Arusha hip hop producer Daudi Bakari hypes up the crowd at a Saving Underground Artists (S.U.A.) event. Credit: Loic Nogues/IPS

By Adam Bemma
ARUSHA, Tanzania, Jun 18 2014 (IPS)

Inside a dark, cramped, music studio on Arusha’s hillside slum of Kijenge Juu, a thumping hip hop beat rattles the window-less room.
A soft-spoken 26-year-old who goes by the name Raf MC steps up to the microphone. He glances down at a piece of paper in his hand. Taking a deep breath, he starts to deliver rhymes in Swahili, the unifying language of Tanzania’s 47 million people: “Hip hop game sio kama tu ma game mengine [The hip hop game is not like any other game]…”

Three other Arusha MCs stand behind the microphones: Pacha the Great, 21, Sight Mo’, 28, and Motra the Future, 20. Together they call themselves KINGS, which stands for Kijenge, Ngalimi and Sekei, three of the city’s most notorious slums.“Hip hop in Arusha has never just been about songs and beats. It’s always been about substance. It’s because of hip hop music that a lot of us avoided becoming criminals.” -- former X Plastaz member, Mohamed Yunus Rafiq

“We all grew up and live here,” Raf MC tells IPS. “I’m from Sekei, Motra is from Kijenge, Pacha and Sight Mo’ are from Ngalimi.”

KINGS are a hip hop group brought up in the nurturing environment of northern Tanzania’s underground hip hop scene. Acheni Blah Blah is the first single released by them and the group is expecting to release an album later this year.

Daudi Bakari is a music producer at Watengwa Records based in Arusha. He’s also the co-founder of Saving Underground Artists, known locally as S.U.A. For almost two years, Bakari, 25, and his colleague Biggie Shirima, 25, have hosted hip hop shows featuring aspiring artists.

“Arusha is known as a tourist city in Tanzania located near most of the countries national parks and major attractions,” Bakari tells IPS. “What people don’t know is there’s an emerging hip hop movement here that dates back to the late 1990s.”

A few years ago, Tanzanians started to fear Arusha’s hip hop scene was disappearing as more young people began turning to jobs in the burgeoning tourism industry, leaving music behind because of the lack of opportunity.

“There were some tough times that we faced trying to promote local hip hop shows,” Bakari says. “People stopped buying records and turning up to performances.”

Bakari and Shirima stepped up to the challenge and started a showcase for Tanzania’s hip hop talent. A few times so far this year, music fans have gathered outside of Watengwa recording studios in Kijenge Juu. Graffiti covers the doors and walls. Over the stage area, the words “Read more, learn more, change” are inscribed alongside a young person holding a book.

Recently, there’s been a resurgence of hip hop fans attending S.U.A. events, assures Bakari.

But S.U.A. isn’t only an event. It also acts as a support network for up-and-coming artists like KINGS. Bakari and Shirima host workshops the week before every show to select which artists get to perform.

“We always choose those eager to learn about the history of hip hop and how it took shape in Tanzania,” Shirima says. “That’s how we found KINGS. Now their music is playing on radio stations across the country.”

Swahili hip hop, still referred to as Bongo Flava, has changed dramatically since its early days when emcees and groups like X-Plastaz gained prominence internationally. It’s gone underground.

“Hip hop in Arusha has never just been about songs and beats. It’s always been about substance,” former X Plastaz member Mohamed Yunus Rafiq, 38, tells IPS. “It’s because of hip hop music that a lot of us avoided becoming criminals.”

Rafiq was a young man during the transition from socialism in Tanzania to the free market. He admits hip hop music in Tanzania is still heavily influenced by founding President Julius Nyerere’s brand of African socialism, known in Swahili as Ujamaa.

“The 1967 Arusha declaration officially made Tanzania a socialist state,” Rafiq says. “In the 1980s, there were Cuban doctors and Russian military advisors everywhere. I remember going to ANC [South Africa’s African National Congress] meetings as a boy and receiving candy from Russians.”

All of this made Arusha the international city it is lauded as today. Now it is home to many international organisations such as the United Nations. Arusha was even once referred to as “The Geneva of Africa” by former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

This all made Arusha fertile ground for a socio-political music scene to flourish. From “muziki wa dansi [Swahili jazz music]” which gained prominence in the 1960s to today’s bongo flava music popular with youth across the continent, Tanzanian hip hop seems to remain true to its roots – and in Swahili.

“The Bongo Flava you hear on the radio now is a blend of rap, dancehall music and R&B. What we do here is much different,” Shirima says. “We focus on the four pillars of hip hop: breakdancing, emceeing, DJing and graffiti. We hope by teaching the fundamentals that it will empower youth to make change in the community.”

By promoting hip hop artists to express themselves in the Swahili language also empowers Tanzanian youth to continue reaching new heights. Across East Africa, from Tanzania and Kenya to Uganda and eastern DRC, hip hop fans are taking notice.

“We’re a linguistic nation. Swahili is a creative language that adapts quite nicely to hip hop,” Rafiq says.

As the hip hop beat fades away, Raf MC takes a step back from the microphone and folds up his piece of paper. “We just want to represent our culture and our city. We do this by using music to educate youth on how to do something positive in the community,” he says.

Anarkia Boladona has turned the streets of Brazil into billboards against domestic violence. As a self-titled feminist political graffiti artist, she represents a new trend in women’s rights that seeks less academic and more daring and popular avenues of expression.

