By Logan Nakyanzi Pollard
American History X's Tony Kaye's abortion film Lake of Fire shows just how scared we are of women. Kaye ingeniously brings you along to that point with footage spanning from the early 1990s, there is no narration and the characters speak for themselves.
Kaye's technique made someone like me, who was not overly invested in the issue, see what is really at stake in this conversation: how real the fear of woman is. I should say that I serve on a board that seeks to provide women in the third world access to doctors who can perform C-sections when their bodies are unable to give birth the natural way. I've always thought the women's healthcare lot was about education and getting access to proper care. Even when I read The Cider House Rules as a teen, I thought then, well you have to let women have abortions because they may die doing it themselves. And you can't stop women from trying to abort unwanted children. It's the poor women who suffer; the rich find a way to access care. A woman should have the services that modern healthcare can provide. She should have options; she should have choices, why argue with that? I never bothered to think beyond -- or into the minds of anyone who thought that abortion was actually murder. That's just crazy talk.
Consciously or unconsciously, Kaye's film shows that these arguments are beside the point for anti-abortionists. Instead, a deep fear has brought some Americans to wage their own private holy war -- and they've got a lot in common with the radicals we think we're fighting overseas. Many count themselves among the "American taxpayers party" (which seeks, among other things, an end what they refer to as the "welfare state") and ascribe to the "Christian Identity Movement," which reportedly shares kinship with neo-nazis and white supremacists in the United States. Eric Rudolph, who attacked a gay nightclub, an abortion clinic and then bombed the Atlanta Olympics and the criminals who murdered or attacked doctors and healthcare personnel participate in this kind of domestic terrorism.
"Hell is like a lake of fire," says John Burt, one of the characters from the film, a rabid anti-abortionist and former KKK member. People who are not saved live in eternal torment in that lake. Abortion rights advocates are in there.
Burt is easy to laugh at; his brand of theology has its limited audience. But the picture Kaye paints is a complicated one. Jane Roe from the Roe v. Wade case, for example, is now an anti-abortionist. We hear her explain how she got involved with the legal case, how her home was attacked, how she was mistreated by town folk, how she became despondent and cut her wrists. She tells us how she starting working at an abortion clinic and how she later befriended the anti-abortionists who bought property beside her clinic. Her biggest reveal -- she found Jesus with their help. Unbelievable!
In one of the more mesmerizing moments in the film, she says, she went to the back of the clinic and opened the freezer and "there were babies, man!"
There were babies.
Writer Nat Hentoff, an avowed atheist, says he simply opposes abortion because "you're killing a developing human being." Clearly the debate over this issue is more layered than meets the eye. If I were to accept that abortion were murder, what then?
When do we kill? When do we save? When do we legally murder? -- War? Accident by torture? Punishment? Self-defense? Carpet bomb? As Noam Chomsky says poignantly during the film, "the values we hold are not absolute." We kill when we have a reason to; when it's sanctioned as acceptable by our society.
"The right to bear arms" for example is commonly defined as "the right that individuals have to weapons. This right is often presented in the context of military service and the broader right of self defense." Implied in there is the right to kill, under certain circumstances. The contest over Roe v. Wade and the continuing debate over abortion show us that that right is reluctantly shared women.
I never thought of abortion in this way, and yet, this does seem to be the root of it. Why should a woman have a right to kill her baby? This is the real question the anti-abortionists are asking.
Chomsky's not impressed with anti-abortionists because they have largely shunned the easy ways to save innocent lives, "if you want to do things to help people, there are easy ways to do it." There are proven ways to care for people to bring abortions down. He says there are massive problems that they could do things about -- potable water, healthcare for women, caring for children who are born, among them, and they've largely done nothing about those things. If these people really care about babies, why are they not outraged at all the innocent Iraqi babies killed because of this war... the argument would go.
And yet if we put the right to kill under certain circumstances -- the implied right behind the right to bear arms -- I wonder, when is it that a woman kills? Put aside, for a moment, the woman serving in law enforcement or in the armed services, it's often something extreme or unfortunate: mental illness, abuse, self defense, survival.
The myth of Medea comes to mind, a fearsome blood-thirsty, extreme woman. As one version of the myth goes, she killed her children (and a whole lot of others) to spite her lover, to gain power, to get what she wanted. Scorned woman, we all know this archetype.
More grounded in our American story is Margaret Garner; Toni Morrison's novel Beloved is based on her story. Garner was a real person -- a mother, a runaway slave. Reportedly, she was in her early 20s, living in Kentucky and "killed her two-year-old daughter with a butcher knife rather than see the child returned to slavery. She was preparing to kill her other children and herself when she was subdued" by slave wranglers.
I'm from the MTV generation (and now admittedly the VH1 crowd) and thought we'd gotten over this stuff already. As a black woman, I've often thought of male oppression of women as abstract and quaint, ridiculous like the 1950s and certainly not as far on my personal front-burner as racism. But Lake of Fire is part of the larger explanation of how the subjugation of women and other forms of oppression are connected.
Belinda Morrissey writes in When Women Kill: Questions of Agency and Subjectivity (Routledge, 2003):
For the fear of women, of their power to generate life and to take it away, runs deep in male-dominated societies... the feminine is often aligned with the abject, the criminal, and that the potential for feminine evil is considered ever present. Female abjection relates largely to the very permeability of female bodies; through reproductive and sexual processes, female anatomy blurs the line between self and other, clean and unclean. The woman's vagina is penetrable and engulfing, her menstrual blood is a primary abject pollutant, while her capacity to give birth raises the subject's terror of encompassment and subsequent loss of self. Finally, the baby's early dependence on the mother gives her enormous power, and the fear this evokes, combined with the abject nature of the female body, has been narrated repeatedly in myths and legends of evil and dangerous women throughout history. Women who kill confirm this archetypal feminine power, reinforcing the terrible antithesis to the myth of the good mother, reminding us that where creativity is located so too is destructiveness. The need to contain and limit the threat posed by such women is paramount in legal discourses, charged with enacting society's official response to these crimes, and in media discourses, responsible for communicating that reaction to the general public.
In short, it's deeply disturbing when women kill. It's no wonder some of us get really scared and upset at the prospect of this. For some, it's so clearly not okay, it's so clearly black and white: At a rally, Randall Terry, co-founder of Operation Rescue shouts into the crowd, "we are right, they are wrong!" Ah, the '90s -- if only our worries were that simple now. Then again, maybe not much has changed. The debate over abortion, like many of the contested topics in this country, is as intractable as ever.
As I watched Cardinal Roger Mahoney, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles, speak against abortion in the film, I thought -- here is a man who we know (thanks to Amy Berg's Oscar-nominated film, Deliver Us From Evil) protected a known child rapist in his church. It's time to be aware of all the interconnected mischief afoot in this country and start getting at the root of our fears.
