Category: reviews

in this world

recently, i made my students watch michael winterbottom’s ‘in this world’ a hands-on, many times unscripted, documentary-style film that follows the arduous (and ultimately tragic) journey of two young men (jamal is only 15) who risk everything and travel from a refugee camp in pakistan to iran, to turkey, to trieste in italy to london. some parts of their journey are more harrowing than others, but one that’s particularly unforgettable is the long voyage on board a ship (from turkey to italy) during which they are locked along with others in a dark, suffocating, metallic container. most don’t make it out alive. 

we discussed the film in class and some of my students made such brilliant comments i have to share.

they were surprised by the corruption of the bureaucracy (officials had to be bribed at every checkpoint), the cultural and linguistic mosaic they didn’t expect (sometimes w/i the same country), and the rationing of food in refugee camps (they said they felt nauseated by comparing it to how much food is wasted here in the US). they couldn’t believe that jamal had such a good head on his shoulders at such a young age, yet they laughed at his jokes and his desire for the largest scoop of ice-cream – reminders that he was just a child after all. they talked about how billions are spent on war against some of the most vulnerable people and they also connected the fate of the two boys they got to know in the film to 9/11 and america’s response to it.

they made some out-of-the box connections, e.g. to the underground railroad – how people have always taken risks, journeyed, and secretly crossed borders to escape oppression and make better, safer lives for themselves and their families. they noticed how jamal and enayat were welcomed by kurdish villagers who helped them get to turkey, and thought about the generosity of a people who don’t have sovereignty themselves, but will do everything they can to get someone else ‘home.’ 

finally, they shared how refugees and immigrants (‘migrants’) are mostly invisibilized and how seeing them up close thru the film moved them in unexpected ways. we also read warsan shire’s poem ‘home’ and fady joudah’s ‘mimesis.’ rather than ask them to write an analytical essay on the film, which is what we usually do, i asked them to write about one leg of jamal’s journey in the first person, to tell me his thoughts and feelings but also details related to the situation he is caught in. i just read some of their responses and i’m blown away. i feel like we’ve hooked into something here. something profound.

Our own remarkable histories

I remember when Laila Lalami came to Rochester many years ago to read from her 2005 book, ‘Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits’. I’d been a fan of her writing since her moorishgirl.com days and so I went. During the Q&A someone asked her a question about how feminism evolved in North Africa by trying to understand its ties to western feminism, because how else would Moroccan women know about their rights? Laila was visibly annoyed and had to take a sip of water before she responded. I never forgot that question. This ridiculous notion that feminism is a western idea.i’m reading Urdu poet and writer Fahmida Riaz’s book, ‘Four Walls and a Black Veil,’ and in the foreword Aamir Hussein talks about how “poems such as ‘The Laughter of a Woman’ and ‘She is a Woman Impure’ celebrate femininity in ways that French feminist theorists such as Julia Kristeva, Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray were to do. Just as Ismat Chughtai prefigured by several years Simone de Beauvoir’s theoretical configurations in ‘The Second Sex,’ so too Fahmida wrote fearlessly about blood, milk and the waters of birth before her western contemporaries began to formulate their theories of women’s writing as grounded in bodily experience, and most certainly before she could have been exposed to their writings.”I

I read Chughtai’s seminal, semi-autobiographical Terhi Lakeer (The Crooked Line) in English, a translation by Tahira Naqvi, some years ago and was blown away by its power. In her foreword to the English translation, Naqvi writes, “it was Ismat Chughtai who, fearlessly and without reserve, initiated the practice of looking at women’s lives from a psychological standpoint. This brings me to the interesting parallels that one can see between ‘The First Phase’ in The Crooked Line and the section titled ‘The Formative Years: Childhood’ in The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir’s pioneering work on female sexuality which appeared in 1949, four years after Chughtai’s novel. As a matter of fact, there are certain portions in Chughtai’s novel that seem to be fictionalised prefigurations of Beauvoir’s description and analysis of childhood playacting and fantasy; it seems as if Chughtai and Beauvoir were drawing on a common source. In both works, feminine experience is explored from childhood through puberty and adolescence to womanhood, these being the stages in the development of a sense of self that finally results in an acceptance of sexual impulses and subsequently leads to the awareness of a sexual identity.”

