[Reader-list] kaafila (liquid europe and solid sea revisited)

[paul keller]

dear all,
thought this little film review that i have written for my blog might  
be of intrest to this list. it dels with the recently released movie  
'kaafila' that among much other nonsense contains a scene that is  
'inspired' by the 'malta boat tragedy' that took place on december  
26th 1996. (also see the 2002 nettime 'liquid europe and solid sea'  
posting by multiplicity, which refers to the the same incident as  
'the ghost ship': http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime- 
l-0209/msg00054.html).
/paul

> so over the last three weeks i have been watching 'kaafila' which  
> bills itself as a movie based on the 'global issue of illegal  
> migration'. it took me 3 weeks to watch because (a) it is a  
> Bollywood movie (and thus runs for three plus hours) and (b)  
> because it is so incredibly bad that i could not muster the courage  
> to watch bits that were longer than 15 minutes. matter of fact it  
> is so bad that that the songs (those ridiculous dancing/singing  
> scenes that are required to interrupt Bollywood productions every  
> so often) were more bearable than the 'story' itself.
>
> So why did i buy it in the first place then? Kaafila contains a  
> scene that depicts what has become to be known as the 'malta boat  
> tragedy': the sinking - off the coast of the sicilian town of  
> Portapalo on december 26th 1996 - of a ship carrying more than 300  
> south-east asian migrants bound for italy. (see: http:// 
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portopalo_di_Capo_Passero) more than 280  
> migrants lost their lives in this disaster (the worst post WWII  
> maritime accident in the Mediterranean) and i was curious how this  
> would be portrayed in a feature film made in one of the countries  
> where a large part of the victims was hailing from. plus some of  
> the reviews actually did sound quite intriguing:
>
>> ... in their effort to forge ahead closer to their dream, the  
>> innocent dozen finds itself trapped sometimes by the Russian mafia  
>> involved in the plutonium smuggling racket and sometimes by the  
>> militancy on the Afghan borders. Here they meet an Afghani girl...  
>> from: http://www.movietalkies.com/movies/index.asp?MovieId=18670
>
> now as i said the movie is exceptionally bad. the story is erratic  
> at best, the characters depicted are extremely unrealistic  
> (although the opening credits of the film actually try to make a  
> somewhat realistic introduction into the migrants' motives for  
> seeking their luck elsewhere) and, on top of this, the trajectory  
> of the journey defies any logic at all:
>
> from India our group of migrants is first flown to Moscow where  
> they are held captive by a Pakistani trafficker for 5 months. he  
> finally takes them across the border to Ukraine (shooting one of  
> them on the way) but decides to take them back to Russia after one  
> of them lights a fire at night which, according to the trafficker,  
> will alert the border guards and guarantee the group's arrest.
>
> on the way back another of the migrants freezes to death under fake  
> styrofoam snow while hiding from a helicopter. back in Russia the  
> group heads towards the Black sea coast where they board a ship  
> that is supposed to take them to Malta. in real life this would  
> mean crossing the Black sea, sailing through the Bosporus, crossing  
> the Aegean sea, sailing around Apulia to continue to Malta (or to  
> be more exact Sicily where the real 'malta boat tragedy' took  
> place). in Kaalifa our heroes board the boat and immediately burst  
> into another dancing scene to the films theme song 'Chala Kaafila',  
> a strange mix between eurotrash and hindi film music:
>
>> Chala Kaafila is a outcome of a confused state of mind. With music  
>> lingering somewhere between the genres of folk and club mix, Chala  
>> Kaafila boasts of a strong blend of North Indian music with  
>> unnecessary westernized musical goof ups. [from: RS Bollywood  
>> Online music reviews http://www.radiosargam.com/films/archives/ 
>> 5942/music-review-kaafila-2007.htm]
>
> The song opens with the singer (the only female on board who  
> somehow disappears before the ship goes down) shouting 'i don't  
> want to wait no more let's bring the house down' over extremely  
> annoying house beats. this is followed by mad dancing of the  
> assembled 300 migrants on the deck of the doomed ship and once the  
> song ends the ship's passengers become aware of a giant wave  
> (clearly inspired by the 2004 asian tsunami, which coincidentally  
> also happened on a 26th of December) slowly approaching and jump  
> ship in fear.
>
> for some reason (supposedly because they cling to pieces of wood  
> taken from the ship before jumping into the sea) our 10 remaining  
> heroes are the only ones to survive and wash up on a beach (which  
> turns out to be the Russian Black sea coast again). here our heroes  
> meet the wife of an mad Indian nuclear engineer who is selling  
> liquid plutonium to the Taleban (with the help of the Russian  
> mafia). for rather unclear reasons  the wife is shot dead by the  
> Mafia and in this moment, out of nowhere, the above-mentioned  
> Afghani girl appears, secures the liquid plutonium, a bag of giant  
> diamonds and offers our heros a lift to Kazaksthan.
>
> from here on the 'innocent dozen' comes under the protection of a  
> dubious pakistani I.S.I agent who teams up with the Afghani girl to  
> fend off waves of waves of russian mafia killers and taleban  
> fighters attempting to kill our heros while they cross Tadzhikistan  
> and Afghanistan heading towards Pakistan (along the way various  
> attempts to put them on a plane to Europe fail). En route 4 more of  
> them are being killed despite the incredible marksmanship of the  
> Pakistani agent and the Afghani girl, who kill dozens after dozens  
> of the attackers.
>
> Finally, in Pakistan the I.S.I agent somehow reconciles with his  
> superiors (in one scene he seems to be talking to Pervez Musharraf  
> himself) who had been pissed off with him for another unclear  
> reason (there are hints that he was suspected to be involved in  
> some Abdul Qadeer Khan style nuclear proliferation operation  
> himself) and arranges for our heroes' safe passage across the  
> border to India. in the final scene the 6 remaining migrants plus  
> the Afghani girl can be seen walking to back towards an imagined  
> India, now being completely cured of their initial desire to leave  
> mother India and find their luck in England...