As the interview begins, Boladona, born Panmela Castro, is painting a mural in front of a municipal school in a Rio de Janeiro suburb, along with other young people.

But unlike in the past, when she began to paint walls as a “pichadora”, or street artist, officials now support her work.

“I had the habit of writing in the streets as a teenager and then I started drawing. When I passed by the drawing next day, I noticed that people liked it and commented on it,” she told IPS.

The artist says she began painting walls “out of indignation”, until she discovered she could use her drawings to “contribute something that could serve my community”, which is a poor suburb of Rio de Janeiro.

“As part of a family of women, one of the issues I perceived was that of violence against women. It was always very present in my life, in that of my sisters, my cousins, my aunts,” she recalls.

The transition to what she calls a “feminist political graffiti artist” was also about her family background: women “influenced by the feminist revolution of the 1970s”.

“At the same time that they were prey to marriage and patriarchy, there were women who understood that everything was walking toward being different. Me and my cousins were raised differently from them,” she adds.

Education was different, as was the path chosen to fight for the rights of women. Today, at 31, she feels part of the feminism of a new generation.

“I think the old feminists had to be very radical to break the stereotypes. That is why they had these strong concepts, like not exploiting the body or even the body image,” she explains.

If in the past they did their bit for a world “without bras”, today these new feminists do not hesitate to remove theirs if it is for a good cause to defend their rights.

“We have advanced so much that our fight is no longer over for example not to explore the body image, but to use your body the way you want, even exposing it. We have the option of working with our brain, our body, in any way that we please,” she says.

The graffitist chose to “work” with her art, with the walls as her instrument. She uses them to portray the tragedies suffered by millions of women. Sometimes graffiti begins with a theatrical play.

The mural that she is doing is against violence toward women. A telephone number indicates where to turn for help.

The Maria da Penha law, passed in 2006 to combat domestic and family violence against women, raised punishment up to prison terms.

A report by the Sangari Institute indicates that a woman is beaten every five minutes in Brazil, and in 70 percent of cases the people responsible for the attacks are boyfriends, husbands, ex-partners or family members.

The themes of Anarkia Boladona’s murals are endless: A female mythical world of flowers, dragonflies, Eves and witches appealing to a world with equal rights in work, culture and sexual freedom.

“I fight mainly for gender equality, that women have the same rights as men. And, when I say rights, not just in law: It is a right of cultural equality as well,” Boladona says.

Silvana Coelho, 23, is involved in the mural. In an atmosphere considered revolutionary like that of the “pichadores”, she knew this to be a cultural struggle.

“It’s a man’s world. I suffered a lot of harassment from the artists themselves. Sometimes they called me to paint, with ulterior motives. But I got angry and told them: ‘I am an artist of the street, I’m not any one of those street women, I’m here to do my art,’” she tells IPS.

As the mural takes shape, the curiosity of men and women passing by is piqued. A group of women, boasting an average age of more than 90, approves of the work.

“Before, it was very difficult for a man to beat a woman. Now there are men who, besides taking their partner’s money, they beat them too, “says 92-year-old retiree Francisca de Oliveira.

A grandfather with his two granddaughters also observes the work. “Some people use this art to denigrate, to demoralise. This art is thought-provoking, educational, on the street, so it is accessible to everyone,” says Mauro Torres, a graphic artist.

“It’s important because there are people who abuse women,” reflects his granddaughter Ingrid da Costa, aged nine. She is part of a generation that, according to Boladona, is experiencing new feminist themes.

The graffiti artist says that in the past, the fight was about sexual freedom. But today, preadolescents and teens from the strong “funk dance culture” of the favelas (crowded slums) feel compelled to have sex, because “if they don’t their boyfriend leaves for another”.

“There is a role reversal. Before, the obligation was to maintain virginity. Today, the obligation is to no longer be a virgin,” she observes.

Sometimes the walls are inadequate for tackling so many issues. So Boladona founded an organisation called “Nami”, a play on the word “mine” that in carioca slang means woman.The organisation uses urban arts to promote the rights of women, especially the poorest.

Daniele Kitty, art student and vice president of Nami, had to face her parents, who do not accept “a woman walking around painting,” when “in truth I am here working as you can see,” she says.

Nami uses its work to reach women who do not even have access to a newspaper.

“You cannot just ignore a mural like this. It ends up being almost like a TV commercial, a subliminal message that you watch again and again as you pass. It stays in your head,” she maintains.

The unfolding mural calls for “an end to violence against women.” A woman, painted like a flower by Coelho, complements the work.

“A woman is sacred, a flower to be cared for, not to hurt. You have to nourish it with water, but also with love,” she says.

Creating art at the ACE Project, a residency for visiting artists in Argentina. Courtesy of ACE Project

By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Dec 21 2012 (IPS)

Artists-in-residence, once found only in the industrialised North, can now be found throughout Latin America, which is hosting artists from different parts of the world to produce and exhibit their work. There are also opportunities for visiting artists simply to seek inspiration.

In the region, initiatives to provide accommodation and work space for artists from a wide range of disciplines are diverse, but they have a common characteristic: their funding is a work-in-progress, improvised as a one-off to fit each specific project.

