Festival Rolling III


Autumn Spring by Vladimír Michálek.
Winner: Best Film, Director, Actor and Actress, Czech Lion 2001.

A light-hearted comedy that, along with its main character, a 70-some-year-old man who is continuously making practical jokes, escapes death by getting out the fun and silliness of life, set for the dreams never to come true. But if the dreams couldn't be reached at, does it mean we can't just pretend to already have reached them either? It's this question which the movie subtly answers in its full colors, putting forth a beautiful look at the lives of aged people. I enjoyed every single shot of the movie, and when walking out of the theatre was thinking how uniquely czech it was!


I'm Taraneh, 15 by Rassul Sadr-Ameli.
Winner: Best Actress & Special Jury Prize, 55th Locarno Film Festival.

The movie promises to follow the steps of a girl, a 15-year-old as the tilte says, when it starts behind her walking through a long corridor. Soon, though, the clichés of a meager, raw teenager stroy wobbling around the main character surface. Full of unnecessary dialogues and scenes that I suppose are meant to convey a half-developed series of feelings, but totally fail to do so, the movie and its story go nowhere but far away from the reality of the iranian society. As an insider, I found the movie unforgivably hiding, or at least carelessly ignoring numerous facts of the social structure just to finish an easy-to-forget story with an uncooked symbolism of the sort one makes up and soon throws away when passing through the few years enveloping the beginning of ones 20's.


Divine Intervention by Elia Suleiman.
Winner: Prix du Jury, Prix de la Critique, Cannes 2002.

A tasteful collage of little, everyday-life stories wrapped with a war-zone love-story and a fashionable computer-operated special feature. The artistry of Elia Suleiman is in telling a multi-layered story of a troubled land in less than a page of dialogues or two. The movie weaves a series of weird, laughable moments into a poetic surrealism I coudn't avoid fully immersing in. The political statement of the movie is somehow more emphasized than that of No Man's Land, but it still stands within the limits of the pacifist. I enjoyed the movie even as the last of my load of three, after an unberable 110-minute chattering (see I'm Taraneh, 15, above). Most Liked Scene: The hands of two parted lovers caressing in and around each other, as they sit still in the front seats of a car just across the isreali check point between Ram-allah and Jeruselam.

Festival Rolling II

Watching three movies in a row was a little breathtaking! One has to have a well-balanced plan of renewing one's breath in between movies.


19 Months by Randall Cole.

A fake documentry on the course of the lives of a couple who decide to break up gradually when they enter the 19th month of their relationship, it being the expiry date of the romantic love announced by a schientific study. The plan goes awry right away, etc. The movie is laughable, but lacks full developement of the ideas behind, so that it seems a little long for its content, even though it's only 77 minutes long.


The Tree That Remembers by Masoud Raouf.

A collection of interviews with former political prisoners of the Islamic Republic in Iran who now live as refugees in Canada, inspired by the suicide of one such refugee. Masoud Raouf manages to put together a historically valuable account of what has gone with those politically active youngsters who were not and refused to be part of the flow that swept to the power after the 1979 revolution in Iran with a touch of the painter and the photograher.


Salam Iran: A Persain Letter by Jean-Daniel Lafond.

A much-anticipated outsider's look into the contradictions of the self-proclaimed Islamic Motherland, Lafond's documentary follows a very well-developed set of steps, triguerred by his iranian friend's return to Iran after 18 years of involuntary exile in Québec, Canada, to show different aspects of the social conservatism of Iran and its demographical self-conflict: a huge 70-percent youth poulation thirsty for unpractised individual freedoms.


The Man Without A Past by Aki Kaurismäki.
Winner: Grand Prix, Cannes 2002.

An enjoyable story set in a slightly surrealistic setting, makes The Man Without A Past a perfect delight for a Sunday afternoon.

Festival Rolling I


Our Times by Rakhshan Bani-Etemad.

