Cultrue For ‘Em: Film Recommendations- Blame It On Fidel & Machuca

I so enjoyed this film I have to pass on how good it is. An absolutely brilliant performance by Nina Kervel-Bey as Anna who is the centre of the story as we view through her 9-year-old eyes her parents becoming increasingly politically engaged and the confusion and obstinacy it inspires in her, until she too grows and becomes her own person. But hey don’t let that worthiness put you off, it really is entertaining, with some very funny moments and some touching ones, the mise-en-scène is virtually faultless from the non stereotype 70’s period detail (something British films usually fail at) to the understated yet strong lighting design. Hilariously right-wing critics misconstrue it is a critique of the left rather than a warm and human story of a little girls bewilderment at her parents awakened consciences and activism. It’s directed and co-written by Julie Gavras daughter of Costa Gavras–

I kept the basis of the story, about a wealthy family with a conservative daughter. The father’s from Spain, his sister arrives, and the little girl’s life is shattered. Although I was more at home with Paris than Rome, what struck me was the way the writer talked about that period of the early ’70s from the perspective of a little girl. In the book, the father’s an engineer who becomes a union leader. I changed him into a pro-Allende activist, because my father made a film about Chile called ‘Missing’ , which was the first of his movies that I actually understood. For many French people, Allende represented the hope of a new political system, because he said he wanted to make a revolution within the bourgeois laws. It was something that caught the imagination of the French intelligentsia and a lot of French people went to Chile.

It’s also notable as a female empowered production-

Based on the novel by Domitilla Calamai and written by the film’s director Julie Gavras, it was produced by Sylvie Pialat (widow of Maurice Pialat), shot by Nathalie Durand, edited by Pauline Dairou, costume-designed by Annie Thiellement, cast by Coralie Amedeo, and acted by two splendid leads, Julie Depardieu (daughter of Gérard Depardieu) and first-time actor, little Nina Kervel.

It’s even more enjoyable when you have an awareness of the history as the interpretation through Anna’s experience and family circumstances give it a unique human colour and warmth. Perhaps a perfect accompaniment to this would be Machuca, two boys experiencing the bloody coup against Allende. It’s a while since I saw it but like Fidel it pays some attention to the comfortable middle class lifestyle and the very prosaic reasons why some people might support a fascist dictator just as long as they keep their lifestyle and they can live in denial of the atrocities committed by the government to keep them in fashionable clothes and servants. Machuca does this fairly directly by comparing the two boys, one from a poor slum the other from a bourgeois family who have their friendship tested as the coup unfolds. The Catholic school which brought them together again provides for an examination of the involvement of conservative religious intuitions in the coup and the individual efforts of some clergy to fight the criminal takeover. Unlike Fidel it is not at a remove in Paris so the experience is bleaker, so maybe Machuca first then Blame It On Fidel to leave you a better night’s sleep.

Machuca is also maybe culturally different in terms of national cinema, examining the Pinochet years in mainstream cinema is clearly a loaded issue (although a much earlier film Gonzalo Justiniano’s ‘Amnesia‘ is excellent but almost impossible to see, my knackered VHS copy would be happy to hand over the task to a DVD but none is apparent, please let me know if you have a lead on that), Machuca perhaps uses the children’s story as a way to get to some truths that adults resist admitting. Whereas Fidel does not have that issue and the children’s story illuminates other aspects of resisting dominant paradigms, how doing the right things is not easy on you or those around you. For Anna is Paris it means a smaller apartment and being taken out of divinity class, both of which piss her off mightily which is made very funny through Nina Kervel-Bey’s performance. For Machuca simply his poverty and darker skin gets him in trouble while his richer friend escapes and his family enjoy the fruits of the repression, even the guilt middle class Gonzalo feels is a luxury not afforded to the repressed barrio dwellers.

What both films do is provide rewarding entertainment with real weight to it and …if you can get English speaking children to watch subtitled films they will also give a vitally different view of the world than the Hannah Montana movie, while giving them stories from children’s viewpoints which they can relate to. For adults, the deeper meditations on the costs and rewards of being concerned with social and political justice will gain nods of recognition.

Meanwhile if you fancy Norwegian comedy zombie movies with living dead Nazis erm, there is one- Dead Snow, not great but worth some popcorn, it’s like BNP on Ice!

David Swanson- Authoritative Rejection of Afghanistan War

Ht2 Jay for this, note the, what at best might be called elitist or patrician and at worst fascist, attitude of the pro-war establishment-

David Swanson:- The last time I was on Laura Flanders’s GRIT tv I argued that the American public opposed the occupation of Afghanistan, but another guest — some Washington, D.C., “progressive” — argued that this had no relevance, since the American public didn’t know anything about Afghanistan.

When the RAND Corporation held a forum on Afghanistan recently on Capitol Hill, Zbigniew Brzezinski claimed that it was uncontroversial that US troops had to stay in Afghanistan. I pointed him to polls of Americans, and he replied that Americans get fatigued and don’t know any better.

When I spoke to a philosophy department at a university this month, a number of the professors objected to my advocacy of majority-rule on the grounds that experts often know best.

Let’s set aside for a moment the ludicrous propaganda that maintains that the reason we occupy other people’s countries is to impose democracy on them. Let’s assume we’re imposing the rule of elite experts. Even so, even on those terms, here are some possible responses to this line of thinking.

BNP’s Sleazy Expense Scam

Admittedly not unexpected, they are using their funding from the European parliament to enrich their party machinery, Searchlight reports–

The British National Party is using money it receives from Europe to support its two MEPs to bankroll the leadership of its organisation. Of the 14 people employed by the two MEPs only five actually live in the two regions they represent and most fulfil national posts for the party. In the latest abuse of the parliamen-tary expenses system, the British and European people are funding the BNP.

As MEPs, Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons, are entitled to claim a combined £382,000 a year to pay for their colleagues’ salaries. The two share five members of staff, who all happen to be national party officers and only one lives in either the North West or Yorkshire. They are Simon Darby, the party’s deputy leader, Eddy Butler, the national organiser, Emma Colgate, the national administration officer, John Walker, the deputy press officer, and Martin Wingfield, who lives in the North West and until recently was the editor of the party newspaper, Voice of Freedom.

Each MEP also has some staff of his own. One of Nick Griffin’s is Martin Reynolds, a bodybuilder from Leeds who acts as his personal minder. When asked about what “specifically” he does for his EU salary, Reynolds said: “I honestly don’t know”. Andrew Brons employs three people. One happens to be the new BNP Yorkshire organiser while the other two, Adam and Mark Walker, both live in County Durham, which is in a different region. Searchlight has long argued that if elected the BNP would use public money to fund the party rather than helping the people they are supposed to represent. This is proving to be the case.

More.
This is a challenge for those who claim that they voted for the BNP not because they were racist (good luck with that Egyptian river) but that they were not like the debauched mainstream parties. Hmmmm.

Like Bush Never Left

Pursuant to new powers delegated to him by Congress, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has executed an order blocking the release of photos depicting the torture of detainees. In doing so, it becomes highly unlikely that the Supreme Court will further consider making the photos public, as a lower court had ordered.