The Iberoamerican Residency Network – “residencias_en_red” – was created in 2008 thanks to an initial donation from the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID). At present it comprises 27 spaces for contemporary art and culture research, production and exhibition in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

In the case of Brazil, the first to host an artist-in-residence was Capacete, an independent residency and art programme in Rio de Janeiro. But there are also residencies in Sao Paulo to the south, Belo Horizonte in the eastern state of Minas Gerais, and Itaparica in the northeastern state of Bahia. In Colombia they exist in Bogotá, Medellín and Cali. Mexico has a residency at Casa Vecina, and Bolivia at the Kiosco Gallery.

There are other spaces that are not part of the network, but do form part of the general opportunities available to artists for spending a creative period of time away from their everyday environment, renewing their ideas, finishing a project or making contacts for future productions.

The network coordinator, Kadija de Paula of Brazil, told IPS that in 1998 there were only three spaces, but in the following 10 years the number of residencies rose to 20.

“On the basis of facts, figures and anecdotal information that I have collected during the time I have worked with the network, I attribute this surge to four main factors,” de Paula said. “First, the need to create non-institutional spaces for art.”

Travel facilities are another, and so are “the increasing interest of international investors in residencies” and “the growing general interest in Latin America, due to shifts in global economic power,” she said, referring to the economic progress made in the region, and especially Brazil.

In Argentina, one of the most active organisations is the ACE Project, an independent, not-for-profit residency offering space for production, exploration and urban interventions by artists.

Based in a middle-class neighbourhood in Buenos Aires, it offers workshops run by experts. There is also an isolated space to work in seclusion, called “The Tower”, and other rooms for lectures or exhibitions.

“We can host 33 artists a year,” Alicia Candiani, the curator and director of ACE, told IPS. The project was created in the late 1990s and began to offer space for residencies in 2003.

The interview with Candiani was held in the centre’s Salón Políglota (Polyglot Room), decorated by Columbian-Canadian artist César Forero during his stay there this year. Transparent, lightweight materials are suspended from the ceiling, bearing inscriptions and drawings that are continued on the floor.

Artists from different parts of the world, and from other provinces in the country, come to the residency. The foundation is not-for-profit and does not receive state funding, but the idea is that the artists should not have to pay for their expenses.

“We subsidise one project at a time. It’s like embroidery: the funding proposal for each project is no good for the next. We are always starting from scratch. And some initiatives do not get off the ground because we cannot manage to find funding,” she said.

The first step is for the artist to send in a proposal. “If it is interesting and can be done here, it is approved. Then we start looking for funds. Depending on where the artist is from, we apply in his or her country of origin; sometimes there are existing agreements,” she said.

Candiani, who has a long artistic career to her credit, said that before she joined ACE she did not know anything about fundraising, but she had to become an expert because it was the only way to carry out the proposals and provide the artists with somewhere to live and work.

Residencies at ACE last three weeks. At other centres they may be shorter or longer; however, the current trend in Latin America is for a maximum stay of two to three months, she said.

Candiani noted that the system of residencies was not a recent phenomenon. They began in the 16th century when the Academy of Art in Rome offered its Grand Prize for artists to work there for two years.

Over time, more residencies opened up in Europe, the United States, Canada, and since the late 20th century, Latin America. “Globalisation and increased opportunities for communication and dissemination caused the explosive growth in this phenomenon,” Candiani said.

A very different style of residency is offered by the Centro Rural de Arte (Rural Centre for Art) in Argentina, which describes itself as a “nomadic and temporary” space without a fixed base, at least for the time being, actress María José Trucco, one of its coordinators, told IPS.

What is unique about this organisation, created in 2008, is that it provides group experiences, includes the full range of the arts, and is convened in different Argentine locations in succession – always in rural areas – by agreement with local organisations.

“We want the artist to work on a theme, proposed by ourselves, in relation to that geographical area, because we think that the environment supplies information which the artist can use to produce new meanings,” Trucco said.

During the residencies, which last from 15 days to a month and are held up to twice a year, the centre has worked in conjunction with the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA) and the National Parks Administration (APN), as well as local governments.

“The call for proposals is national and international. People have come from Canada, Belgium, Finland, South Korea, France, Peru, Brazil, Colombia and Chile,” she said. “Each residency takes a year’s work to prepare.”

Trucco said “every project requires its own fundraising effort.” Sometimes they obtain full funding, and at other times only half the amount. In the latter case the artists have to find a way of raising the rest.

Candiani said some countries host up to 500 artists, but that is because they have state subsidies, funding for the arts or private trust funds. This is not the case in Latin America – or at least, not yet.

What is a journalist to do when simply providing information is not enough to bring about the desired change? Why, turn to art, of course.

Untitled photo, evoking water torture. Credit: Courtesy of Shahidul Alam

“The information is clearly in the public domain, but when it doesn’t do what you’d hoped it would do, you need to re-think your strategy,” Alam told IPS in New York where he had come for the exhibition launch last month, in an attempt to highlight the urgency of internationalising the issue.

“I didn’t know how effective this show would be, but I wanted the issue to be seen in a different context,” he said.

The result is a series of beautifully lit, symbolic images in a show titled “Crossfire”, which just concluded a run at the Queens Museum in New York– “a physical experience that aims to evoke rather than inform,” as Alam puts it in the exhibition brochure.

In so doing, the show raises a human rights issue that is relevant to any state that allows extra-judicial murders to take place with impunity.

