooled. There are, of course, pluses of the fall of Saddam, but there are many minuses of the way it was done and what it lead to.
In opposition to "Turtles can fly" I would suggest to watch "
Voices of Iraq", 2004. It is a documentary movie, which claim to have been directed by people of Iraq. For more information you can check
the official website of the movie. The movie is believed to create the new genre of cinema. The producers distributed more than 150 digital video cameras across Iraq to people, who filmed their everyday life and end up with more than 400 hours of footage. Later on it was edited and issued as documentary. There is a big controvercy over the whole matter. Those working in cinema or media can understand that having any raw material you can create any position you like through the means of editing. It is more than easy to choose the favoured opinions and to omit the unwanted ones.
There has been an interesting comment posted on the board of IMDB, with the topic "
Propaganda: Producers of this movie= ties to Bush Administration", which lead to many people arguing with each other. You need to register to be able to see the topic, but I will put a quote from that comment here:
"
If you do not think that this film has any political ties, then read some of this. The public relations group called Manning, Selvage & Lee (MS&L) (one of the largest U.S. public relations companies, estimated to have more than 1,000 employees and approximately $100 million in turnover)did publicity for this film. It happens to be the same group that runs all of those "ARMY OF ONE" ads for the U.S. Army. Don't tell me that this film was directed by "The People of Iraq." That has got to be the most misleading title EVER, and the PR Firm and the Producers should be ashamed of themselves for taking footage of these people, and editing it to the political message they wanted to push.[...]
Also, the film was produced with much help from "The Iraq Foundation," which provided all of the toture footage. They are located in Washington DC, and the foundation receives their funding from the State Department, which is headed by Colin Powell, a member of the Bush Administration..[...]
Independent Documentaries do not get funded by the Government and publicized by huge firms like "Manning, Selvage, and Lee." Look at their website, http://www.mslpr.com/"
What can I say from my side? Watch the two movies for yourself and make up you mind. I think that there cannot possibly be 100% true approach or representation of any subject, so it is always useful to look at all points of view. We can never be sure who is right and who is wrong. There will always be people for and against and it is not possible to make everyone happy at the same time.
|* cinema. Control Room, 2004.
What I consider to be very important in our world today is the opportunity to get information from different points of view. We live in the age of propaganda and media wars. We can never be sure that media coverage from one channel corresponds with the coverage from another channel. Politics use media to manipulate people's minds, trying to win the game. But the sufferings and the loss is among the civilians and that is the saddest truth.
One movie I would highly recommend to anyone interested in the media coverage on the war in Iraq, which started in 2003, is
Control Room. It is a movie about the role of the media, about the differences and similarities between opposing journalists and the media war. As
Samir Khader, the producer of Al Jazeera, stated in the beginning of the movie: "
You cannot wage a war without rumours, without media, without propaganda. Any military planner, if he doesn't put media propaganda at the top of his agenda, he is a bad militarist."
Control Room is the second film by Egyptian-American director
Jehane Noujaim (she co-directed 2001's
Startup.com with
Chris Hegedus). It is trully amazing that the director is a woman and that the decided to deal with such a hard issue as documentary on politics, and specially documentary on politics around the war in Iraq. My respect to her.
As written in the article of Chanel 4, "
Noujaim had intimate access to Al Jazeera's journalists and while there's no denying the channel's partisan position, the film avoids taking sides."
I got mixed feelings after watching this movie. It surely excited me, as I got the perspective on the war, but at the same time it horrified me.
It was shocking to know some facts. For example, that the US forces deliberatly bombed the position of Al Jazeera and two other arab channels in Baghdad just before the US troops came into town and "Iraqi" people took down the monument of Saddam. In the movie we get the same shots, but little bit from another angle and with comments. All "Iraqi" people going to the monument and portraying to be happy were of the same age, no women and coming together with the troops. There were no other people in the street. Noone else. All the scene looked very much being set up and fake.
A enjoyed the character of Al-Jazeera's journalist
Hassan Ibrahim, who was the head of Arabic news for the BBC before he joined al-Jazeera. Being very skeptical about the Bush administration, he is rather optimistic about the US Constitution and the American people. ("
The Americans will defeat the Americans. I have ultimate faith in the American Constitution.") Throughtout the movie he gave out many ironic comments and was always a person to make a sharp comment.
One more moment I would like to mention is when Al JAzeera is being criticized for showing the footage of dead American soldiers. The manager of AlJazeera.net,
Joanne Tucker, is accused of having a "position on the war". And she responds: "
Are any US journalists objective about this war? This word 'objectivity' is almost a mirage. If there was no agenda, if there was true neutrality there would be a welcoming of any and all information from all sides."
Of course, when Al Jazeera shows the footage of crying children and torn bodies, it has two reasons for that. First of all, there is a war going on and Al JAzeera is fighting on the side of the Arab interests. Secondly, they fulfill the requirements to translate news for more then 40 millions of Arabs and to match the expectations of them. All the media nowadays is build up like this in our market world.
Control Room is not a fancy documentary; it was filmed, I suppose, entirely on MiniDV, which has become the standard in home video cameras. The composition of some shots goes completely against all the rule of cinematography (like the shot where Samir Khader is giving a comment and you can see a big palm tree right behind his head, that makes his head look like in a funny outfit), but that is not the point. The point is that "Control Room" makes you stop and re-think many obvious facts. And it has sompletely succeeded in that.
|* caricature.
Is caricature a form of art? According to Wikipedia.Org:
"A caricature is a humorous illustration that exaggerates or distorts the basic essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness."Caricature is a special art form that helps to point out the most important issues in a humorous way. There are many "funny" images that pretend on being called caricature, whereas in fact they are tasteless and stupid. The real art of caricature includes professional approach, talent to see the subtext and sharp eye for the unexpected points. Usually caricature becomes popular during the political and social changes or important events. It is the way to make people pay attention by using the strongest wearpon - humour. There are many characteristics for a good caricature: a metaphot, grotesque, extra-ordinary and sharp solutions and independent thinking about government and society. Of course, sometimes caricature, as any other form of art, can be used as propaganda, creating a particular stereotype.
Today caricaturists in Saudi hope for more freedom to express themselves with the means of their works. From the article published in Middle East Online:
"Caricature is about drawings accompanied with small comments, but has large meanings either to mock or criticize." Many caricaturists in the Middle East admit that the World Wide Web has helped to make caricaturists' voices to be heard all over the world.
I would say that caricature is unique, because sometimes it is enough to look at one caricature and understand the main point and the whole situation instead of reading through numerous articles on the same topic.
I personally like the works of the cartoonist
Jeff Danziger
see more of them
hereAs and old Chinese proverb goes: "a picture is worth ten thousand words"
