a little while …

Encouraging events have been popping up everywhere in recent months deep in the trenches of Toronto’s burgeoning grassroots organizations – labour unions, student unions, community-sponsored events – whose support for the Palestinian struggle against occupation has finally arrived. Examples range from Susan Nathan’s lecture at the Steelworkers Hall (whose facade, interestingly, bears a striking similarity to Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, in Star City, Russia) to the regularly scheduled but seldom reported coordinated rallies in Queens Park. Better late than never.

Israel, of course, has taken notice. Their recently announced ‘image re-branding’ campaign, blitzing Canada in the month of September, is far from coincidental. Academia too, as far as Canadian Universities are concerned, has had a history of rigid support structures for pro-Israel support groups. The ‘Netanyahu Riot’ in Concordia being the most covered instance of that; coverage of which was owed fully to Izzy Asper’s sponsorship of the event.

I address these issues by being reminded of the sentiment I share with Susan Nathan, that the problem facing major developed international hubs is immigration’s exigency; how to manage the cultural collusion resulting from the massive in-flux of ethnically diverse citizens. Zionism, and the Israeli model in general, does not offer itself as a viable solution to that problem, and as a consequence of that is destined to fail.

Nevertheless, my attention swings to the uplifting these days, and my spirits piggy-back on the 1st annual Toronto Palestine Film Festival. A description of it is implicit in its title, but here’s an official description I’ve snagged from the media release:

The Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) evolved from a series of successful
screenings held over the past year in Toronto. This year also marks the 60th
anniversary of the Nakba, which refers to the 1948 expulsion of the indigenous
population of Palestine. The anniversary has been marked through a series of events
over the year, and Palestine House felt the best way to share Palestinians’ stories from
the time of the Nakba until present day was through film.
This film festival will introduce Torontonians to Palestinian cultural, historical and
personal narratives told through the rich variety of Palestinian films.

Having capitalized on their limited time offer of 10 tickets for 50$, skipping Hallowe’en night is clearly an afterthought. Here are the screenings I’m looking forward to the most (I hijacked the descriptions from the TPFF site):

Salt of This Sea

Annemarie Jacir
2008
105:00
Fiction
Palestine/France
Canadian Premiere

Synopsis:
Soraya, born in Brooklyn in a working class community of Palestinian refugees, discovers that her grandfather’s savings were frozen in a bank account in Jaffa when he was exiled in 1948. Stubborn, passionate and determined to reclaim what is hers, she fulfills her life-long dream of “returning” to Palestine. Slowly she is taken apart by the reality around her and is forced to confront her own anger. She meets Emad, a young Palestinian whose ambition, contrary to hers, is to leave forever. Tired of the constraints that dictate their lives, they know in order to be free, they must take things into their own hands, even if it’s illegal. In Palestine’s first feature by a female director, we follow two refugees in search of their own freedom through the traces of a lost Palestine.
Official Selection, Un Certain Regard, Cannes Film Festival 2008

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(This is the 2nd part of a six part documentary. I’d really like to see all six parts.)
Chronicles of a Refugee – Episode II: The Daily Nakbas

Perla Issa, Aseel Mansour, Adam Shapiro
2008
89:00
Documentary
USA/Lebanon
Canadian Premiere
Co-presented by International Diaspora Film Festival

Synopsis:
Episode II: The Daily Nakbas documents the repeated expulsions of Palestinians from refugee camps and countries around the world since 1967. It explores the impact of displacement on a community under constant threat of becoming refugees a second, third or fourth time. (Chronicles of a Refugee is a 6-part documentary series examining the global Palestinian refugee experience over the last 60 years.)

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Memory of the Cactus

Hanna Musleh
2008
42:00
Documentary
Palestine
Canadian Premiere
Co-Presented by the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association

Synopsis:
This documentary reveals the true story behind Israel’s “Canada Park” – a story of dispossession, destruction and continuing displacement. Forty-one years ago, the three Palestinian villages of Imwas, Yalo and Beit Nouba in the Latroun enclave of the West Bank were razed to the ground after Israel occupied the territory in 1967. Today, the residents of those villages remain displaced and barred from returning, while Israeli citizens enjoy picnics in the Jewish National Fund’s “Canada Park”, much of it funded by Canadians, oblivious to the crimes perpetrated in their names.
Discussion with guest speaker from Al-Haq, a Palestinian Human Rights Organization, will follow the screening.

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The Mountain
Hanna Elias
2003
36:00
Fiction
Palestine
Canadian Premiere

Synopsis:
The Mountain is a poignant story of the bond between generations, and explores Palestinian community life apart from the shadow of Israeli occupation. When an attractive young woman from Galilee catches the eye of a young farmer from Gaza on market day, love may be an inevitable consequence. But in this film, the course of true love is complicated by tradition. For many centuries elopement in the Middle East has been the only alternative for women who object to pre-arranged marriage.