“Through Wikileaks, we learnt that the U.S. and UK have been involved in training RAB. Hopefully this exhibition will provide food for thought about U.S. special training being provided to Bangladesh security forces,” says Alam, a pioneering photojournalist and activist, founder of the multimedia Drik Picture Library and the not- for-profit photo agency Majority World.

“Water-boarding was a new concept for us in Bangladesh,” he added.

In addition to training, the U.S. and Britain have also been providing arms to RAB. The issue has been raised in the British Parliament, but not in the U.S., something Alam hopes will change.

When it was first launched in Dhaka in March 2010, the Bangladesh government sent riot police to shut “Crossfire” down, on its opening day – an action seen around the world as the organisers strategically live-streamed the event. Alam recalls that he was in fact on a Skype call with the Reporters Without Borders secretary general when the riot police surrounded the gallery.

The widespread negative publicity and protests at the exhibition being shut down highlighted the issue and led to an initial decline in “crossfire” killings. However, since then, disappearances as well as killings have risen.

Although symbolic rather than literal, the photographs evoke a dark, sinister feel. An underwater photo with bubbles, a cycle rickshaw on a deserted university road, a rice paddy field, a ‘gamcha’ (sarong) on the ground…

Combine these images with the word “crossfire” in the context of Bangladesh, and you have a clear political statement about extra- judicial killings in that country.

“This one’s clearly about water-boarding,” commented Pramilla Malick of Manhattan, stopping in front of the water bubbles photograph at Alam’s show. “It gives me the chills.”

“The idea of the concept of ‘crossfire’ rather than showing bodies is very potent,” said documentary filmmaker Brian Palmer, who has been to Bangladesh and worked with students at Alam’s Drik institute. “We’re so bombarded by an avalanche of images that it can be more powerful to interrupt and pause.”

Each photograph represents an actual case, based on solid research about every known case of crossfire death.

Each photo was taken in the middle of the night, lit by torchlight, “because that’s how survivors and victims’ families recall these incidents,” says Alam. “They take place in the dead of night, people wake up to torchlight shining in their faces, and then they’re taken away.”

“Even a child knows what ‘crossfire’ means,” comments a passer-by, whom Alam video-interviewed outside the gallery after the government shut down the show in Dhaka.

“You use these images with that word, everyone will know that that’s where a crossfire happened,” comments a policeman.

One passerby angrily says that “those putting on this show are the ones who should be ‘cross-fired'”, because the police are “only trying to make the country safer for the citizens by getting rid of criminals”.

However, most passers-by commended the organisers for bringing this issue to the public. “Those who are killed are not just criminals,” said one young man. “Some are just ordinary people on their way to work, their families never even get their bodies back.”

The interviews, playing on a subtitled video, are part of the Crossfire show at Queens Museum.

The exhibition in Dhaka and in New York is supported by the Open Society Institute, which also funded a series of posters based on the images that human rights organisations in Bangladesh had agreed to exhibit.

However, NGOs all backed out at the last minute, says Alam, perhaps due to fears that the Bangladesh government would not renew their licenses to operate as non-profit organisations.

Drik, an independent media organisation that is not subject to such restrictions, has persisted with the exhibition. “We’re also risk- takers,” grins Alam.

In a country where the risks of speaking out include being “cross- fired”, taking such chances is no laughing matter. But for activists like Alam, staying silent is not an option.

A dissident Chinese author has expressed dismay at the lack of independent and exiled authors represented at this year’s London Book Fair (LBF), where China is guest of honour. An ensuing public spat, revolving around accusations that the Fair’s organisers have bowed to Chinese authorities, has thrust the thorny issue of censorship to centre-stage.

In a letter sent to the British Council and LBF, Bei Ling, founder of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre (ICPC), said that he is “astonished that no independent literature voice nor exiled writer from China is being represented at the London Book Fair programme.”

He goes on to state amazement that the state-run Chinese Writers’ Association have chosen the 31-strong author delegation travelling to London to represent China, which is this year’s market focus country.

“Also shocking is the London Book Fair’s cooperation with GAPP (General Administration of Press and Publication which overseas the Writers’ Association) – the very ministry that’s responsible for censorship,” Bei writes in the letter.

Missing voices at the fair Apr. 16-18 include the exiled novelist Gao Xingjian, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2000, and poet Liao Yiwu, who escaped China last July. Nobel Peace prize winner and poet Liu Xiaobo, currently serving an 11-year prison sentence, will also be unrepresented.

“This is very embarrassing, because the London Book Fair should be choosing writers to join the panels independently,” Bei tells IPS. “Sure, LBF may consult the opinions of GAPP, but it doesn’t mean that it has to blindly follow GAPP’s instructions…LBF should show that they are independent instead of being manipulated.

“Exile literature, underground literature, and independent writings are also a part of Chinese literature,” he adds.

The argument echoes the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair scandal in which Bei and investigative journalist Dai Qing were cut from the list of authors invited following pressure from China. The two writers were restored after a media furore, leading to walkouts from Chinese representatives at the Fair.

Moves have been made to counter the official list in London. Bei will be sharing a stand at the LBF for the ICPC alongside a Hong Kong-based publisher. English PEN also held their own event Mar. 29 , “China Inside Out”, for authors not invited in the approved delegation.

Tibetan poet and blogger Tsering Woeser, 46, who was placed under house arrest last month, is another author excluded from LBF. Woeser was granted both the Norwegian Authors Union’s Freedom of Expression Prize and a freedom of speech medal by the Association of Tibetan Journalists in 2007. She was invited to Frankfurt in 2009, but was unable to attend because she did not have a passport.

