We Make Money Not Art has an excellent review of Lucy Orta’s new book about Roma people in Europe.
The Roma are present throughout Europe and to some extent in the Americas. Historically, like Jews, they have been routinely subjected to ethnic hatred and persecution. Fiercely independent, they refuse a single homeland, preferring to be dispersed and nomadic. Their cultural traditions are passed orally in a rich array of dialects and through distinctive music and social rituals. Their language is based on Sanskrit, so traces their origins to India– it appears likely they were escapees from slavery in Afghanistan in 1001.
Treatment of Roma populations has been improving in countries wishing to join the European Union, which demands a high standard of human rights in its members, especially new ones where Roma populations are large. Many Roma have assimilated into the cultures of their host countries and come to prominence in various fields
At Culture Unplugged watch Skutka: Book of Records, a film documenting the largest settlement of Roma in Macedonia. Isabel Fonseca’s Bury Me Standing and Jan Yoors’ The Gypsies are good background books, but because books have not been part of Roma heritage, there is relatively little Roma literature in print. PEN brought out The Roads of the Roma, an anthology or poetry and prose, which contains works by a one of the greatest Roma poets, a woman named Papusza, much of whose writings were unfortunately lost. The Pariah Syndrome by Ian Hancock is a scholarly study of Gypsy slavery and persecution. The University of Hertfordshire Press has also been regularly publishing books on Romani Studies.
The Roma’s most notable cultural contribution are musical and several films online delve into their ethnomusicology. Latcho Drom traces Romani culture from India to Spain. Crossing the Bridge is contemporary documentary about music in Istanbul at the nexus of Europe and Asia. Another relevant film is Adela Peeva’s, Whose is This Song? (preview only), which explores how the same melody is shared, albeit with different meanings, across diverse cultural communities in Turkey and the Balkans.
The Exiles is a long lost film chronicling Native American life in the Bunker Hill neighborhood of Los Angeles during the late 1950′s. Catch a rare screening of a fully restored print at Hammer Museum May 26th.
The film follows a man and a woman over the course of a long night as they and their friends wander the city and talk about their lives and culture, especially their move from reservations to the city as part of a government jobs program. The film’s dialogue is based entirely on interviews and its gritty style pioneers the now common blending of documentary and drama. The film has an elegiac feel with its rare insight into a time and place doubly removed from the collective mainstream of U.S. history. Made at about the same time as Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank was photographing his epic book, The Americans, it is interesting to note that The Exiles’ director, Kent Mackenzie, was British.
It’s a sad fact that there has been only one commercially released film about the realities of Native American life, Smoke Signals, made by the author Sherman Alexie, who incidentally had a hand in bringing The Exiles back into currency a few years ago. Also responsible for bringing the film back is Charles Burnett, who made another excellent Los Angeles film called Killer of Sheep about life in Watts in the 1970′s.
Anonymous artist/photographer, JR, has been exhibiting his art in the public realm for several years now – always in unsuspected places, mostly illegally. His up-close full frame portraits detail human expression and its worth and show up in sometimes controversial settings with the purpose of non-violent confrontation.
“Portrait of a Generation” portrayed suburban “thugs” which was “posted, in huge formats, in the bourgeois districts of Paris.”
“Face 2 Face” was allegedly the largest illegal photo exhibition to date. Portraits of Israelis and Palestinians were posted face to face in eight Palestinian and Israeli cities, and on the both sides of the Security fence / Separation wall.
“In 2008, he embarked for a long international trip for “Women,” a project in which he “underlines the dignity of women who are often the targets of conflicts.”
The following is the trailer for JR’s new film, “Women are Heroes,” the story behind this recent project.
The film showed at this years Cannes Film Festival.
As part of this year’s Big Read in Washington, Provisions co-presents two films and a panel discussion to open a dialogue about issues of juvenile justice. Programs will complement this year’s book selection, Ernest Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying, a novel which chronicles the redemption through reading of an innocent young black man sentenced to death for his unwitting involvement in a robbery and murder in the rural South of the 1940′s.
Next week’s programs use Gaines’ classic story as a lens to see today’s clash between youth and the criminal justice system.
SENTENCED HOME - Tuesday, May 4, 7 PM, AED Globe Theater, 1927 Florida Avenue, NW. Followed by Q&A with Helly Lee, Director of Policy for Southeast Asia Resource Action Center.