And of course, we can go back to ‘Sultana’s Dream’ a feminist utopia imagined and articulated by Rokeya Hossain, a writer and social reformer from Bengal.

Rokeya Hossain was born in 1880, Ismat Chughtai in 1915, and Fahmida Riaz in 1946. All three women were Muslim and Brown (South Asian). This is just a small bit of history (literature), so much more can be found in the non-white, non-western world. And confining ourselves to what’s written only, is egregiously short-sighted – so much is passed down through stories and diverse oral traditions.

I hope that my daughter and all the brilliant young women I consider to be my daughters, sisters and friends, will read these women and learn their own remarkable histories.

gentleman jack

i’m loving ‘gentleman jack,’ a show based on the diaries of ’19th century landowner anne lister who returns to her home to transform its fate – and with plans to marry a woman.’ written by the brilliant sally wainwright, the main character is played with dynamism and sensitivity by suranne jones who injects her own spunk into the entire project. still left thinking why LGBT actors don’t get cast in LGBT roles. such roles are few and far between, and i’m sure LGBT actors do exist.

reminds me of how i saw The Orphan of Zhao by the royal shakespeare company, when i took a class in theater. all the main characters were played by white actors. when asian actors complained, they were told that the casting was based on merit, to which an asian actor remarked how sad it was that asian actors were not even good enough to play themselves.

Lessons of the Hour: a review

My review of Lessons of the Hour, a video installation by British artist Isaac Julien, inspired by the life of Frederick Douglass, on view at the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester until May 12th.

‘Although I agree that photographs of brutalized bodies, especially when they belong to oppressed communities, dehumanize and normalize further violence, prioritizing sanitized visuals over rougher, less agreeable sounds and images can also be tricky. It takes away a lot of the discomfort that real talk might induce in an audience. It makes art easier to digest, but one has to question its message, its gloss, its commercial invincibility.’ More here.

my review: capernaum

‘capernaum’ is a hectic, brutal, relentless journey into the slums of beirut and the lives of its inhabitants. it reminded me of ‘dirty pretty things,’ a film about the underground world of illegal immigration, set in london, in which chiwetel ejiofor’s performance blew me away. ‘capernaum’ too has its share of stunning performances, especially by children including the film’s remarkable protagonist zain al rafeea, a syrian refugee, and boluwatife treasure bankole who delivers the most unbelievable performance by a toddler in film, ever. shot with documentary style realism, the film addresses poverty and violence head-on, thru the lens of those who are the most vulnerable.

however, the final message of the film is unsettling. many times, in films that expose the pathos of poverty, there’s a speech at the end, something to leave the viewers with, a resolution of the tragedy they just witnessed. we saw ken loach’s ‘i, daniel blake’ recently and he follows the same convention. but whereas loach’s films humanize the poor and are strongly critical of the systems that produce and sustain poverty, nadine labaki’s ‘capernaum’ ends with a patronizing scolding, a decree to the poor not to produce so many children.

although 12-year-old zain is a compelling character, his parents are shown as dickensian villains, selfish, heartless and irresponsibly fertile. rather than question the system that produces such people, labaki is satisfied with this skin-deep portrayal.

in interviews labaki has said that the film is universal and that it ends with a challenge to audiences to confront their complicity. yet the connections to imperial wars (the mass dislocation and humanitarian crises they produce) and their impact on neighboring countries in the middle east, already struggling with their economies, are missing from the film. that context would have been a brave, and much needed, addition.