“I am used to getting ignored,” Woeser says from her home in Beijing. “This is the reality of China. If you are a writer within the system, for example you are a member of the Chinese Writers’ Association, you will have opportunities for publishing and attending literary events like book fairs. But if you are outside the system, even if you are a good writer, the chances for publishing are few and book fairs are more unlikely.”

Woeser publishes her thoughts in an influential (and blocked in China) blog which has helped expose the rash of Tibetan self-immolations and unrest over the past year in south-west China.

Authors who are part of the delegation, however, have complained that the media furore has taken the emphasis away from literature to politics.

Alice Xin Liu, managing editor of Pathlight, a new English language literary magazine featuring translations from top contemporary Chinese writers, says the LBF features many of today’s most exciting authors. Examples include Bi Feiyu, winner of the 2010 Man Asian Literary Prize.

“Writers such as Han Dong (author of the Cultural Revolution novel ‘Banished!’) are quite daring. So it’s quite murky – (Bei’s) distinctions are actually way too clear cut,” the Beijing-based translator and editor tells IPS.

She adds that while listening to the voices of exiled authors is important, “the large majority of the population are reading writers not like him – they are reading writers like Mo Yan and Sheng Keyi, the writers who are going (to the fair).”

Regardless, Bei Ling is holding out optimism that dissident writers will be heard. “I still have hope they can include an independent writer or exiled writer to join a panel,” he says.

The silencing of music in the name of Islam led Pappu to give up the cello and set up a tea stall. But Pappu and other musicians survived the Islamist regime for former dictator Zia ul-Haq and the recent ways of the Taliban to return to the most surprising group of musicians to have emerged over years – on a dusty little street in the Pakistani city Lahore.

Rehearsing at Sachal Studios in Lahore. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS.

Little known at home on a street taken over by car showrooms, Sachal made waves on the international music scene last year with their rendition of the 1959 jazz number Take Five.

Originally by the American Dave Brubeck Quartet, Sachal’s rendition hit the top of jazz album charts on iTunes in Britain and the United States.

It was a 90th birthday tribute to Dave Brubeck. “Listening to this exotic version…brings back wonderful memories of Pakistan where my quartet played in 1958,” wrote Dave Brubeck. He found it a “most interesting and different recording” of the original jazz number.

The musicians bring in the cellos and the violins – but also traditional south Asian instruments such as the tabla and the dholak. And the indefinable but pervasive feel of south Asian traditions to jazz – and whatever music they create, or pick and transform.

The musicians from Sachal Studios are now set to perform in London Apr. 17 at a pre-Olympics concert that is a sellout.

Izzat Majeed, a businessman who has put all the money into this labour of love, does not like to label the music produced by the ensemble gathered at Sachal Studios. He won’t even call it hybrid, or fusion. And he is no “crusader” trying to revive music from an era bygone.

At best, Majeed tells IPS, “you can call it contemporary.” He points to the maestros gathered at the studio rehearsing in Bossa Nova, a style of Brazilian music that combines samba and jazz.

As a guitar player strums his strings, followed by the musician on the cello, they are joined by a trio of percussionists on the floor. Using their fingers and the base of their palms, they create intricate beats with the tabla, the dholak and the mridangam. On cue, the solo flutist joins in.

The ensemble gathered this afternoon is perhaps the Pakistan music industry’s crème de la crème. “You can’t get musicians better than these under one roof; Sachal has managed to do that,” says Munir Kaukab, the recording engineer.

Between them they produce a mesmerizing track where Brazil meets Pakistan.

“We do what we like,” says Majeed. He is not pushed if only a few people listen to them. In Pakistan “jazz has a very small market anyway.”

Sachal, inspired by Abbey Road Studios in London, is “reviving old forms by giving them contemporary colour,” says Sarwat Ali, a music critic.

The studios shun the commercial. “We don’t work for anybody; we don’t rent the place out to anybody,” says Soofi. “Anyone working here is free to work for anyone he pleases.” But few would want to leave the equipment and quality at Sachal, says Kaukab.

Amongst the range of music Sachal take up, the sound of jazz is prominent. “Sachal introduced a new format to jazz by introducing eastern instruments that remained true to their traditions,” 37-year-flutist Baqir Abbas, who has been playing since he was 12, tells IPS.

Since it began in 2003, the studios gave a new lease of life to dying “studio recording traditions” that prevailed before the computer entered the music world, Abbas says.

“It’s still the only studio in Pakistan where music is recorded in its purest form without computer technology used to tweak it,” he says.

As with the music, so with musicians as they prepare for the London concert – Sachal is nothing if not inclusive. Besides the musicians from Pakistan, “we will have about ten to 12 more joining from England, Italy and India,” says Soofi.

They will be playing mostly jazz and a version of Brazilian compositions, as well as some traditional Indian (and now Pakistani) raga compositions in jazz style. “We have already prepared about 13 tracks,” he tells IPS.

Sachal Studios is now home to many classical musicians who had been lost in the din of digital and electronic music. Here they find music as they would like it – and they find a living.

Violinists like Pappu were particularly hit by the collapse of the Pakistani film industry in the 1980s. The violin went out to make place for rock and pop. When Sachal came on the music scene, they were able to dig out just ten violinists in Lahore; over the nine years since they were set up, they have found more than 30.