I always thought the abortion debate was about women's bodies, at least for pro-choice people. But I think what the film shows is that the anti-abortionists are not talking about that, they are talking about the right to kill, which they view as wrong, at least when women initiate it as mothers. Pro-abortionists or pro-choice people need to address this, or both parties will just keep talking past each other.
Logan Nakyanzi Pollard
Huffingtonpost.com/logan-nakyanzi-pollard/lake-of-fire_b_67230.html
Logan Nakyanzi Pollard is an executive producer at Air America Radio and Go Left TV, and writes for The Huffington Post. Logan is also a member of the Women Film Critics Circle.
AGORA: Dragged from her chariot by a mob of fanatical vigilante Christian monks, the revered astronomer was stripped naked, skinned to her bones with sharp oyster shells, stoned and burned alive as possibly the first executed witch in history. A kind of purge that was apparently big business back then.
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12/22/07
Ghosts Of Cite Soleil: Cheap Shot at the People’s Struggle in Haiti
Ghosts Of Cite Soleil: A Cheap Shot at the People’s Struggle in Haiti
By Shirley Pate
A recently released film, "The Ghosts of Cite Soleil," tells the story of two young men, Bily and 2pac, who live in Cite Soleil, a poor neighborhood of Port-au-Prince.Most people who have reviewed the film suggest that viewers are at once titillated and repelled by these young men because of their violence-ridden lifestyle. We learn that they are "chimeres" (a word that loosely means "monster" and used for several years to demonize supporters of former Haitian president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide).It’s a label that adds a certain drama, if you are looking at it from a cinematic standpoint, but its political implications are serious.
Several years ago, a mainstream journalist introduced “chimere” broadly into the international media suggesting that President Aristide had a corps of violence-prone monster-creatures responsible for attacks on his political opponents. The introduction and extensive use of “chimere” by journalists was part of an international plot to turn world opinion against Aristide paving the way for a coup d’etat that would oust him in 2004 and lead to the murder of thousands of his supporters.
While “Ghosts” appears to be the belle of the blogs and various newspapers, many of the reviews, analyses, and discussions about the film are unenlightened by facts concerning Haiti’s history and politics.
Filmmaker, Asgor Leth, is under the mistaken impression that his movie is a documentary. Actually, it is a staged fraud of a movie that exploits the poverty and social circumstances of life in Cite Soleil. Just below the film’s veneer of gangster rap, sex, and violence lies an unmistakable and intentional subtext: supporters of Aristide are violence-prone sub-humans who, because of their overwhelming majority
and continued demand for the return of Aristide, must be contained and then eliminated. A lack of context might lead viewers to assume that the “chimeres” are the primary aggressors in Haitian society. Quite the opposite is true. Those labeled “chimere” during and after the coup were met with certain incarceration or execution by the Haitian National Police – many were accused over Haitian radio. Rather than aggressors, those labeled “chimeres” have been, and continue to be, the victims.
Not long after the UN peacekeeping mission, MINUSTAH, arrived in Haiti, it began to raid poor, Aristide- supporting neighborhoods. Yet, the indiscriminate attacks were causing it a public relations problem. In need of a propaganda advantage, MINUSTAH came up with its own term for the “resistant” population that remains loyal to Aristide – “bandit.” This term may not be as exotic as “chimere,” but with its roots in the 1915-1934 US occupation of Haiti, where the mere utterance of the word provided Marines carte blanche to kill, it resonated well and has become pervasive in the media and a major theme in speeches by the UN Secretary General’s representative in Haiti, Edmond Mulet.
And, this brings another political reality to the fore. MINUSTAH’s mandate calls for bringing security to Haiti yet, security for all Haitians is not part of its agenda. Make no mistake, MINUSTAH was sent to Haiti by a US-dominated UN Security Council to do one thing: make the coup of February 2004 “stick.” Elite Haitians and international business interests are banking on an Aristide-less Haiti. Aristide was on a path of shifting the balance of power into the hands of the majority of
Haitians who are poor by doubling the minimum wage, dedicating 20% of the nation’s budget to education, instituting widespread literacy programs and struggling successfully with international financial institutions to not privatize all of Haiti’s state-owned companies. The last thing the business class needs in Haiti is a better-paid, better-educated workforce.
No documentary about post-coup Haiti can be authentic unless it “outs” those responsible for the carnage, asks hard questions and pursues answers relentlessly. “Ghosts” never tried to do any of these things. If “Ghosts” wants to collect its “documentary” credentials, it will have to admit that Bily and 2pac are not the real bad guys but, rather: the US, France, and Canada who planned, financed and implemented the coup that ousted President Aristide; the US-installed de facto government of Gerard Latortue that maintained an extraordinary atmosphere of impunity
making summary incarcerations and executions of Aristide supporters effortless and without consequence; and the US-dominated United Nations Security Council and its peacekeeping mission in Haiti, MINUSTAH, which is making the coup “stick” by committing massacres of unarmed Haitians in poor neighborhoods.
Asking the right questions and pursuing the answers is the only way to honor the struggle of the people of Haiti. In addition, those answers will tell us far more about the lives of Bily and 2pac than “Ghosts” ever could. While there are many questions that can and should be asked, I propose the following:
What was intended for Haiti's economy and education, health and social structures when the US coordinated an embargo on loans to Haiti by international financial institutions beginning in 2000 and not ending until Aristide's forced departure four years later? Who in the international press collaborated with the coup makers to demonize Aristide and criminalize his supporters by labeling them "chimeres?" How
long before the coup did the US, France, and Canada map out the plan to destabilize Haiti politically by financing "opposition groups" and fake human rights organizations that fingered "chimeres" for summary executions by the Haitian National Police? How many thousands of guns did the US give to the Dominican Republic that went to Haitian "rebels" hiding out there to invade their own country and kill thousands of Aristide supporters and, for god’s sake, how many of those guns are
still in their hands? What kinds of state repression tactics did the unelected Prime Minister of the illegal interim government of Haiti employ to "contain" the overwhelming majority of Haitians who demanded the return of their democratically-elected president? How long before the coup did the US-dominated UN Security Council develop its occupation plan for Haiti involving first, soldiers from the three countries that orchestrated the coup and then followed by a UN “peacekeeping” occupation? Why, for the first time in UN history was MINUSTAH the only peacekeeping mission deployed without a peace agreement to enforce? How
many Haitians died because MINUSTAH ignored the assassination of unarmed demonstrators by Haitian National Police sharpshooters? Why does the present government of Haiti allow MINUSTAH to continue to label Haiti’s citizens as “bandits” for supporting the return of Aristide and resisting a cruel occupation? Finally, what monster, under the guise of pursuing “bandits,” authorized UN raids into Cite Soleil and other poor neighborhoods involving hundreds of UN soldiers, tanks, and assault
helicopters resulting in the death and injury of hundreds of unarmed Haitians?
