Category: local

Dirty Wars on Nov 12 at 7pm at the Cinema Theater in Rochester!

DON’T MISS THIS!!! RCTV presents Dirty Wars, Tuesday, November 12 at 7pm at the Cinema Theater, on the corner of Goodman St and Clinton Avenue. The film will be followed by a conversation with Director Rick Rowley. This is a groundbreaking film which premiered at Sundance this year, received the award for best cinematography and was featured on Democracy Now! More about the film here.

my review:

i saw “dirty wars” this week at the cinema theater here in rochester. the film is based on jeremy scahill’s investigative work as a journalist. i have been aware of the quality and integrity of his reporting for many years and the film does justice to it. the cinematography is superb and so is the tight, almost breathless editing of the film – no wonder it was a favorite at sundance. i knew many of the events covered by the film: the night raid and killings in gardez (afghanistan) where US soldiers dug out bullets from the bodies of pregnant women in order to create a counternarrative; the strikes in al-majalah (yemen) where 45 innocent people were killed, most of them women and children; the extrajudicial execution of anwar al-awlaki and later his 16 yr old son. however, there were a few things that jumped out at me. (1) JSOC (joint special operations command) which was responsible for gardez, and is known for its super secrecy and ability to fabricate and distort reality, was the exact same elite force that carried out osama bin laden’s murder. something to think about. (2) JSOC was described by an insider in the film as having become the paramilitary arm of the white house. when asked whether things had gotten better or worse under obama vs bush, he said that global operations under obama had become “harder, faster, quicker – with the full support of the white house.” america’s covert wars have expanded from 40 to 75 countries. (3) afghan civilians described american soldiers who had beards and wore local clothing. they said those were the worst US soldiers – more violent and cruel than anyone else. they called them the “american taliban.” we see pictures of them in the film. so funny that when i was in islamabad a week or so ago, many people told me about americans living in the tribal areas in the north who had beards, looked like pashtuns, and stirred up trouble in that part of the country. i didn’t pay much attention until this. (4) i loved how jeremy concluded the film by saying that the war on terror has become a self-fulfilling prophesy. that’s my take exactly. these secretive, illegal and morally repugnant covert wars r preparing the ground for endless backlash and destroying entire countries as they become engulfed in increasing violence. american citizens are not immune to these nefarious operations – the president has carte blanche to kill anyone of us, whenever he likes.

eschatology and hospitality: an interfaith conversation

oct 19, 2013: presented a paper with my friend Rachel McGuire at the new creation conference at roberts wesleyan college today. the topic of our presentation was “eschatology and hospitality: an interfaith conversation.” we talked about hospitality as an equalizer of power – a way to restructure society. rachel spoke about prophets such as jesus and malcolm x who shake up oppressive power imbalances and decolonize our minds. i talked about amartya sen’s book “identity and violence: the illusion of destiny” and discussed complex, multi-faceted identities within each individual as opposed to cardboard stereotypes which pit unchanging, incompatible “cultures” against one another. we quoted jacques derrida, the letter to the hebrews, jesus, muhammad asad, and the andalusian sufi and poet ibn arabi. ours was the only interfaith presentation, presented by two people instead of one. it was academic but forcefully connected to our present reality. the response was brilliant. instead of one tentative question we got an array of questions and comments which ended up becoming a discussion. yay!!!

my co-presenter rachel is on my left and my friend eileen who was there to cheer us on, is on my right.

rachel mcguire, mara ahmed and eileen borduin vanderzwan
rachel mcguire, mara ahmed and eileen borduin vanderzwan

Flying Paper: A Documentary Film

upstate new york, check out this terrific film in utica tomorrow!

Roger Hill: Please join us at the Utica area premier of the new film Flying Paper, the uplifting story of resilient Palestinian youth living in the Gaza Strip on a quest to shatter the Guinness World Record for the most kites ever flown. This feature-length documentary film is directed by Nitin Sawhney and Roger Hill and co-produced with a team of young filmmakers in Gaza. Flying Paper will be showing at the UN Spoken Human Rights Film Festival in Utica on Saturday Oct. 19th at 4 pm at the Uptown Theater in Utica. More here.

dinner guests from palestine

had the pleasure of hosting 5 palestinian academics for dinner at our house last night. they are guests of the dept of state’s intl visitor leadership program and they’re all from the west bank. we had v interesting discussions about american perceptions vs palestinian reality. they were happy to learn about the witness palestine film festival and had much to say about the films we selected. we had home cooked aloo keema, daal and bhindi. sufian, who is a linguist, told me about the roots of urdu and other languages from the indian subcontinent. “see u in palestine” they said, as we said goodbye. from left: ekrema, sufian, mahmoud, myself, lourdes and luna.

mara ahmed with dept of state's intl visitor leadership program guests from the west bank.
mara ahmed with dept of state’s intl visitor leadership program guests from the west bank.