“I think this is their greatest contribution and service to our music,” Arshad Mahmood, a leading composer who has handled orchestras for nearly 30 years tells IPS.

Sachal Studios has produced more than 30 albums spanning a spectrum of genres from local folk to jazz. The group now needs to “pay attention to the market and make their music accessible to the people,” says Sarwat Ali.

The group has been approached by several international filmmakers for a feature film on the studio and on their endeavour to revive classical music in Pakistan. “It’s in the pipeline and we’re working on how best this idea can be executed,” confirms Soofi, without giving names. “We’re open to these ideas.”

A lyrical attack by Germany’s acclaimed novelist and essayist Günter Grass in which he labelled Israel’s alleged atomic arsenal and looming pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear installations a threat to world peace has triggered fury and controversy amongst Israelis.

In his 66-line poem entitled ‘What Must Be Said’ and published on the front page of the Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung’s culture section, the Nobel Prize laureate in literature in 1999 asked: “Why only now, grown old/…, do I say:/Israel’s atomic power endangers/an already fragile world peace?/Because what must be said/may be too late tomorrow.”

In a Cassandra-like apocalyptic style, Grass lamented, “Why have I kept silent, held back so long/on something openly practised in/war games, at the end of which those of us/who survive will at best be footnotes?/It’s the alleged right to a first strike/that could destroy an Iranian people/subjugated by a loudmouth.”

Widely believed to be a nuclear power – it’s not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) – Israel has kept a veil of calculated ambiguity on its own nuclear programme, only stating that it won’t be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons in the region.

Iran has, in a sense, emulated this policy of concealment.

Hence on Friday, a week before the scheduled negotiations between the P1+5 group (U.S., U.K., France, Russia, China, plus Germany) and the Islamic Republic, an Iranian lawmaker declared, “Iran has the scientific and technological capability to produce a nuclear weapon, but will never choose this path.”

Published on the parliamentary website icana.ir in advance of Iran’s National Day of Nuclear Technology, the remarks by Gholamreza Mesbahi-Moghadam were are a first-time acknowledgment of nuclear knowhow.

U.S. President Barack Obama has recently tried to pull the veil over Iran’s true nuclear intentions. According to the Washington Post, he’s relayed a message to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei via Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the U.S. would agree to a civilian nuclear programme if Iran proved it wasn’t developing nuclear weapons.

Israel has threatened to strike Iran’s nuclear programme unilaterally if, despite mounting international sanctions, Iran doesn’t abandon its nuclear programme.

Iran’s nuclear policy is perceived in Israel as an existential threat in light of the less-than-lyrical anti- Zionist tirades by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Grass’s ‘loudmouth’) who has vowed to annihilate Israel, and has denied the Holocaust in which six million Jews were exterminated by Nazi Germany during World War II.

Referring to “blood libel”, a traditional anti-Semitic accusation that took place before Passover – the Jewish seven-day festival began Friday evening – an Israeli envoy to Berlin angrily used the format of the Grass diatribe and threw it back to the poet’s face.

“What must be said is that/it’s a European tradition to accuse the Jews/before the Passover festival of ritual murder,” Emmanuel Nahshon wrote on the Israeli embassy website, and concluded, “We aren’t ready to take on the role assigned on us by Grass/of the German people’s efforts to come to term with the past.”

Grass might also have wanted to target Germany. For having supplied Israel with submarines that can be equipped with nuclear warheads, “We may be providing material for a crime/that is foreseeable,” he wrote in verse.

But he said, albeit maladroitly, that his poem was meant first as a warning to the Israeli Prime Minister’s policy vis-à-vis Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu, himself accused in his own country of cheap use of the memory of the Holocaust as he time and again draws a parallel between Iran and Nazi Germany, issued a stern condemnation.

Emphatically reproving Grass’s “shameful moral equivalence between Israel and Iran,” he used his own celebrated oratory skills. “It’s Iran – not Israel – that’s a threat to world peace and security/It’s Iran – not Israel – that threatens other states with annihilation.”

And, on a more personal attack, he accused Grass of concealing (“for six decades”) his past as a member of the Waffen SS. “So for him to cast the one and only Jewish state as the greatest threat to world peace and to oppose giving Israel the means to defend itself is perhaps not surprising,” he added.

After the publication of ‘The tin Drum’ (1959), which depicts the rise of Nazism in his hometown Danzig, Grass was long hailed the moral conscience of post-war Germany. But in his autobiography ‘Peeling the Onion’ (2006), Grass painfully confessed that as a youth he had joined the Nazi party’s military at the end of World War II. Suddenly, Grass personified a compromised Germany still haunted by national self- disgust.

In an opinion piece entitled ‘Günter Grass’s Moral Blindness’, Haaretz columnist Anshel Pfeffer wrote: “His membership in an organisation that planned and carried out the wholesale genocide of millions of Jews disqualified him from criticising the descendants of those Jews for developing a weapon of last resort that is the insurance policy against someone finishing the job his organisation began.”

“The verdict ‘Anti-Semitism’ falls easily,” Grass had felt compelled to acknowledge pre-emptively in his poem.

Grass’s awkward criticism can be interpreted as rooted in his own guilt as if the 84-year-old poet wished the Jewish people to accuse him of anti-Semitism in order to expiate his problematic youth, noted renowned Israeli historian Tom Segev, author of ‘The Seventh Million’, a book about the decisive impact of the Holocaust on the identity, ideology, and politics of Israel.