Luckily, there is one documentary that can answer these and many other questions about what happened in Haiti. It’s a film called “Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits,” by acclaimed filmmaker, Kevin Pina. Finally, the people of Haiti have a film about their struggle that is honest, well-researched, hard-hitting, and dead serious. Most importantly, “Bandits” features Haitians telling their own story about their fight
for justice, peace and security. You can find more information about the film at this website: http://www.haitiinformationproject.net/.
Shirley Pate is a Haiti solidarity activist in Washington, D. C. You can contact her by email at: magbana@hcvanalysis.net. For other articles written by her, please go to: http://hcvanalysis.wordpress.com.
--
__________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
"Cuban fighters are ready to lay down their lives for the liberation of our countries, and in exchange for this aid to our freedom and the progress of our people, all they take from us are their comrades who fell fighting for freedom." --Amilcar Cabral, freedom fighter, Guinea-Bissau, 1924-1973
By Shirley Pate
A recently released film, "The Ghosts of Cite Soleil," tells the story of two young men, Bily and 2pac, who live in Cite Soleil, a poor neighborhood of Port-au-Prince.Most people who have reviewed the film suggest that viewers are at once titillated and repelled by these young men because of their violence-ridden lifestyle. We learn that they are "chimeres" (a word that loosely means "monster" and used for several years to demonize supporters of former Haitian president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide).It’s a label that adds a certain drama, if you are looking at it from a cinematic standpoint, but its political implications are serious.
Several years ago, a mainstream journalist introduced “chimere” broadly into the international media suggesting that President Aristide had a corps of violence-prone monster-creatures responsible for attacks on his political opponents. The introduction and extensive use of “chimere” by journalists was part of an international plot to turn world opinion against Aristide paving the way for a coup d’etat that would oust him in 2004 and lead to the murder of thousands of his supporters.
While “Ghosts” appears to be the belle of the blogs and various newspapers, many of the reviews, analyses, and discussions about the film are unenlightened by facts concerning Haiti’s history and politics.
Filmmaker, Asgor Leth, is under the mistaken impression that his movie is a documentary. Actually, it is a staged fraud of a movie that exploits the poverty and social circumstances of life in Cite Soleil. Just below the film’s veneer of gangster rap, sex, and violence lies an unmistakable and intentional subtext: supporters of Aristide are violence-prone sub-humans who, because of their overwhelming majority
and continued demand for the return of Aristide, must be contained and then eliminated. A lack of context might lead viewers to assume that the “chimeres” are the primary aggressors in Haitian society. Quite the opposite is true. Those labeled “chimere” during and after the coup were met with certain incarceration or execution by the Haitian National Police – many were accused over Haitian radio. Rather than aggressors, those labeled “chimeres” have been, and continue to be, the victims.
Not long after the UN peacekeeping mission, MINUSTAH, arrived in Haiti, it began to raid poor, Aristide- supporting neighborhoods. Yet, the indiscriminate attacks were causing it a public relations problem. In need of a propaganda advantage, MINUSTAH came up with its own term for the “resistant” population that remains loyal to Aristide – “bandit.” This term may not be as exotic as “chimere,” but with its roots in the 1915-1934 US occupation of Haiti, where the mere utterance of the word provided Marines carte blanche to kill, it resonated well and has become pervasive in the media and a major theme in speeches by the UN Secretary General’s representative in Haiti, Edmond Mulet.
And, this brings another political reality to the fore. MINUSTAH’s mandate calls for bringing security to Haiti yet, security for all Haitians is not part of its agenda. Make no mistake, MINUSTAH was sent to Haiti by a US-dominated UN Security Council to do one thing: make the coup of February 2004 “stick.” Elite Haitians and international business interests are banking on an Aristide-less Haiti. Aristide was on a path of shifting the balance of power into the hands of the majority of
Haitians who are poor by doubling the minimum wage, dedicating 20% of the nation’s budget to education, instituting widespread literacy programs and struggling successfully with international financial institutions to not privatize all of Haiti’s state-owned companies. The last thing the business class needs in Haiti is a better-paid, better-educated workforce.
No documentary about post-coup Haiti can be authentic unless it “outs” those responsible for the carnage, asks hard questions and pursues answers relentlessly. “Ghosts” never tried to do any of these things. If “Ghosts” wants to collect its “documentary” credentials, it will have to admit that Bily and 2pac are not the real bad guys but, rather: the US, France, and Canada who planned, financed and implemented the coup that ousted President Aristide; the US-installed de facto government of Gerard Latortue that maintained an extraordinary atmosphere of impunity
making summary incarcerations and executions of Aristide supporters effortless and without consequence; and the US-dominated United Nations Security Council and its peacekeeping mission in Haiti, MINUSTAH, which is making the coup “stick” by committing massacres of unarmed Haitians in poor neighborhoods.
Asking the right questions and pursuing the answers is the only way to honor the struggle of the people of Haiti. In addition, those answers will tell us far more about the lives of Bily and 2pac than “Ghosts” ever could. While there are many questions that can and should be asked, I propose the following:
What was intended for Haiti's economy and education, health and social structures when the US coordinated an embargo on loans to Haiti by international financial institutions beginning in 2000 and not ending until Aristide's forced departure four years later? Who in the international press collaborated with the coup makers to demonize Aristide and criminalize his supporters by labeling them "chimeres?" How
long before the coup did the US, France, and Canada map out the plan to destabilize Haiti politically by financing "opposition groups" and fake human rights organizations that fingered "chimeres" for summary executions by the Haitian National Police? How many thousands of guns did the US give to the Dominican Republic that went to Haitian "rebels" hiding out there to invade their own country and kill thousands of Aristide supporters and, for god’s sake, how many of those guns are
still in their hands? What kinds of state repression tactics did the unelected Prime Minister of the illegal interim government of Haiti employ to "contain" the overwhelming majority of Haitians who demanded the return of their democratically-elected president? How long before the coup did the US-dominated UN Security Council develop its occupation plan for Haiti involving first, soldiers from the three countries that orchestrated the coup and then followed by a UN “peacekeeping” occupation? Why, for the first time in UN history was MINUSTAH the only peacekeeping mission deployed without a peace agreement to enforce? How
many Haitians died because MINUSTAH ignored the assassination of unarmed demonstrators by Haitian National Police sharpshooters? Why does the present government of Haiti allow MINUSTAH to continue to label Haiti’s citizens as “bandits” for supporting the return of Aristide and resisting a cruel occupation? Finally, what monster, under the guise of pursuing “bandits,” authorized UN raids into Cite Soleil and other poor neighborhoods involving hundreds of UN soldiers, tanks, and assault
helicopters resulting in the death and injury of hundreds of unarmed Haitians?
