Filmmaking for peace...

[redrice]

yes, but the censorship has nothing to do with god and irrationality (see your previous post), and everything to do with an apparatus of government inherited from the colonial period, and techniques of civilian repression fomented and supported by the KGB and the CIA as they fought their proxy wars.

name me a state anywhere which gives free air time to people who say: the state should be overthrown.

most states exist on a constant war footing towards their own people, who are generally not very happy to be governed. the exception to this is the west, where we are so used to not taking decisions for ourselves, we presume to call ourselves a democracy.

if you think censorship doesn't exist in the UK, then you should read the latest prevention of terrorism act.

just some more ideas for that film alex is going to make...:-)

peter

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[Dominic3]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by redrice:
[B]yes, but the censorship has nothing to do with god and irrationality"

You think so Peter - this is a quote from the Koran:
"fight and slay the Pagans wherever you find them . . . those who reject our signs we shall soon cast into the fire . . . those who disbelieve, garments of fire will be cut out for them; boiling fluid will be poured down on their heads . . . as to the deviators, they are the fuel of hell". The Koran

Redrice said,"name me a state anywhere which gives free air time to people who say: the state should be overthrown".

I don't know what you mean by "free air time", however in America and Britain you are free to say and publish what ever you like. Our Universities are full of professors of philosophy who advocate such repressive systems as Marxism and yet they are not imprisoned, they are entitled to their view. We have numerous political organizations, even racist groups,however wicked, that are entitled to their own free speach.

Redrice said,"if you think censorship doesn't exist in the UK, then you should read the latest prevention of terrorism act".

The act was established to prevent those who believe it is morally acceptable to INITIATE the use of force against innocent people - what ever the motive. In a free society it is the purpose of government to protect the right to life of a country's citizens by placing the use of retaliatory force under objective control.

I agree, Britain is not quite as "free" as I would like. Britain's current Government under Blair has recently agreed,(amongst other things), to a European Union wide telephone tapping/email monitoring policy in line with the new direction Britain is heading with the EU. I would much prefer to live in the USA again.




[This message has been edited by Dominic3 (edited October 12, 2001).]

[redrice]

dominic: thank you for the quote from the koran, describing so many familiar scenes from hiroshima, vietnam, the gulf war, etc.

there are also some pretty unpleasant passages in the films of arnold schwarzenegger: i wonder what arabs think of us when they see them? and remember, in the 'free world', going to the cinema isn't a religious duty for which you can be publicly whipped if you fail to turn up: it's what we do for 'entertainment'...

of course, the koran can be used to justify almost anything, rather like the bible, das kapital or the declaration of independence. marx would have been horrified by stalin, as christ would have been by george bush sr and jr. even people with the most beautifully-phrased values are capable of mass murder. but my point was that, in the present case, the limits on freedom of expression in most so-called 'muslim' countries are there because their ruling elites are corrupt westernised profiteers who want to keep the people down, not because they are religious bigots.

if everything was really as black and white as you say, how do you explain that the only country in the middle east which has made any progress towards democracy and pluralism over the last 10 years is iran? while all the arab/islamic countries which receive substantial US military and development aid remain police states where the president is elected with 98% of the vote?

it is probably not a coincidence that iran is also the only country in the region to have produced an entire new generation of film makers since the 1980s who are making serious movies, not just ideological/commercial trash. they are also making films which as well as being independent in thought and aesthetics, are precisely the kind of thing a US or European director would find it nigh on impossible to finance.

the egyptian cinema, meanwhile, has been completely corrupted by oil money since it was taken over by gulf financiers at around the same time. and as for syria...

but i digress:

in the middle ages, we used christianity as a pretext to make war on others. now we do it in the name of human rights. the rhetoric has changed, but the procedure remains the same.

we've already killed over a million people, the vast majority of them innocent, defending the little tin-pot caudillos of kuwait. meanwhile, saddam hussein is still in power, and the marsh arabs - one of te oldest civilisations in the world, who you may remember we were meant to be protecting from the air - have been exterminated and their homelands completely drained. there are a lot of people who hold all of that against us. i think that's quite comprehensible. but we still seem to think that as long as we talk about 'freedom' while we drop the bombs, everyone will love us and want to be like us. and it's that conviction - that our civilisation is so inevitably, irreversibly, morally superior to all others, that we can (literally) get away with murder - that is going to be our downfall.

'religion' is not the only religion.

peter

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[eddie]

The Apple

is an Iranian film, made by a 17 year old girl on Video, 16mm and probably super8 too.
Its brilliant too. Came out about a year ago.

Has nothing to do with war, but IS about a uneducated, innocent, confused and deeply religious man who quotes the Koran to explain every aspect of his life.
He trusts it implicitly and yet has a terrible life and he mistreats his daughters by locking them up. He rarely leaves his home, and lives in almost squallor. He doesnt understand that what he does is wrong, and it IS wrong to lock up 2 young girls. (its a documentary by the way.)