“You can relax, Mr. Grass. You’ve written a rather pathetic poem, but you’re not anti-Semitic. You’re not even anti-Israeli,” Segev ironically addressed the poet, also in Haaretz. “You said you wrote that poem ‘with what ink remains’. Let’s hope you have enough for another beautiful novel.”

Actors, musicians, activists and friends gathered in various locations throughout Israel and the West Bank this week to commemorate the life of actor and theatre director Juliano Mer-Khamis.

Mer-Khamis was shot and killed on Apr. 4, 2011, while he sat in his car in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank.

“It is a sad reminder of the reality of the present situation here, of the fear in our part of society here. It is a reminder of how thin the border is between life and death here, and how little is in our control,” managing director Jonatan Stanczak told IPS. He co-founded the Freedom Theatre along with Mer-Khamis and Palestinian Zakaria Zubeidi.

An Israeli citizen born to a Palestinian-Israeli father and Jewish-Israeli mother, Mer-Khamis opened the Freedom Theatre in Jenin in 2006 as a way to empower Palestinian youth in the refugee camp to express themselves, and to use creative expression as a method of resistance.

“I think that when artists are attacked, then it is a symbol that free cultural expression is under grave threat and every artist is then also a potential target. It also recognises the important role, I think, of artists in this struggle for freedom and equal rights,” said Stanczak.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has jurisdiction over the Jenin refugee camp, a 0.42 square-kilometre area in the north of the occupied West Bank that is home to more than 16,000 registered Palestinian refugees, almost half of them under the age of 18. The PA began a criminal investigation immediately after Juliano Mer-Khamis was killed.

A separate Israeli investigation is also ongoing and is being conducted jointly by the Israeli army, police and the Shabak (Shin Bet) security agency.

Israeli authorities have arrested various members of the theatre – including a 20-year-old lead actor – broken theatre windows and equipment, conducted night raids involving the shooting of live ammunition, and intimidated and ransacked the homes of individuals affiliated with the theatre.

According to the Freedom Theatre, over 30 arrests were made in the Jenin refugee camp in December 2011 alone, all supposedly related to the investigation into Juliano’s killing.

Despite the case remaining unsolved, Stanczak said that the theatre has continued to follow Juliano’s vision of using cultural expression to promote change and fight injustice.

“We are here to join a movement struggling against oppression and inequality, struggling for a society built on democratic values. We believe that culture is a key component in that struggle because culture has the built-in capacity of questioning the present systems, of questioning authority, of questioning and challenging the present reality and also, showing the possible alternative reality,” Stanczak said.

Today, Freedom Theatre continues to organise various cultural activities in Jenin and throughout the West Bank, including running Palestine’s first professional acting school, and hosting filmmaking workshops and playback theatre events, where members of a community share personal experiences, which actors and musicians then act out in an improvised theatre piece.

In September-October this year, the theatre is also organising a ‘Freedom Bus’ tour through the West Bank, where Palestinians’ personal stories and experiences under occupation will again be acted out in street theatre events.

“We are continuing to educate professional actors, future leaders, in a cultural revolution. The Freedom Theatre is continuing the work of Juliano in the spirit of Juliano,” Stanczak said.

“We are inviting people all around the world to join this struggle. The reality (in Palestine) is only getting worse by the day. We see ourselves as part of a rising popular struggle and we will only succeed if the international community will join this popular, non-violent struggle asking for democracy and justice.”

In a first in years, snow blessed the Holy City last month. For a moment, hail metamorphosed into a paltry three-millimetre layer of white, liquid, light. Children and parents and snowmen relished the wonders of an almost real, though usually ephemeral, winter. But then, the Ice Age befell Jerusalem…

A replica of the Tower of David at the Ice City in Jerusalem. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

Some 30 ice sculptors have been flown in especially from China. “We brought in our finest team from Harbin, a very faraway place with a long history and a rich culture,” says Bai Liang proudly. “These artists have at least 15 years of experience. Since it’s our first time in Jerusalem, we have to be on our best.”

Assisted by local artists, the Chinese masters have designed and installed the first international festival of sculptures on ice in a covered space near the disused train station located close to the old no-man’s-land that used to divide the city into Jewish and Arab sectors before Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 war.

“We exchanged ideas, plans and sketches with Israeli artists in order to reach a tight concept that integrates the local culture and architecture in our creations,” explains Liang, the exhibition director.

With hundreds of tons of ice, walls have been erected carefully, one ice block at a time. Within one month of hard work, a palace of wonders, a frosty replica of Jerusalem of Ice, came to light – “Ice City”.

“Temperatures are low, ice is heavy,” ice sculptor Liu Qi acknowledges as he supervises the lifting of a replica of a limestone of the walled Old City. “An ice sculpture artist has to be in good physical condition, resistant to cold. And, knowledge of the art is certainly critical.”

At a cosy ten degrees Celsius below zero (minus 14 degrees Fahrenheit), life is a fairy tale when coats are received on entrance to the site. So, dress warmly, enter a world of ice and misty lights.

“The people here are interested in snow entertainment and ice. We’re happy to bring happiness,” says Qi while now combing a reproduction of a flying camel with a special metal rake.

Visitors pass through a replica of Jaffa Gate, one of the seven opened monumental gates to the Old City.