Luckily, there is one documentary that can answer these and many other questions about what happened in Haiti. It’s a film called “Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits,” by acclaimed filmmaker, Kevin Pina. Finally, the people of Haiti have a film about their struggle that is honest, well-researched, hard-hitting, and dead serious. Most importantly, “Bandits” features Haitians telling their own story about their fight
for justice, peace and security. You can find more information about the film at this website: http://www.haitiinformationproject.net/.
Shirley Pate is a Haiti solidarity activist in Washington, D. C. You can contact her by email at: magbana@hcvanalysis.net. For other articles written by her, please go to: http://hcvanalysis.wordpress.com.
--
__________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
"Cuban fighters are ready to lay down their lives for the liberation of our countries, and in exchange for this aid to our freedom and the progress of our people, all they take from us are their comrades who fell fighting for freedom." --Amilcar Cabral, freedom fighter, Guinea-Bissau, 1924-1973
Writing While White: Race, Gender And The WGA Writers Strike
By Sikivu Hutchinson
"It was nice to see Jesse Jackson attend the Fox parade. Otherwise, I would have been the only black person there."
Comment by a black writer, on the WGA Fox rally — November 9, 2007, DeadlineHollywood.com
While the Writers Guild of America strike has elicited much righteous indignation on both sides about whether or not writers are entitled to heftier shares of digital media, there continues to be a deafening silence on the issue of racial and gender equity in the industry. The spectacle of “A-list” celebs defiantly thrusting strike placards into the air with journeymen/women scribes has further illuminated the vast racial divide in a niche whose unabashed white male insularity puts other sectors of corporate America to shame. As far as diversity behind the cameras is concerned, it may as well still be 1955 with Ozzie and Harriet. According to a 2007 report by UCLA professor Darnell Hunt (commissioned by the WGA), writers of color account for less than 10% of the TV industry and command significantly less in salary than their white counterparts. Although writers of color represent a small portion of the WGA’s membership, their numbers are still greater in the guild than they are in the paid workforce. Shut out of gigs on major white-themed/dominated shows, ghettoized at the CW network and other “ethnic” venues, the 2005 median income for writers of color was $78,107, while the median income for white TV writers was $97,956. The report also noted that while women writers represent 25% of both the film and TV industries they had successfully narrowed the gender income gap in TV. A 2002 study published by UC Santa Barbara professors Denise and Bill Bielby concluded that rampant cronyism, arbitrary hiring practices and the racial biases of bottom-line oriented foreign investors are several factors that make the film/TV industries among the most stubbornly segregated in the U.S.
Beleaguered writers aside, the Hollywood corporate image regime and its writing establishment have been the foremost vehicles for the global export of American cultural values and iconography. TV shows like Desperate Housewives and the Office rake in millions of foreign dollars annually while promoting a largely white middle class professional America peppered with a few token supporting characters of color. American exports of films churned out by the same incestuous stable of favored white male screenwriters score megabucks in overseas markets where audiences lap up European American-style sex, romance, machismo and violence like mother’s milk. As a result, these audiences have little concept of the U.S. beyond the celluloid fantasy of white culturally homogeneity peddled by sexist gross-out comedies like recent foreign favorite The Heartbreak Kid or triumphal testosterone fests like Die Hard. For image starved filmgoers of color, new film ads in the L.A. Times and other major dailies showcase a whiteness so relentless that the ubiquitous mugs of Denzel/Morgan/Will have become virtually interchangeable as the only acceptably “bankable” Negroes that Hollywood will let mind the cinematic plantation.
The multiracial non-white face of the U.S., in which white people actually represent an ever shrinking minority, is a reality that the film and TV industries seem hellbent on obliterating one show at a time. Indeed, driving through the streets of Los Angeles it is difficult to reconcile the seismic demographic shift that has occurred in the city’s predominantly black, Latino and Asian communities with the almost Jim Crow era throwback billboards of “hot” new Hollywood ensemble sitcoms and dramas. Drive down Crenshaw, Cesar Chavez or any of the major thoroughfares in black and brown L.A., and this street media parade of fresh telegenic white faces is a visual reminder of the egregious disparities in access and capital that render the everyday lives of most people of color invisible to mainstream America; positioned as lapdog consumers rather than image makers. The normative view of white Americana that the most handsomely-paid writers peddle and the industry bankrolls is devoid of consistently compelling stories and characters that capture the complexities of people of color. This void has particularly dangerous implications for young people of color, who, with the exception of the random white collar professional of color, only see themselves and their communities trotted out as gangbangers, rappers, criminals, unwed teenage mothers and/or sage sidekicks for more richly textured white characters.
Whatever the merits of the WGA’s beef about corporate exploitation it is abundantly clear that the $20,000 median wage gap that separates striking white writers from their male and female colleagues of color represents job opportunities, networks and critical access to professional ties that remain closed to so-called minorities in the industry. The next time the WGA goes to the barricades it would do well to make good on the findings of its industry critique and have white writers standing shoulder to shoulder with writers of color on the corporate racism in hiring that informs the income and image gap for the new “majority” Americans.
Sikivu Hutchinson is a Los Angeles-based writer and editor of blackfemlens.org an online journal of feminist criticism.
"It was nice to see Jesse Jackson attend the Fox parade. Otherwise, I would have been the only black person there."
Comment by a black writer, on the WGA Fox rally — November 9, 2007, DeadlineHollywood.com
While the Writers Guild of America strike has elicited much righteous indignation on both sides about whether or not writers are entitled to heftier shares of digital media, there continues to be a deafening silence on the issue of racial and gender equity in the industry. The spectacle of “A-list” celebs defiantly thrusting strike placards into the air with journeymen/women scribes has further illuminated the vast racial divide in a niche whose unabashed white male insularity puts other sectors of corporate America to shame. As far as diversity behind the cameras is concerned, it may as well still be 1955 with Ozzie and Harriet. According to a 2007 report by UCLA professor Darnell Hunt (commissioned by the WGA), writers of color account for less than 10% of the TV industry and command significantly less in salary than their white counterparts. Although writers of color represent a small portion of the WGA’s membership, their numbers are still greater in the guild than they are in the paid workforce. Shut out of gigs on major white-themed/dominated shows, ghettoized at the CW network and other “ethnic” venues, the 2005 median income for writers of color was $78,107, while the median income for white TV writers was $97,956. The report also noted that while women writers represent 25% of both the film and TV industries they had successfully narrowed the gender income gap in TV. A 2002 study published by UC Santa Barbara professors Denise and Bill Bielby concluded that rampant cronyism, arbitrary hiring practices and the racial biases of bottom-line oriented foreign investors are several factors that make the film/TV industries among the most stubbornly segregated in the U.S.