Putting a human face on controversial immigration policy, Sentenced Home follows three young Cambodian Americans through the deportation process. Raised in inner city Seattle, they pay an unbearable price for mistakes they made as teenagers. Caught between their tragic pasts and an uncertain future, each young man confronts a legal system that offers no second chances.
As part of a large group of Cambodian refugees admitted to the U.S. in the early 1980s, the deportees and their families found asylum in Seattle’s grim public housing projects and hoped to pursue the American dream. But, as “permanent residents,” the refugees were not afforded the same protections as American citizens. Under strict anti-terrorism legislation enacted in 1996, even minor convictions can result in automatic deportation. For some, this means being permanently separated from families and homes because of a minor offense—such as the case of Loeun Lun, who fired a gun in the air as a teenager to protect himself from a gang attack. Directors: Nicole Newnham and David Grabias.
CRIPS AND BLOODS: MADE IN AMERICA – Wednesday, May 5, 7 PM, AED Globe Theater, 1927 Florida Avenue, NW. Followed by Q&A with Tendani Mpulubusi, Arts Commissioner for Ward 8 and Director of Programs, Helping Inner City Kids Succeed (HICKS); and Ashley Howard former gang member, youth member of HICKS.
Crips and Bloods: Made in America tells the story of South Los Angeles’ two most infamous African-American gangs in a character-driven documentary narrative which chronicles the cycle of destruction and despair of modern gang culture.
Contemporary and former gang members offer street-level testimony about modern-day gang life: the turf wars and territorialism, the inter-gang hierarchy and family structure, the codes of behavior, the culture of guns, death and dishonor. Gang members, gang intervention experts, writers, activists and academics analyze many of the issues that contribute to South LA’s malaise: the erosion of identity that fuels the self-perpetuating legacy of black self-hatred, the disappearance of the African-American father and an almost pervasive prison culture in which today one out of every four black men will be imprisoned at some point in his life.
Finally the gang members themselves articulate their enduring dream of a better life and provide the film’s its ultimate statement: a message of hope and a cautionary tale of redemption aimed at saving the lives of a new generation of kids, not just in South LA but anywhere in the world that gang violence exists. Narrated by Forest Whitaker. Director: Stacy Peralta.
ARE THERE SECOND CHANCES? Panel on juvenile justice, Thursday, May 6, 7 PM, AED Globe Theater, 1927 Florida Avenue, NW
Join our panelists for an in-depth discussion on the state of juvenile justice in Washington, DC.
Reginald Dwayne Betts went from the high school honor roll to the penitentiary where he spent nine years in adult prison beginning at age 16, for a senseless car jacking in Virginia. A Question of Freedom, Betts’ memoir, tells a coming-of-age story with a unique twist– it takes place in prison. Utterly alone, Dwayne confronts profound questions about violence, freedom, crime, race, and the justice system. It traces his quest for identity through the power of poetry, not only as a means of survival but as a way of discovering his own identity.
David Muhammad is Chief of Committed Services for Washington DC’s juvenile justice system, the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS), with 820 youth committed to his department’s care. He was formerly Executive Director of The Mentoring Center in Oakland, CA. He was a contributing editor and television show host for Pacific News Service in San Francisco and has written for numerous national publications.
Shani O’Neal is Director of Justice for DC Youth, a community organization that fights for a fair and more effective juvenile justice system in the District of Columbia. She coordinates the Prison to College Pipeline which supports the empowerment through education of incarcerated teens. In addition, she serves on the Advisory Board of the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services. She designed and directed The Art of Activism series at Howard University that utilized art to educate young people about organizing for progressive social change. Her writings on race, gender, diaspora and culture have been published in several collections and incorporated into university curricula.
All events are free and will take place at 7pm in the AED Globe Theater, 1927 Florida Avenue, NW. Make reservations (highly recommended).
“I had a feeling that things were about to happen. They were so tense, they were so agitated, in a revolting state of mind. I wanted to use the film to scream against the situation, scream like all the members of the bands I worked with. I wanted to scream along with them, making this film as a statement against the brutal situation we were all under.” -Bahman Ghobadi on young people in Tehran, June, 2009
The script for filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi’s No One Knows about Persian Cats was rejected by the Iranian Ministry for Islamic Culture and Guidance for three years before Ghobadi took a risk: making an unlicensed film. Shot in just 17 days with a digital S12K camera (all 35mm equipment is owned by the state), Cats is a faux-documentary following two young indie rock musicians (real life band Take It Easy Hospital) around Tehran, fusing humor with the reality of life as an underground musician in Iran.