Fringe Fest 2013 Reviews: Garth Fagan Dance

sept 29, 2013: went to see garth fagan yesterday, and loved it! his choreography is athletic, muscular and incredibly precise. the stop-start movements of the dancers require strength and perfect control. it reminded me of still frames in a film, which capture motion when played fast enough but which can express themselves as a series of vivid images when slowed down considerably. fagan dancers can slow down, so that every muscle in their bodies is taut, flexed, throbbing yet fully disciplined. no wonder then that the show opened with “prelude: discipline is freedom.” this was followed by “no evidence of failure” which fagan explained was inspired by his mother and other women in his family who were strong, can-do, multifaceted women. i also loved “gin” which is choreographed by norwood pennewell and based on the separation and transformation that occurs in cotton ginning. fantastic music by aphex twin, yo-yo ma and coleridge-taylor perkinson. finally, we were treated to excerpts from fagan’s lighthouse/lightening rod which is choreographed to original music by wynton marsalis. what a blessing that garth fagan’s dance studio is based here in rochester. the mad love from the audience was pretty obvious. more here.

sept 27, 2013

what a great day! lunch with a close friend at benucci’s, followed by a multi-media dance performance which was part of the fringe festival, followed by dinner at jines with my husband and daughter. didn’t get any artwork done but what a terrific finish to the week!

mara and shahida
mara and shahida

jonathan kuttab in rochester

jonathan kuttab, who is a leading human rights attorney and peace activist in israel/palestine and the co-founder of the palestinian center for the study of non-violence and the mandela institute for political prisoners, was here in rochester on sept 9-10 as a panelist for the witness palestine film series. in this picture, he is the man on my right. he talked about “thinking outside the box” and focusing on palestinian human rights issues rather than being embroiled in the useless and palsied rhetoric of “two state vs one state.” it’s interesting that ever since we had this conversation, the same idea has been echoed in both alternative and mainstream media. noam sheizaf wrote about it in +972 (“two state vs one state debate is a waste of time, political energy”) and yousef munayyer just published “thinking outside the two-state box” in the new yorker. he writes:

While the two-state solution might provide an answer to Israel’s identity crisis, it does little in terms of solving both the humanitarian and human-rights crisis facing Palestinians. In the best-case scenario, a Palestinian state would be demilitarized and have not a semblance of the sovereignty afforded to every other state in the international system. It would, more or less, be under glorified occupation. Palestinian refugees would not be permitted to return to their homes. The status of Jerusalem, having become so marred by Israeli settlement-building, would likely be indivisible and largely off limits to the Palestinian statelet.

Endlessly pursuing a two-state solution that is condemned to failure, simply out of a reluctance to challenge the core problem Zionism has created, leaves Palestinians subjugated and waiting. They have already been waiting for far too long, and we owe them more than just robotically returning to the two-state framework every time it fails.

[…] Recognizing that we have a “one-state problem” is the key to peace. The first step is ending discrimination in the law based on ethnicity or religion throughout the entirety of the territory. Palestinians must be part of shaping any future state they will live in, and they can do so only on equal footing with their Jewish counterparts before the law, not under military occupation. For the next steps, numerous historic examples of multi-ethnic democracies exist, including those that made transitions from parallel situations. South Africa is one. It is important to note that while each case is different, and no analogy is perfect, lessons learned from those experiences and examples can inform the path forward for Israelis and Palestinians, even as they simultaneously take into consideration the uniqueness of this case.

mara ahmed, jonathan kuttab and witness palestine friends at the basin bean in pittsford, ny.
mara ahmed, jonathan kuttab and witness palestine friends at the basin bean in pittsford, ny.

African-American Musicians, More Than Just Jazz

experienced wonderful chamber music today – it was part of the gateways music festival which is a collaboration with the eastman school of music, houses of worship and the rochester community. the festival celebrates the participation and contributions of classically-trained musicians of african descent. today’s performances took place at the mt olivet baptist church on adam st. there’s lots more to come. check it out here. thx to my friend rachel for posting about the festival on fb!

Mondays at Racine at the Little Theatre

On August 11, 2013, the AAVia Foundation for the Health of Bolivian Children sponsored a visit by documentary filmmaker, and my friend Timothy Malia’s high school buddy, Cynthia Wade for a screening of her Oscar-nominated 2012 film, MONDAYS AT RACINE. Following the film there was a panel discussion related to issues raised by the film: cancer, beauty and self-perception. What I liked was the film’s quietness – it let the women (struggling with cancer) articulate their own stories, in their own particular way. So empowering.

The Honeymoon Suite

i am one of the judges at the rochester teen film festival and this year there was a film we just couldn’t agree on. it was interesting that the reaction to it was mostly split along gender lines – the men loved it and the women felt extremely disturbed by it. it’s called “the honeymoon suite.” the director is a high school senior.

the men totally loved the film. as soon as the screening was over they expressed their admiration for the writing, the editing, the acting, the twists and turns in the story. after 10-15 minutes of a discussion about the film’s maturity, i asked the question: wait a minute, was that a rape drug? i was told, yes, it was. it was incredible to me that a film about something as violent as rape was treated with such nonchalance. when the female judges expressed their disgust, they were told that the film had a positive resolution because the kid realizes how stupid he was being.

by creating nebulous boundaries between friendship, love and rape, we are confusing the very definition of rape – the forceful, violent penetration of another human being’s mind and body. the sweet, hand-holding romanticism of the resolution is problematic because the kid wasn’t just being “stupid”, he had deliberately drugged another human being in order to rape her, i.e. commit a terrible crime.

the complete passivity of the woman is disturbing. it’s the man’s decision to rape or not to rape. it all comes down to his conscience, or mood. i was told that we were experiencing the film from the man’s perspective. that’s exactly the problem with patriarchy: we’re supposed to accept that it’s a man’s world and anyone who disagrees with that reality is being a hysterical bore.

i was told: u’ll just have to get beyond ur feelings on this and recognize that it’s a good film. so interesting that such a remark was not made about any of the other films, even tho i had strong opinions about all of them. why is it that when it’s a feminist issue, a woman’s reaction is automatically classified as “emotional”?

if it were a man being drugged and potentially raped, perhaps the horror of rape would become real for other men. when it’s a woman, they simply see it as a date that could’ve gone wrong but had a “positive” outcome.

it seems to me that white men have a huge mental block when it comes to women’s issues, especially rape, this in spite of the propaganda about the misogynistic barbarism of the brown/black man. an eye opening experience.