Beleaguered writers aside, the Hollywood corporate image regime and its writing establishment have been the foremost vehicles for the global export of American cultural values and iconography. TV shows like Desperate Housewives and the Office rake in millions of foreign dollars annually while promoting a largely white middle class professional America peppered with a few token supporting characters of color. American exports of films churned out by the same incestuous stable of favored white male screenwriters score megabucks in overseas markets where audiences lap up European American-style sex, romance, machismo and violence like mother’s milk. As a result, these audiences have little concept of the U.S. beyond the celluloid fantasy of white culturally homogeneity peddled by sexist gross-out comedies like recent foreign favorite The Heartbreak Kid or triumphal testosterone fests like Die Hard. For image starved filmgoers of color, new film ads in the L.A. Times and other major dailies showcase a whiteness so relentless that the ubiquitous mugs of Denzel/Morgan/Will have become virtually interchangeable as the only acceptably “bankable” Negroes that Hollywood will let mind the cinematic plantation.
The multiracial non-white face of the U.S., in which white people actually represent an ever shrinking minority, is a reality that the film and TV industries seem hellbent on obliterating one show at a time. Indeed, driving through the streets of Los Angeles it is difficult to reconcile the seismic demographic shift that has occurred in the city’s predominantly black, Latino and Asian communities with the almost Jim Crow era throwback billboards of “hot” new Hollywood ensemble sitcoms and dramas. Drive down Crenshaw, Cesar Chavez or any of the major thoroughfares in black and brown L.A., and this street media parade of fresh telegenic white faces is a visual reminder of the egregious disparities in access and capital that render the everyday lives of most people of color invisible to mainstream America; positioned as lapdog consumers rather than image makers. The normative view of white Americana that the most handsomely-paid writers peddle and the industry bankrolls is devoid of consistently compelling stories and characters that capture the complexities of people of color. This void has particularly dangerous implications for young people of color, who, with the exception of the random white collar professional of color, only see themselves and their communities trotted out as gangbangers, rappers, criminals, unwed teenage mothers and/or sage sidekicks for more richly textured white characters.
Whatever the merits of the WGA’s beef about corporate exploitation it is abundantly clear that the $20,000 median wage gap that separates striking white writers from their male and female colleagues of color represents job opportunities, networks and critical access to professional ties that remain closed to so-called minorities in the industry. The next time the WGA goes to the barricades it would do well to make good on the findings of its industry critique and have white writers standing shoulder to shoulder with writers of color on the corporate racism in hiring that informs the income and image gap for the new “majority” Americans.
Sikivu Hutchinson is a Los Angeles-based writer and editor of blackfemlens.org an online journal of feminist criticism.
This Is England On DVD: Convergence Of Macho Mystique And Race Hatred
This is England
Director: Shane Meadows
Cast: Thomas Turgoose, Stephen Graham, Rosamund Hanson
By Nancy Keefe Rhodes
It's one of those shabby, low-ceilinged country bars, out of the way down a dirt road with no traffic, that you'd reach after a drive through slow, monotonous rain blurring fields edged with scrub trees. In the muddy yard, men with shaved heads and black leather and tattoos on their faces mill around, then go respectfully silent when the guest candidate arrives. Inside, before posters for the National Front party, keeping his topcoat on against the damp and the dirt, he rails, "Our country has been stolen." His wind-up draws cheers: "There is a forgotten word, a forbidden word – I want to revive the word Englishmen."
In the audience, dragged way out here from his small town home along with some other new "troops" by the persuasive, unstable Combo (Stephen Graham), 11-year-old Shaun (Thomas Turgoose), still grieving the father he lost to war and thrilled that schoolyard bullies now avoid him, is so far a willing convert.
This year US movies have examined the volatile, double-edged hero worship that needy and impressionable young men have for violent criminals as one facet of the Westerns revival – think Casey Affleck's Robert Ford in *The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward…* and Ben Foster's Charlie Prince in *3:10 to Yuma*. Indeed the template for that specific longing and frustration available in the genre's revisionist incarnations may be part of its contemporary appeal, even fifteen years ago in Clint Eastwood's *Unforgiven*, with the self-styled Scholfield Kid running after Eastwood's
retired gunslinger. Although British director Shane Meadows has visited the romance of the Western to great satiric effect in his riff on Sergio Leone, *Once Upon a* *Time in the Midlands* (2002), here he goes straight to the more recent parallels of his own youth, letting his back-country pub echo the frontier in more muted ways.
What goes around, comes around. *This is England* is set in 1983 in the English Midlands, home territory of the National Front, a far-right party founded in 1967 that opposed immigration, multicultural policies and membership in the UN and NATO. Ronald Reagan's friend Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. Though Thatcher's own rise and her heartily conservative policies, especially toward immigrants, at first deflated support for the extremist National Front, by 1983 it's making a come-back. It's a little more than a year since the end of what Meadows calls "another pointless war," England's invasion of the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina, made vivid by archival footage of horrific battle injuries book-ending the film. Unemployment stands at about 3 ½ million. There's a racist-tinged resurgence of skinhead gangs (more militant in prisons, where Combo's been) – ironic, since Jamaica's ska and reggae music had heavily influenced early skinhead culture – plus increased hate crimes and noisy demonstrations across the land against newcomers from Commonwealth countries such as Pakistan.
*This is England* walks some razor edges. First, it is that rare film whose story is set just far enough away in time and place to take the defensive edge off watching it, long enough to let the parallels with our own day sink in. This 2006 film finally reached US theaters in August and now released on DVD. Because it portrays scenes of extreme violence and racist invective, it had difficulty initially in England getting cleared so adolescents – arguably a major target audience – could see it. But it's also that rare film which makes a clear distinction between accounting for behavior and approving it.
Meadows – now in his mid-30s and still shaving his head – says his main ambition at age 11 was going to prison. Instead, he makes movies set in the small towns of his native Midlands, often containing violence (which he says is more traumatic in village and rural settings because unexpected), usually reserving Hell's hottest places for the bystander who does nothing, and aiming to portray skinhead culture in its complexity rather than as a straw man plot device.
Shaun's story is fairly straightforward. A loner who's developing quite a temper, he's taken in by some older, mildly skinhead kids, led by Woody (Joe Gilgun), whose second in command is a mild young Jamaican named Milky (Andrew Shim, a fine natural actor cast in most Meadows' films but seemingly nowhere else). There's an assortment of younger teens, and an auxiliary girl gang led by Woody's girl Lol (Vicky McClure, another Meadows veteran), a hair stylist who keeps everyone shorn. Sometimes over the line of merely boisterous – one day they gleefully trash abandoned apartments with an
energy and ferocity which gives you pause – this crew gets what many gangs provide: companionship, belonging, plenty of affirmation and rough physical affection, a curb on their more destructive impulses toward one another.