Here’s a clip from the film, Take It Easy Hospital playing “Human Jungle”:
Although I have yet to see No One Knows about Persian Cats (US release set for April 16!), I find Ghobadi’s statement against censorship and cultural repression (of both music and film) particularly interesting when examined contextually. The film was co-written by Hossein Abkenar and Ghobadi’s fiancée, Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi. Saberi was arrested in Iran in January, 2009 and held for months on charges of espionage, initially facing an eight year prison sentence. During her imprisonment, Ghobadi published a letter regarding Saberi’s situation which you can read here.
She was released just as Cats was about to premiere in Cannes, where the film received the Un Certain Regard prize, a grant to aid distribution in France for an innovative and daring work. Upon returning to Iran from Cannes, Ghobadi was arrested and held for seven days, accused of “severe criticism” of the Iranian Government during the film festival. Ghobadi was even offered between $1-2 million in exchange for all the material and rights to the film. He refused, and was ordered to leave the country.
For more on the film’s plot, I suggest this New Internationalist article. The Village Voice interviewed Ghobadi eight days after his release from prison, four days after Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election. In the interview Ghobadi says, “The youth have seen how they can hurt the government. This three or four days has shown them that they can rush out to the streets and say what they want and take it all in their own hands. And if the government is not going to listen to them, it is going to be a bloody future. The government cannot control the people any longer..and this was the last big lie. The people were ready to erupt.”
And in case you were what the film title means, it refers to an Iranian law that bans cats and dogs from being outdoors.
One of my favorite artistic movements is Czech New Wave cinema. The movement was deeply embedded in Czechoslovak politics of the period, particularly De-Stalinization which permitted political and cultural reforms such as state support for the film industry and increased artistic freedom generally. The filmmakers objective was “to make the Czech people collectively aware that they were participants in a system of oppression and incompetence which had brutalized them all.”
Perhaps the international success of such films was due to Cold War curiosity about Central and Eastern Europe and these films offered the outer world a rare look at art from a communist country with relatively little censorship. Two New Wave films received Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film, The Shop on Main Street in 1965 and Closely Watched Trains in 1967.
New Wave films are characterized by dark humor, unscripted dialogue and often center around misguided youth. My favorite is Vera Chytilová’s Sedmikrásky (Daisies, 1966), perhaps the movement’s most radical and surreal film. The two main characters, both named Marie, realize that the world they live in is corrupt and decide to go corrupt themselves. The narrative follows Marie I and Marie II as they justify their ‘bad’ behavior because ‘the world has gone bad.’ While Marie I and Marie II destroy social norms, Chytilová’s approach to cinematic form destroys conventions, reinforcing the audience’s shock.
Some argued Daisies is apolitical and void of substance (Jean-Luc Godard did), but I believe that any film from this era defying socialist realist aesthetics is inherently political. Chytilová is clearly working in response to the political reality of Czechoslovakia; exploring morality, anarchy, gender roles and automatism. I could go on and on, but I hope you’ll judge for yourself.
Avatar has made more dollars in the last month than there are people in China, but not all of its fans left the theater feeling happy. Psychology Today reports that some experienced depression and even suicidal thoughts after seeing Avatar. Here’s an example of the post-movie melancholia an Avatar fan felt:
“Ever since I went to see ‘Avatar’ I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na’vi made me want to be one of them. I can’t stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it. I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in ‘Avatar.’
No, it’s not because Avatar has a silly script or condescendingly simplifies the complex historical narratives of native peoples. The reason is that some Avatar fans can’t handle being thrust back into the bleak reality of early 21st century Earth, a dying planet whose quickly decaying beauty can’t match the shimmering, bioluminescent landscapes of Pandora (the planet where Avatar is set). Finding the IMdB discussions full of “trolls and 12 year old deconstructors” (according to one Avatar enthusiast) the blockbuster film’s fans have created their own online forum communities, one of which includes a thread entitled ‘Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible’ And an antidote is indeed desperately needed.