A great documentary, picturing the atmosphere as well as the feeling of being a youngster in Iran, now, where 2/3 of the population are the youth under 20-some years of age. Starting with the 2nd presedential election as the main theme to be recurred throughout the film, the director goes around talking with some of the 48 female candidates who were eventually disqualified by the Gaurdian Council, since it is inconstitutional in iran to have a female president. The film gets especially invloved with one of them, Arezoo Bayat, a single mother raising a daughter and caring for her blind mother at the same time who is also in serious need to finding a new place to move into, one that is affordable with her meager monthly salary, even though she works two jobs, and not too inaccessible for her kid and blind mom. The account of this urgent 3-day search that ironically ends on the election day is the everyday life of many single mothers in Iran, including my own. The film gave me the feeling of frustration that has now become history to me after two years of a laid-back student life here in Canada, the frustration that a whole generation, a whole country is living moment by moment struggling for their basic civic rights.


Bowling For Columbine by Michael Moore.

A brilliant 132-minute masterpiece that unfolds the simple links of it all about guns in the USA. Setting off on just another normal day, Michael Moore's mastery of reasoning and style combined with his bold, yet straight forward and to-the-point appraoch to the subject and people, from the street guy to the celebrity, kept me -in fact, us, a theatre-full of people- amazed and totally unaware of time and space. No more words, as none can just grasp the dimensions of it. Must see for yourself. Do NOT miss it.

Film Festival

I'm going to see quite a few films of Vancouver International Film Festivals. About 18 in two weeks. The festival starts today with an opening Gala, eight women, which also opens in a theatre, Fifth Avenue, tomorrow. How absurd! Who is going to pay $25 for it then?

Huh! Hopefully I will have some new entries for the list of the movies I'v liked!

Edge

I couldn't contain
my lavishly pleased senses,
walking my usual path
at an unusual time,
succumbing my face to the gentle touch
of the afternoon breeze
of the falling season.

Fall it is called, but it's only
the rise of maturity
in the repeated cycle of years,
growing out of
the blossoming adolescence of springtime and
the fiery youth of summer.

Beneath the warm ashes of
the reluctantly gone summer
was, all of a sudden, lurking
the worry of my life -my mom-
pointing out to me
the edge of knife
I was strolling upon,
blissfully looking only at the bright side,
defensively ignoring
the undue asphalt and
the unwelcome noise and pollution of
the hurried high-way
on the other side.

There in the near horizon
appeared the inhibiting silhouette of
a spider sure of its daily prey;
my regular walking end point:
cement-cold, venous
skytrain station.

Differences

Yes, there are similarities but so many differences too. Freedom is only one, which I couldn't help mentioning even in the rush of unbearable feelings of similarities. I couldn't know about the US in fact, but here in the upper band of Northwest America, I see: tolerance, prudence, collective reason, hard-work and contructive look to the life to name just a few. Talk about destruction, you get a frown; talk about construction, you get a smile. Oh, sure there are cracks and defects, but where isn't there? What counts is how you deal with them.

And I had this question to ask myself, as I was thinking about the fuss the US has made all the past year, and many years before: what if there was an attack on this city that I love? would I be as (self-)critical as I am now? Maybe not. Feelings woud surge and fuzz the reason, but I wouldn't go blow my sword all over the world. Isn't it all about the peace?

You want peace? Don't make wars then!

Similarities

Ever since I saw, for the first time, G.W. Bush giving a speech on TV, this striking idea has been growing in me how similar he acts and speaks to the one very man who sits in the absolute opposite to whatever he could say in the political arena: Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of I.R. of Iran. The political enmities of these two personae aside, I cannot help seeing all their detailed similarities when talking, when arguing, and when making certain gestures, from body gestures to political, figurative gestures. The question that has bothered me for quite some time is whether this means any thing as to the political situation the US now finds itself in.