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[redrice]

also, the films of abbas kiarostami, especially his early work, when he was working as a film maker in the tehran education institute, making films with young children.

but there are also the films of mohsen makhmalbouf, his daughter samira, jafar panahi, and the documentaries of ebrahim moktari. and these people have many students who are just beginning to make features now.

it's an amazing renaissance. there's nothing like it at all anywhere in the arab world. in fact, there's nothing like it in europe either.

peter

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[crimsonson]

MATTIAS I AGREE WITH 100%

Dominic3 - last I checked America was founded on slavery, has not paid its 40acre and a mule, alost succesfuly vanished hundreds of different aborigines in the name of 'Manifest Destiny,' blacklisted countless intellectuals and thinkers for expressing their political views, drags a black man's body and can be found innocent of any crimes, supports countless dictators, sells drugs to support foreign wars, did not pay its UN fees (half a billion dollars) until the September attack in order to gather international support for its new war, assasinates its own presidents, fought in a war in order to protect against the spread of 'communism' or should i say to guarantee that Godfather II is available in Southeast Asia, trained the many of the Talibans and other Muslim radicals, gives R rating for getting your head blown off but XXX for a blow job, blah, blah, blah...

BUT I ALSO know

America is first in using its force to protect small countries, opens its borders to immigrants, has a flourishing art culture, elects woman to office, has vertical mobility in the socio-economic ladder, invented the internet, invented 'movies,' balh, blah, blah


Nothing is BLACK and WHITE!! NOthing.

I enjoy my freedom and values but not in the name of turning a blind eye to the past, present and future.


BTW -



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[Alex]

I was gone all day, did I miss anything?

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Alex

[Dominic3]

Peter,

[QUOTE]Originally posted by redrice:
"if everything was really as black and white as you say, how do you explain that the only country in the middle east which has made any progress towards democracy and pluralism over the last 10 years is iran?"

In May of this year, in Teheran,Iran, an amalgam of the world's foremost terrorist groups met (under the supervision of the government of Iran) and resolved to unite against America, declaring a ?holy war? against America, Israel and western values. The same type of irrefutable evidence exists against Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan and the PLO.

I would not describe this as "progress".

I do accept however, that there are people in Iran who do not support such action and who would love the freedom to make independent films.



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[redrice]

dominic:

i think it's very nice of these terrorist groups to tell us that they are declaring a holy war against the US, then do so little for so long.

we - i.e. the US and its poodle, my country, the UK - led the people of irak to believe that we were going to set them free of saddam - the kurds rose up, and were slaughtered, on that understanding, while we stood by and watched. then we proceeded to massacre the civilian population of the country on the pretext that this was the only way of preventing saddam from rearming: having bombed their civil infrastructure to pieces, we proceeded to forbid them to import such 'dangerous' military supplies as water purification equipment.

i guess it all depends on how you like your mass murderers: with hypocrisy, or without.

apparently, tho, someone did make a movie about this. by john gianvito:
http://www.geraldpeary.com/festivals/taos_2001.html

peter

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[Matt Pacini]

Well, first of all America was not "founded" on slavery.
Just because something happened, does not mean it is the absolute "founding" of the country. This comes from the false ideas that:
1. All white people 150 years ago were rich enough to have slaves.
2. That everything that private citizens of a country do, is somehow considered to be "official government policy", simply because the government went a certain amount of time without stopping it.
(Remember, the US governemnt DID stop it. Ever heard of the Civil War?)

And that 40 acres and a mule was NEVER some official US government policy, and even if it were, how much would that be worth now, after having been split up amongst the countless offspring of those people alive then?
(They would have like 3 square inches, and a hoof).

It's ridiculous to take anything that private citizens have ever done, and then define the country by that.
Having said that, there are many things the US has done in the past, as official policy, that are horrible... just like every other country on earth.
The world is a cruel place, and we have to spread love around, but also not let someone brutally kill and maim our loved ones!

By the way, I don't think the Afgan's are going to have much use for films, given the fact that many of them don't even have food, or electricity, for that matter.
So I admire your positive outlook, but it's just not going to do anything in this circumstance.
Mainly, because the US already exports more films around the world than anyone. Did that stop any of this insanity?
Don't think so...
And I'm sorry Alex, but I just don't see how the fact that most Americans are perhaps a little too materialistic, makes it somehow OK for someone to mass-murder our innocent citizens.
That's just total B.S., especially since THEY aren't even saying that's the reason. I think that THEY probably know why they're doing it.
You lefties are just using this as a convenient excuse (as usual) to blame the US for anything that is wrong anywhere, even though it's totally out of context with the real reasons for any of this.
Whatever our faults, we feed more people and give more money, and provide more jobs to people than any nation in history.
And yes we use our "evil" military to do "terrible, imperialistic" things, like free Europe from Nazi takover, etc.

Matt Pacini


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