[Reader-list] 'Pro-war film spotted on Croisette'

[shivam]

Pro-war film spotted on Croisette

Charlotte Higgins
Saturday May 14, 2005
The Guardian
http://film.guardian.co.uk/cannes2005/story/0,15927,1483884,00.html

George Bush and Tony Blair will whoop for joy. A strongly pro-war film
has been premiered at the Cannes film festival - and it comes from
Iraq.

The main part of Hiner Saleem's Kilomètre Zéro, premiered in
competition for the Palme D'Or, is set in 1988 against the backdrop of
the deaths of thousands of Iraqi Kurds at the hands of Saddam's
cousin, "Chemical" Ali Hassan al-Majid.

It is framed by scenes of the main characters, now exiled in France,
rejoicing at the fall of Baghdad in 2003.

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"I am against war of any kind," Saleem said. "But we didn't have the
luxury to say, 'For the time being, we will be exterminated'.

"If you say that the US is an imperialist country, then you are right.
Had Sweden, Liechtenstein, France, come, it would have been wonderful.
But they gave the US free rein; I am extremely pleased."

The scene of jubilation in the final moments of the film was "still
valid. I would like to say I am optimistic, he said.

"The problem with Iraq is that it was not born of the will of a single
people, but because Churchill wanted it. Power went to the people who
had the most Kalashnikovs."

The story is set during the Iran-Iraq war. Ako, an Iraqi Kurd, goes
out one morning in his pyjamas to buy bread. He is arrested by the
Iraqi military and sent to fight on the dusty, brutal Iranian front in
Basra.

One day he is ordered to accompany the body of a dead soldier as it is
returned to the family. So he and an Iraqi Arab driver set off
together across the unremitting landscape.

The film, partly funded by the Kurdistan regional government and
partly from France, reads as a strong political statement of Kurdish
identity.

Some also see it as anti-Arab, accusing it of presenting the driver as
dimwitted and dominated by naive religious feeling.

Saleem responded: "The Arabs don't know the Kurds well. They forced us
to study Arab history and culture. But they know nothing of our
history, culture, sensibilities, dreams. An effort must be made by
them to understand us."

He denied that the film was overtly political in its message: "You
don't produce a film to draw people's attention to politics. I wanted
to show the hills of Kurdistan, the faces of the people. I don't think
I have produced a military or political film.

"It is not an ideological film. It doesn't say we are the most
wonderful people on earth ... but I am thrilled people will be able to
discover, to drive through Kurdistan for an hour and a half in this
film."

Sami Shorashi, the Kurdistan regional government's culture minister,
said: "This is a major step forward for the Kurdish people ... I see
it as a work of art that well portrays the misfortune of the Kurdish
people caused by the regime of Saddam Hussein."

Saleem, who has lived in France since the early 1980s and whose
previous work includes Vodka Lemon, said the film was based on real
events that happened to his brother.

The making of the film, he said, presented enormous practical
difficulties. Because of the lack of indigenous film culture ("except
for a few propaganda films"), technicians, crew and equipment had to
be brought from France.

"It was a nightmare to get the cameras and crew to Kurdistan and even
harder to get them back. We seriously thought of contacting the
smugglers on the borders to help."

-- 
www.shivamvij.com

"We are the universe creating from within its own pure potentiality
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built-in safety mechanism of creating from the non-attachment of the
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what cosmic intelligence needs to manifest." - Deepak Chopra :)