A film very much about young men, *This is England* nonetheless supplies three decisively strong and fully drawn female characters. Shaun's mother Cynthia (Jo Hartley), though judging the haircut "not good," okays her son's bond with them after a confrontation in the village cafe. Members also get initiation into grown-up ways. Shaun has his first girlfriend, an older, quite a bit taller girl with huge hair and black lipstick. A bit outlandish if you met them on the street, Shaun and Smell (Rosamund Hanson) enjoy a surprisingly delicate, hesitant courtship. Even with her lipstick smeared garishly after their first kissing session, Smell maintains great dignity and sweetness. The hairdresser Lol, having survived what was clearly a brutal rape by Combo several years back, decisively sets him straight when he attempts new advances. The strength and clarity of Lol's experience – "the worst night of my life" – illuminates the degree of Combo's delusion in his own hopeful recollection of the "best night" of his life.
Trouble comes in the person of Combo (Stephen Graham), one of the more riveting, complex portraits of a needy, manipulative sociopath found anywhere on screen, and one of the best explorations of precisely how such a figure works his will by dividing others according to their own fears and hopes. His first wedge when he returns from prison is his verbal attack on Milky, after which he effectively splits the group by sneering as Woody for letting him "abuse" the Jamaican. Similarly disorienting to Shaun is Combo's praise of the boy for swinging at him when he disparages Falkland Islands veterans.
Intriguingly, Meadows has Combo rehearse his "troops." He has the boys prepare for their invasion on a Pakistani convenience store – the middle-aged owner has banned Shaun – as if it were a stage performance. They get their lines, they work on their stances and delivery, they discover how having a role manages their anxiety. Meadows writes and directs very tight, pivotal scenes that advance his story. He also intersperses them with evocative musical montages that provide depth of field. Besides collaging images from the era – the opening of *This is England* is particularly brilliant – his musical montages often contain slow-motion images of the
characters themselves, composed in ways that remarkably resemble album covers of bands – one imagines this is also how these characters would like to be seen – again underscoring of the importance of performance to adolescents. This and his use of contemporary music and montage have been among Meadows' most consistent strengths, here blended in his choices of The Clash's "This is England," Jamaican classics from Toots and the Maytals and the Upsetters, pop from Percy Sledge, The Specials, Strawberry Switchblade, and Clayhill's new cover of The Smith's "Please, Please, Please."
And the next diatribe you hear on the campaign trail about being soft on illegal immigrants, remember, what goes around, comes around.
*******
*This review appeared in the 12/13/07 issue of the Syracuse *City Eagle *weekly, where "Make it Snappy" is a regular column reviewing DVDs of recent movies that didn't open theatrically in CNY & older films of enduring worth. Of Meadows' previous feature films,* Dead Man's Shoes *(2004) &* Once Upon a Time in the Midlands *(2002) are both available on DVD via Netflix.* A Room for Romeo Brass *(1999) is available on-line in non-US DVD format if you have a zone-free player. *TwentyFourSeven* (1997) can be found in VHS online. His next project, in which he again works with a frequent
collaborator, the actor Paddy Considine, involves a Gypsy story set in Eastern Europe. *
--
Posted By Nancy Keefe Rhodes to Movie Cross Rhodesat
--
Nancy Keefe Rhodes
www.MovieCrossRhodes.blogspot.com
Covering film, photo & visual arts
"A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species homo sapiens - second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter." - Reynolds Price
Director: Shane Meadows
Cast: Thomas Turgoose, Stephen Graham, Rosamund Hanson
By Nancy Keefe Rhodes
It's one of those shabby, low-ceilinged country bars, out of the way down a dirt road with no traffic, that you'd reach after a drive through slow, monotonous rain blurring fields edged with scrub trees. In the muddy yard, men with shaved heads and black leather and tattoos on their faces mill around, then go respectfully silent when the guest candidate arrives. Inside, before posters for the National Front party, keeping his topcoat on against the damp and the dirt, he rails, "Our country has been stolen." His wind-up draws cheers: "There is a forgotten word, a forbidden word – I want to revive the word Englishmen."
In the audience, dragged way out here from his small town home along with some other new "troops" by the persuasive, unstable Combo (Stephen Graham), 11-year-old Shaun (Thomas Turgoose), still grieving the father he lost to war and thrilled that schoolyard bullies now avoid him, is so far a willing convert.
This year US movies have examined the volatile, double-edged hero worship that needy and impressionable young men have for violent criminals as one facet of the Westerns revival – think Casey Affleck's Robert Ford in *The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward…* and Ben Foster's Charlie Prince in *3:10 to Yuma*. Indeed the template for that specific longing and frustration available in the genre's revisionist incarnations may be part of its contemporary appeal, even fifteen years ago in Clint Eastwood's *Unforgiven*, with the self-styled Scholfield Kid running after Eastwood's
retired gunslinger. Although British director Shane Meadows has visited the romance of the Western to great satiric effect in his riff on Sergio Leone, *Once Upon a* *Time in the Midlands* (2002), here he goes straight to the more recent parallels of his own youth, letting his back-country pub echo the frontier in more muted ways.
What goes around, comes around. *This is England* is set in 1983 in the English Midlands, home territory of the National Front, a far-right party founded in 1967 that opposed immigration, multicultural policies and membership in the UN and NATO. Ronald Reagan's friend Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. Though Thatcher's own rise and her heartily conservative policies, especially toward immigrants, at first deflated support for the extremist National Front, by 1983 it's making a come-back. It's a little more than a year since the end of what Meadows calls "another pointless war," England's invasion of the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina, made vivid by archival footage of horrific battle injuries book-ending the film. Unemployment stands at about 3 ½ million. There's a racist-tinged resurgence of skinhead gangs (more militant in prisons, where Combo's been) – ironic, since Jamaica's ska and reggae music had heavily influenced early skinhead culture – plus increased hate crimes and noisy demonstrations across the land against newcomers from Commonwealth countries such as Pakistan.
*This is England* walks some razor edges. First, it is that rare film whose story is set just far enough away in time and place to take the defensive edge off watching it, long enough to let the parallels with our own day sink in. This 2006 film finally reached US theaters in August and now released on DVD. Because it portrays scenes of extreme violence and racist invective, it had difficulty initially in England getting cleared so adolescents – arguably a major target audience – could see it. But it's also that rare film which makes a clear distinction between accounting for behavior and approving it.
Meadows – now in his mid-30s and still shaving his head – says his main ambition at age 11 was going to prison. Instead, he makes movies set in the small towns of his native Midlands, often containing violence (which he says is more traumatic in village and rural settings because unexpected), usually reserving Hell's hottest places for the bystander who does nothing, and aiming to portray skinhead culture in its complexity rather than as a straw man plot device.
Shaun's story is fairly straightforward. A loner who's developing quite a temper, he's taken in by some older, mildly skinhead kids, led by Woody (Joe Gilgun), whose second in command is a mild young Jamaican named Milky (Andrew Shim, a fine natural actor cast in most Meadows' films but seemingly nowhere else). There's an assortment of younger teens, and an auxiliary girl gang led by Woody's girl Lol (Vicky McClure, another Meadows veteran), a hair stylist who keeps everyone shorn. Sometimes over the line of merely boisterous – one day they gleefully trash abandoned apartments with an
energy and ferocity which gives you pause – this crew gets what many gangs provide: companionship, belonging, plenty of affirmation and rough physical affection, a curb on their more destructive impulses toward one another.