Another forum member offered a rather comprehensive solution:
“Start living like Neytiri: in touch with nature, the environment, and not being greedy and wasteful. Pass on the burger, for something more healthy for you and less cruel to animals. Spend your time on this forum, or volunteering in your free time, instead of getting high or drinking, twiddling your thumbs, being apathetic and complaining about how bad the world is. Don’t get swept away by the wave of negativity, live your dream. Your life has only two switches, to shine or not to shine. There is no ‘apathy’ setting. If you’re on apathy setting you might as well sign your world away to destruction. When you get discouraged by everyone around you, be courageous like Jake, and jump on the leonopteryx. Be the change you want to see in your world. There are only so many people on this earth, the more of them that are doing positive things, the less of them that are out there doing negative things. It’s unfortunate that we live in a world where, just by pulling a trigger or making a corporate decision, one single greedy human being can wipe out the hard works of love of many people. But this is why we need to stop focusing on money and start focusing on our environment. Because we have the intelligence to kill ourselves, but not the wisdom to stop it. What will our money buy, when everything that is worth having is destroyed? The only way you can fill the emptiness you feel after this movie, is to jump on the leonopteryx.”
Speaking as someone who has seen this movie (in Copenhagen, actually, so the Danish subtitles sort of distorted some of the experience, since parts of the dialogue are in Na’vi, the lilting language of idyllic Pandora’s noble natives) I can tell you that it’s not worth getting this worked up about, just in case that wasn’t clear. It’s a great looking movie but it’s certainly not a great movie. Indeed, Jake Sully, the Na’vi’s human advocate (dressed up as an alien for diplomatic purposes (don’t worry, it’s a long story)) fulfills the tired troupe of White Savior, like some sort of interstellar Lawrence of Arabia or Kevin Costner’s character in the eponymous Dances with Wolves. Don’t take my word for it though, this is Ezili Danto’s interpretation. Personally, I can’t find a reason to disagree with her. So maybe one way to beat those “Avatar blues” is to remember that, at the end of the day, two important facts a) the millions of dollars James Cameron spent making Avatar (and the subsequent cost of pricey tickets for 3-D showings) all could’ve gone to, I don’t know, cleaning up The Chesapeake Bay or subsidizing wind farm construction. At least something less vain, frivolous, and decadent than a major motion picture. And, of course, b) it’s just a movie. A great antidote to movies are books. I suggest Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece Blood Meridian, a novel depicting panoramas surpassing Pandora’s in primordial beauty.
In a hip hop and R’n’B world dominated by men and noted for misogyny, the unstoppable female lyricists of Say My Name speak candidly about class, race, and gender in pursuing their passions as female MCs. This worldwide documentary takes viewers on a vibrant tour of urban culture and musical movement: from hip hop’s birthplace in the Bronx, to game on London’s eastside.
Featuring interviews from a diverse cast of women including Remy Ma, Rah Digga, Jean Grae, Erykah Badu, Estelle and newcomers Chocolate Thai, Invincible and Miz Korona, this powerful documentary delves into the amazing personal stories of women balancing professional dreams with the stark realities of poor urban communities, race, sexism and motherhood. The more then 18 artists featured in Say My Name battle for a place in a society that creates few changes for women. From emerging artists filled with new creativity, to true pioneers like MC Lyte, Roxxanne Shante, and Monie Love, these are women turning adversity to art.
One of the works shown this past weekend at the Creative Time Summit was Mary Koszmary (Nightmares), a film by Israeli artist Yael Bartana. I had missed its debut at the Jewish Museum earlier this year but caught up with this amazing work at the Tirana Biennial last month. The short film powerfully explores a complicated set of social and political relationships among Jews, Poles, and other Europeans in the age of globalization. Using the structure and sensibility of a World War II propaganda film, Mary Koszmary (Nightmares) addresses contemporary anti-Semitism and xenophobia in Poland, the longing for the Jewish past among liberal Polish intellectuals, the desire among a new generation of Poles to be fully accepted as Europeans, and the Zionist dream of return to Israel.
Bijou Theater
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
October 25 – 7 pm COPYRIGHT CRIMINALS
Directed by Benjamin Franzen and Kembrew McCleod
Produced by University of Iowa professorKembrew McCleod, Copyright Criminals is a documentary that poses the question: Can you own a sound? The film traces the history of sampling in the music industry and the increasing government regulation on the practice, featuring interviews from music legends like Chuck D, George Clinton, and Clyde Stubblefield.
Q&A session with producer Kembrew McCleod following the free screening.
Also showing in DC at the JCC. More here.
[text from Bijou mailing. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]