These days, this question has become a terrible pound in my head, as these similarities have gone far beyond the personal level of the top political figures, making their way into the media as well. Now, I turn on the TV set and see that almost all of some forty (and probably more in fact) channels show long programmes about September 11th in their whole 24-hour air times. They have made and are making documentries, showing again and again the horrifying collisions of those planes and their unfortunate passengers with the twin towers and then talk to the people who were around or the fire fighters who faced the tragic events, intercepted with the truly empty words of the president Walker Bush about the freedom and the way it was (and is) going to be defended. These are very touching programmes indeed, but not to me. I just see the similarities to those old programmes of my childhood and adolescence, a little deeper beneath the thin skin of sensationalism they wrap them with.

I remember those long TV programmes that had occupied the short air times (about six hours) of the limited TV channels (only two) there were in Iran during the war (with Iraq) and then way after it was over, about the war and its casualties, and the rock-strong faith of our fighters and sacred martyrs that was going to eventually open the way of Quds all over through the heart of criminal, unrightful Saddam, intercepted with golden exerpts of the Great Leader's speeches. And then all the anti-american, anti-Israeli, anti-whatever demontsrations and the fuss they would make about them for weeks and weeks on. Again sensationalism was a key ingredient.

There is one big difference though, which I hope prevents all this crap from taking over the whole atmosphere of the so-called free world, and that is the freedom itself. I saw many people in the blogosphere and elsewhere who voiced their different opinions about the truth that lies buried below these endeavours of the mainstream media. And I hope this freedom of speech, as being practised frequently, undoes the ruining effects of the misleading and inverted picture of the world the media are promoting in favour of some political and economic benfits of their own. And I hope these similarities do not mean, in the longer run, anything close to what they meant for us in Iran during that horrible period of bloodshed (and still do now) in the name of officially sacred beliefs, and as a result of an imposed sensational look to the world.

Back to Normal

After a self-destructive struggle with the blogging rush which resulted in the Duck's blogging principles, I'm getting back to normal. Now I feel quite at ease with the concept and feel it has found its right place in my life. So, I'm going to go one step closer to the norm: I'll resume the commenting option below the posts as a regular hereafter.

The trigger for the blogging principles was the horrifying feeling of publicity which I felt I was being drawned upon. I absolutely hated it and still do. Although the strict measures I took freed me from the gnawing worries of losing my individuality to the devouring sociality of the www, but also made this weblog a little disfunctional. After all, this is about telling things in the public and hearing back, isn't it? So, now that I feel normal, there is no more reason to hold back.

Free

Finally, the last of the modules I was editting is done. And it will be the last one ever. I can't take it any more, sitting at my desk, totallly uninterested in all the pages that rest in front of me, counting the remaining ones, instead of reviewing the ones I have already editted for a less erronous completed job. All that ends here. Now, I'm free to shape my days at my own will. Well, sort of!

Blue Velvet

We saw, Blue Velvet, a movie by David Lynch. A strong, photographic and funny account of the unforeseen capabilities of human being in pushing the limits of his/her experience, through a detective story. The cast is brilliant, and the scenes are strong. The style is neat. The cut is witty and clever. And the content? The content is controversial, at the least. Many liked the movie, and many did not (read Roger Ebert's first reaction to the movie and his follow-up among those who didn't). I liked the movie. Oh, yes, that's why I'm writing about it here!

Learning English by Negation

Today I found a collection of words -of accidental wits and wisdom- which could be very helpful for learning English, at some advanced level. The collection is called “The Complete Bushism” and to improve one's English through it, one must apply a negation method: whatever word or expression seems suspicious or is not familiar, exactly that, one should not use in English. Here are my three favourite quotes:

• “I'm a patient man. And when I say I'm a patient man, I mean I'm a patient man.”


• “There's no bigger task than protecting the homeland of our country.”


• “The public education system in America is one of the most important foundations of our democracy. After all, it is where children from all over America learn to be responsible citizens, and learn to have the skills necessary to take advantage of our fantastic opportunistic society.”—Santa Clara, Calif., May 1, 2002