A film very much about young men, *This is England* nonetheless supplies three decisively strong and fully drawn female characters. Shaun's mother Cynthia (Jo Hartley), though judging the haircut "not good," okays her son's bond with them after a confrontation in the village cafe. Members also get initiation into grown-up ways. Shaun has his first girlfriend, an older, quite a bit taller girl with huge hair and black lipstick. A bit outlandish if you met them on the street, Shaun and Smell (Rosamund Hanson) enjoy a surprisingly delicate, hesitant courtship. Even with her lipstick smeared garishly after their first kissing session, Smell maintains great dignity and sweetness. The hairdresser Lol, having survived what was clearly a brutal rape by Combo several years back, decisively sets him straight when he attempts new advances. The strength and clarity of Lol's experience – "the worst night of my life" – illuminates the degree of Combo's delusion in his own hopeful recollection of the "best night" of his life.
Trouble comes in the person of Combo (Stephen Graham), one of the more riveting, complex portraits of a needy, manipulative sociopath found anywhere on screen, and one of the best explorations of precisely how such a figure works his will by dividing others according to their own fears and hopes. His first wedge when he returns from prison is his verbal attack on Milky, after which he effectively splits the group by sneering as Woody for letting him "abuse" the Jamaican. Similarly disorienting to Shaun is Combo's praise of the boy for swinging at him when he disparages Falkland Islands veterans.
Intriguingly, Meadows has Combo rehearse his "troops." He has the boys prepare for their invasion on a Pakistani convenience store – the middle-aged owner has banned Shaun – as if it were a stage performance. They get their lines, they work on their stances and delivery, they discover how having a role manages their anxiety. Meadows writes and directs very tight, pivotal scenes that advance his story. He also intersperses them with evocative musical montages that provide depth of field. Besides collaging images from the era – the opening of *This is England* is particularly brilliant – his musical montages often contain slow-motion images of the
characters themselves, composed in ways that remarkably resemble album covers of bands – one imagines this is also how these characters would like to be seen – again underscoring of the importance of performance to adolescents. This and his use of contemporary music and montage have been among Meadows' most consistent strengths, here blended in his choices of The Clash's "This is England," Jamaican classics from Toots and the Maytals and the Upsetters, pop from Percy Sledge, The Specials, Strawberry Switchblade, and Clayhill's new cover of The Smith's "Please, Please, Please."
And the next diatribe you hear on the campaign trail about being soft on illegal immigrants, remember, what goes around, comes around.
*******
*This review appeared in the 12/13/07 issue of the Syracuse *City Eagle *weekly, where "Make it Snappy" is a regular column reviewing DVDs of recent movies that didn't open theatrically in CNY & older films of enduring worth. Of Meadows' previous feature films,* Dead Man's Shoes *(2004) &* Once Upon a Time in the Midlands *(2002) are both available on DVD via Netflix.* A Room for Romeo Brass *(1999) is available on-line in non-US DVD format if you have a zone-free player. *TwentyFourSeven* (1997) can be found in VHS online. His next project, in which he again works with a frequent
collaborator, the actor Paddy Considine, involves a Gypsy story set in Eastern Europe. *
--
Posted By Nancy Keefe Rhodes to Movie Cross Rhodes
--
Nancy Keefe Rhodes
www.MovieCrossRhodes.blogspot.com
Covering film, photo & visual arts
"A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species homo sapiens - second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter." - Reynolds Price
12/15/07
Blame it on Fidel: A Continuing Analysis
By Nancy Keefe Rhodes
Women Film Critics Circle
Director: Julie Gavras
Cast: Nina Kervel-Bey, Julie Depardieu, Stefano Acorsi
It's one of those furious, dramatic exits, more exhilarating because the one stalking out is all of ten years old. As befits a school-girl trained by French nuns to stand when the priest enters – elsewhere another pupil demonstrates hilarious mastery of the single raised eyebrow as comment on unseemly adult behavior – Anna (Nina Kervel-Bey) marches head down, her silence incendiary, dragging five-year-old brother François (Benjamin Feuillet) by one wrist, out the door and into the streets of Paris. Bad enough her parents took away her garden, her normal food, her catechism
classes, and her beloved Cuban nanny Filomena (Marie-Noelle Bordeaux), who lost everything to Castro and supplies the story's title. Bad enough they move to a cramped, shabby apartment, host nightly meetings of bearded men preaching "group solidarity," and her attorney father leaves for months on end to assist Chile's new Socialist regime. The breaking point comes amidst tears and shouts as her parents fight, the one rupture this little girl will not abide.
For some time she and François sit quietly on a park bench, their feet dangling as tall grown-ups pass. Then they go home. Their young parents meet them at the door with anguished relief. She has gotten their attention and we believe it, even smiling a little at them – one outcome of filmmaker Julie Gavras and casting director Coralie Amedeo testing almost 500 girls to find their right Anna.
*Blame it on Fidel* – a French import that screened early this year at Sundance and then Lincoln Center's annual Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, played in US art-houses from August till November and just released on DVD – is being marketed here as a comedy about generational friction and political excess. A sensible child fumes and rolls her eyes as her idealistic parents go over the edge in sudden enthusiasm for lefty causes. Papa Fernando (Stefano Acorsi) carries some guilt. He fled a wealthy Spanish background to France, even sat out 1968's student protests, rather than join his sister Marga (Mar Sodupe) in resisting Franco's fascists. Now Marga's arrival – her husband has disappeared – sparks Fernando's confused awakening. He then objects when wife Marie (Julie Depardieu) is more publically feminist than he likes, signing an abortion petition that embarrasses him and leads to that fight.
But Anna's parents are never buffoons. Decent, affectionate and generous young people, they try to be good parents, role models and, perhaps belatedly, citizens in the best sense. And Gavras frames her film with the deaths of two presidents; each breaks the hearts of a different generation, and in that mirrored grief finds a common aspiration that lingers and raises Gavras' first feature well above guffaws at the expense of novice activism. When Anna's grandfather (Oliver Perrier), a Bordeaux vineyard owner, says that "France is orphaned" upon the death of Charles DeGaulle, his grief recalls the French Resistance that helped defeat World War II's Nazi
occupation. DeGaulle died just six days after Chile elected Salvatore Allende in November 1970. Chile's military overthrew this popular reformer on September 11, 1973. Gavras excerpts Allende's riveting last address to his nation, along with news footage of the coup and Allende's death, which Anna's parents and their friends watch, huddled around the TV, as sorrowful as Anna's grandfather had been two years earlier. By the time this occurs, Anna has moved from resentment to some appreciation and, notably, choses to change schools. (Ironically, soon after Gavras wrapped her film, former dictator Augustin Pinochet, who supplanted Allende, also died.)