Late Afternoon

we watched oscar-nominated, animated shorts last night and i fell in love with this animated film from ireland. the writer-director, louise bagnall, explains how she wanted to explore the different stages of a woman’s life and the idea that identity is so dependent on memories. it moved me to tears. i was able to find the entire 10 minutes-long animation on youtube. here it is.

my review: cold war

like dr zhivago, cold war too is a love story stretched to the limit by its when and where. but polish writer-director pawel pawlikowski can streamline drama with such beautiful precision, that we are left with a jewel. a perfect piece of visual music. i agree with reviewer a. a. dowd when he describes the film as “a haunted romantic epic in miniature, like a novel written with the careful, precise economy of a short story. tracking the ups and downs of a tumultuous love affair against seismic shifts in the cultural landscape, it condenses 15 years of plot and history—spread out across four countries situated on the fault line of the 20th century—into a spare, elegant 89 minutes.” his earlier film, ida is equally excellent.

discussion on the diversity advantage at the gandhi institute

solid discussion on the “diversity advantage” at the gandhi institute today. it took more than 6 months for me to put this community event together (it was free and open to the public), along with a preview on wxxi’s connections. getting the panel together and negotiating its constantly fluid, evolving make-up was challenging (thank u kristin for being such a trouper and jumping in – i owe u one), finding a venue that made sense, getting some money, bringing food, promoting on social media and otherwise, figuring out how all our disparate pieces would fit together, and then writing my presentation on the complex work of edouard glissant took time and energy. but hopefully, to the frequent question of “why do we need these discussions?” we could submit, “because we might learn something new, meet the other, hear from the other, and change the way we think and act?” possibly.

we learned about ecology and how diversity endows plant and animal systems with resilience. we also learned how some of those ecological principles and habitats can help us design better urban environments. we learned about ableism as a system of segregation and how more intelligent/inclusive design can create public spaces that enrich all of our lives. we learned about the beast of racism and how it disrupts and distorts our most intimate as well as collective experiences. finally, we talked about the work of an incredible martinique poet and philosopher who offers us a language to imagine a world different from ours. by using ideas such as creolization, archipelagic thinking, relation and opacity, glissant allows us to wrap our minds around what could be.

my film, A Thin Wall, tries to imagine a decolonized south asia, in which our common past and pressing present would allow us to break through the colonial framework we’ve been stuck in for the last 70 years. if only we could see through the thin wall that separates us, we would recognize some of our sameness. the last words in the film, which are echoed by my indian co-producer (i was born in pakistan, on the other side of the border) and friend Surbhi, are: “nothing happens, unless we dream it first.” dreams are important.

thx to my valiant co-panelists luticha doucette, mary scipioni and of course kristin hocker, to maria engels our host at the gandhi institute, and to all those who came and added their presence to our dreaming.

[photograph by andrew brady]

my review: lazzaro felice

watched “lazzaro felice” last night. a beautiful film that charms and surprises. lazzaro, the film’s main character, has the head of michelangelo’s “angel with a candlestick” and a guileless kindness that’s just as otherworldly. storytelling as magic, unmoored from constraints of time and space. on netflix.

Alan Scherstuhl: Alice Rohrwacher’s work unites a passionate interest in social realism, in the hardships faced by people on the streets and in the fields, with a daring refusal to be held by the rules of narrative realism.

roma by alfonso cuaron

roma by alfonso cuaron. based on intimate memories of his childhood, especially cleo, the family’s nanny and housekeeper, who’s played by the luminous yalitza aparicio, a non-actor. a breathtaking, expansive film, beautifully shot, with wonderful details. the house, stunning soundscape, and street scenes reminded me of lahore. no wonder i loved mexico city. with some heartbreaking, hard to watch moments and a script that’s always interesting, shifting, multivalent. no music at all. the best film i’ve seen this year. written, directed, shot, co-produced and edited by cuaron himself. if only we could all recreate our childhoods with such haunting eloquence. on netflix.


the romanoffs in mexico

“panorama” the new episode of the romanoffs is a love letter to mexico city. the zócalo, diego rivera’s mural at the palacio nacional, teotihuacan, the unending layers of history, archeology, and culture. reminded me of our unforgettable time there, 3 years ago. loved the last scene. with a song by regina spektor.

palacio nacional, 2015

teotihuacan, 2015