Winner of 13 international awards including: Grand Prix, Du Monde, Arab Film Festival, Paris, France; Best Short Film GrandPrix, Henri Longlois Film Festival, Tours, France; President Prize, UINESCO International Film Festival, Hiroshima, Japan; Cine Eagle Film Award, Washington DC, USA

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USA vs Al-Arian
Line Halvorsen
2007
99:00
Feature
Documentary
Norway
Co-presented by Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival

Synopsis
USA vs Al-Arian is a portrait of an Arab-American family facing terrorism charges leveled by the U.S. Government. The film shows the personal story of a family living in a society where fear of terrorism has resulted in increasing stigmatization and discrimination against Muslims. For years, Nahla Al-Arain and her children have been fighting to prove the innocence of their husband and father Sami, a Palestinian refugee, university professor and civil rights activist, who has lived in the USA for more than thirty years.
Best Documentary, Norwegian Documentary Film Festival, Oslo 2007; Best Film, New Orleans Human Rights Film Festival, USA 2007; Grand Prix, International Festival of Muslim Cinema, Kazan, Russia 2007

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Slingshot Hip Hop

Jackie Reem Salloum
2008
80:00
Feature
Documentary
Palestine
Canadian Premiere – Director in Attendance

Synopsis
Slingshot Hip Hop braids together the stories of young Palestinians living in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank as they discover Hip Hop and employ it as a tool to surmount divisions imposed by occupation and poverty. From internal checkpoints and “Separation Walls”, to gender norms and generational differences, this is the story of young people crossing the borders that separate them.

Nominee, Grand Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival 2008.

i watched this at the cinema yesterday.
nobody’s counting, but that’s 2 movies in 3 days – i think a personal record for me. i’ve always found the theatres uncomfortable and i’ve never really enjoyed going, so i’m not sure what motivated 2 trips in 3 days. it seems i lucked out big time, i totally loved both movies.

the easiest way to describe ’stranger than fiction’ is to say that it’s a less exaggerated, and much more enjoyable and endearing kind of ‘truman show’. will ferrell is cast perfectly in that kind of role, he doesn’t over-act, as jim carrey is wont to do, and there is as much emphasis on the supporting cast as there is on him.
i really loved how the whole narration picked up at the point in ferrell’s life when he was about to make the transition from a loveless irs automaton to an emoting guitar playing guy who loves a girl, all the while keeping me guessing whether lily tomlin’s (WTF? lily tomlin? emma thompson?) third person omniscient character was guiding his transition, or just documenting it. in the end, they’re each just playing earthly roles, her life is to narrate his.
essential for me to elevate a movie from ‘well done’ to ‘fucking a!’ is a captivating love story, like the one that evolves between ‘irs agent’ and ‘anarchist baker’ … the kind of randomness that plucks at heart strings: she bakes him cookies, he brings her a box of flowers.
if i could pick my favourite part in the movie it would be where harold crick in a burst of honesty and brevity says to ana pascal, “i want you.”

this film premiered locally last night to a somewhat limited release, and i went to see it. i’m glad i held out as i had it downloaded almost a month ago, being fed up that 2 or 3 weeks prior it had premiered in bigger cities to even more limited release.

watching an almodovar movie for me is a safe bet. i know, going in, that no matter how catering his filmmaking becomes to a hollywood audience, i will appreciate the narrative. i can’t figure out whether this is because i’m a sucker for movies about women, or whether i’m a sucker for movies about almodovar’s women. what i do know for sure is that he managed to employ penelope cruz in a way that completely hypnotized me. her face became an extension of almodovar’s hyper-active use of warm bright colours. she was extremely stylized; at one point, her mother casually asks her whether she’d had work done on her breasts, pushing to the forefront the intent with which almodovar exaggerated her features (she wore a fake ass in the movie). aside from her breasts, which in one occassion are presented beautifully from a bird’s eye view as she washes dishes, and her lips, which were never short of being bright bright red, and her voluminous hair, i fell in love with her eyes.
with cruz’ eyes, it’s as if almodovar managed to place two smaller symmetrical frames within the larger frame the film played out in – like a narrative within a narrative. her heavily black-liner lined eyes served as 2-dimensional almond shaped barriers to the stuff going on outside of them. you can kind of see it in that picture, the way the whites of her eyes glisten and the pupils are like giant glass marbles. but what i can’t really portray in still pictures is how dynamic the commotion in her eyes was throughout the movie, you just gotta see it. her eyes would well up with tears exactly when she needed to be the strongest. and she was by far the strongest.
i’ve never loved penelope cruz more than when i’ve seen her in almodovar’s movies and i’m sure she’ll be nominated for a whole bunch of awards for this role.