Gavras based *Blame it on Fidel* on Domitilla Calamai's novel of the same name, which she read after meeting Calamai in Italy. Daughter of Oscar-winning Greek political filmmaker Constantin Costa-Gavras (* Z*, *State of Siege*, *Missing*) and producer Michèle Ray-Gavras, she initially resisted feature filmmaking, first with law school, then working in production and documentaries, until a story brought her home. In adapting Calamai's novel to the screen, Gavras herself added the Allende storyline to
her script. She was just twelve in 1982 when her father made *Missing*. On the DVD's excellent extras (see also how the children were cast and directed, and what Julie Depardieu thought of growing up with Gerard's rising stardom), she recalls that film – in which Sissy Spacek played an outspoken young American whose husband disappears during the Allende coup, bickering with Jack Lemmon as her judgmental, conservative father-in-law – was her own "political awakening." Gavras also sees the enduring legacy of the 70s as women's liberation, so filmed *Blame it on Fidel* from Anna's
point of view and made her parents' pivotal quarrel about a feminist issue
like abortion.
Gavras comes of age in good company this year. Francis Ford Coppola's daughter Sofia already has her own shelf in the famous directors' section at some rental shops. Zoe (John) Cassavetes' *Broken English* is newly out on DVD, and Alison (Clint) Eastwood's *Rails and Ties* opened last month. All daughters coming home.
*******
*This review appeared in the 12/6/07 issue of the Syracuse *City Eagle *weekly, where "Make it Snappy" is a regular column reviewing DVDs of recent movies that didn't open theatrically in Central New York & older films of enduring worth. *
Nancy Keefe Rhodes
www.MovieCrossRhodes.blogspot.com
Covering film, photo & visual arts
Women Film Critics Circle
Director: Julie Gavras
Cast: Nina Kervel-Bey, Julie Depardieu, Stefano Acorsi
It's one of those furious, dramatic exits, more exhilarating because the one stalking out is all of ten years old. As befits a school-girl trained by French nuns to stand when the priest enters – elsewhere another pupil demonstrates hilarious mastery of the single raised eyebrow as comment on unseemly adult behavior – Anna (Nina Kervel-Bey) marches head down, her silence incendiary, dragging five-year-old brother François (Benjamin Feuillet) by one wrist, out the door and into the streets of Paris. Bad enough her parents took away her garden, her normal food, her catechism
classes, and her beloved Cuban nanny Filomena (Marie-Noelle Bordeaux), who lost everything to Castro and supplies the story's title. Bad enough they move to a cramped, shabby apartment, host nightly meetings of bearded men preaching "group solidarity," and her attorney father leaves for months on end to assist Chile's new Socialist regime. The breaking point comes amidst tears and shouts as her parents fight, the one rupture this little girl will not abide.
For some time she and François sit quietly on a park bench, their feet dangling as tall grown-ups pass. Then they go home. Their young parents meet them at the door with anguished relief. She has gotten their attention and we believe it, even smiling a little at them – one outcome of filmmaker Julie Gavras and casting director Coralie Amedeo testing almost 500 girls to find their right Anna.
*Blame it on Fidel* – a French import that screened early this year at Sundance and then Lincoln Center's annual Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, played in US art-houses from August till November and just released on DVD – is being marketed here as a comedy about generational friction and political excess. A sensible child fumes and rolls her eyes as her idealistic parents go over the edge in sudden enthusiasm for lefty causes. Papa Fernando (Stefano Acorsi) carries some guilt. He fled a wealthy Spanish background to France, even sat out 1968's student protests, rather than join his sister Marga (Mar Sodupe) in resisting Franco's fascists. Now Marga's arrival – her husband has disappeared – sparks Fernando's confused awakening. He then objects when wife Marie (Julie Depardieu) is more publically feminist than he likes, signing an abortion petition that embarrasses him and leads to that fight.
But Anna's parents are never buffoons. Decent, affectionate and generous young people, they try to be good parents, role models and, perhaps belatedly, citizens in the best sense. And Gavras frames her film with the deaths of two presidents; each breaks the hearts of a different generation, and in that mirrored grief finds a common aspiration that lingers and raises Gavras' first feature well above guffaws at the expense of novice activism. When Anna's grandfather (Oliver Perrier), a Bordeaux vineyard owner, says that "France is orphaned" upon the death of Charles DeGaulle, his grief recalls the French Resistance that helped defeat World War II's Nazi
occupation. DeGaulle died just six days after Chile elected Salvatore Allende in November 1970. Chile's military overthrew this popular reformer on September 11, 1973. Gavras excerpts Allende's riveting last address to his nation, along with news footage of the coup and Allende's death, which Anna's parents and their friends watch, huddled around the TV, as sorrowful as Anna's grandfather had been two years earlier. By the time this occurs, Anna has moved from resentment to some appreciation and, notably, choses to change schools. (Ironically, soon after Gavras wrapped her film, former dictator Augustin Pinochet, who supplanted Allende, also died.)
Gavras based *Blame it on Fidel* on Domitilla Calamai's novel of the same name, which she read after meeting Calamai in Italy. Daughter of Oscar-winning Greek political filmmaker Constantin Costa-Gavras (* Z*, *State of Siege*, *Missing*) and producer Michèle Ray-Gavras, she initially resisted feature filmmaking, first with law school, then working in production and documentaries, until a story brought her home. In adapting Calamai's novel to the screen, Gavras herself added the Allende storyline to
her script. She was just twelve in 1982 when her father made *Missing*. On the DVD's excellent extras (see also how the children were cast and directed, and what Julie Depardieu thought of growing up with Gerard's rising stardom), she recalls that film – in which Sissy Spacek played an outspoken young American whose husband disappears during the Allende coup, bickering with Jack Lemmon as her judgmental, conservative father-in-law – was her own "political awakening." Gavras also sees the enduring legacy of the 70s as women's liberation, so filmed *Blame it on Fidel* from Anna's
point of view and made her parents' pivotal quarrel about a feminist issue
like abortion.
Gavras comes of age in good company this year. Francis Ford Coppola's daughter Sofia already has her own shelf in the famous directors' section at some rental shops. Zoe (John) Cassavetes' *Broken English* is newly out on DVD, and Alison (Clint) Eastwood's *Rails and Ties* opened last month. All daughters coming home.
*******
*This review appeared in the 12/6/07 issue of the Syracuse *City Eagle *weekly, where "Make it Snappy" is a regular column reviewing DVDs of recent movies that didn't open theatrically in Central New York & older films of enduring worth. *
Nancy Keefe Rhodes
www.MovieCrossRhodes.blogspot.com
Covering film, photo & visual arts
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