The exhibition grounds feature historical monuments such as the Ottoman walls built in the 16th century during the rule of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent; the Tower of David, a citadel originally raised above earlier fortifications in the second century BC; the Montefiore Windmill built in 1857 and designed as a flour mill, but actually unproductive due to a lack of winds. Qi saws another square chunk of translucent ice. Vapours of frost sprinkle his face. Though it breaks up easily, ice stands for unity, purity, and strength.

If the infamous monster – the “Golem” moulded in cement by French sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle – is a favourite Jerusalem playground, the amiable beast in its frozen version offers an even more slippery slide.

“No, I’ve never seen such beauty before,” six-year old Iris shakes her head from left to right. “Yes,” she nods – she simply loves it.

“The colourful ice sculptures are made with food colouring. It doesn’t matter if kids taste the popsicles- like sculptures,” smiles Liang.

Jewish and Arab schoolchildren can be seen playing side by side. In Ice City, the walls are emblazoned with two interlaced peace doves. Co-existence seems no arctic mirage.

Meander in the ice forest; wander around the fairy tales of your childhood; encounter ice figurines from the Wizard of Oz – the Scarecrow and the Tin Man and the Wicked Witch of the West.

Cinderella, the little glass slipper is metamorphosed into a little glacial slipper. The pumpkin transformed into the golden carriage is transformed into an ice carriage; mice are frozen into horses.

Not just children are marvelled. The attraction emulates ice festivals in Harbin, China, or Bruges, Belgium. Like their equivalents around the world, Ice City draws people from around the world.

“They do this in China? That’s cool!” exclaims a young tourist from Chicago ostensibly in awe of a menacing black bear adorned with an emerald glint.

“My wife gave me a present for my birthday and brought me here,” explains Tomer Gur-Arieh, a Jerusalemite.

But all this shimmering world of crystal and diamonds is pure evanescence.

These metamorphoses, of pandas, of giraffes and camels – even the lion king, the city’s emblem – will surely melt away. Don’t worry, next year, we’ll be back, assures the Chinese team.

“They’re very satisfied with our work,” confirms Liang, “especially Mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat; he came here five times; he was shocked by the ongoing change.” At the Mar. 6 opening, Barkat maladroitly hailed the ice festival as a “cultural revolution”.

“Never cast a thread until April is dead, Never cast a clout, until May be out” has never been so true here – the “cultural revolution” heralded by the Israeli Mayor will have to be watered down on the last day of April.

“We’re talking about further cooperation,” says Liang. “We’ve signed a five-year contract to bring ice sculptures back to Jerusalem.”

In the meantime though, to add a glow to cold cheeks you might want to have a drink on the rocks at the local ice bar…

By Ashfaq Yusufzai and - -
PESHAWAR, Mar 17 2012 (IPS)

Not so long ago, Gul Pana’s pursuit of a career as a professional singer in Khyber Pakthunkhwa (KP) province would have invited certain death at the hands of the Taliban.

Fans defy the Taliban to attend a music concert at Nishtar Hall in Peshawar. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS.

“I enjoy music and, at the same time, I am able to earn money for my family through singing,” the pretty young diva tells IPS. “The people cannot be kept away from listening to songs.”

Cultural activities were unthinkable in KP as long as the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) or United Council of Action – an alliance of religio-political parties – ruled the province from 2002 to 2008 with backing from the Taliban militia.

After the MMA lost elections held in 2008 to the left-wing, socialist Awami National Party (ANP), bombing attacks by the Taliban on CD shops, cinemas and schools in KP and the adjacent Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) increased briefly.

On the night of Jan. 2, 2009, the Taliban brutally executed Shabana, a popular female dancer in Swat and strung up her body from an electric pole. That year, local singer Ghani Dad was killed in Swat while he was returning home from a music session.

But the tide began changing against the Taliban after the Pakistan army launched operations against militancy in the region in 2009 and the United States military stepped up drone strikes targeting top Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders holed up in Pakistan’s northwest.

“We have opened the 600-seat Nishtar Hall for cultural activities and want to defeat terrorism through music and art,” Mian Iftikhar Hussain, KP’s culture minister, tells IPS.

Hussain wants to reverse the policies of the former MMA government which banned musical concerts and other cultural events, considering them to be un-Islamic.

Hussain says the revival of music and cultural activities was also part of the government’s campaign to send across the message that the Pashtuns are a liberal people and opposed to terrorism.

Over two-thirds of KP’s 21 million people are Pashtuns, an ethnic group that straddles the Pakistan- Afghan border and provides the main support base for the Taliban.

“The Nishtar Hall, which remained closed for six consecutive years, now regularly hosts events where enthusiasts enjoy music, drama and other activities,” Hussain said, indicating the most visible sign of the government’s determination.

Reviving cultural programmes across the province has been welcomed by the entertainment-starved Pashtuns, known to be traditionally fond of music, art and dance.

“We came to watch our favourite singers and dancers. The night was fun-filled and we enjoyed ourselves,” said Zawar Ali, a resident of Mardan, one of the 25 districts of KP.

Ali, who attended the musical night at the Nishtar Hall along with 10 of his friends, said he was thankful to the ANP-led government for defying the Taliban, who have now taken to attacking mosques and funerals.

On Mar. 11, a suicide bomber attacked a funeral ceremony in Badhber village, on the outskirts of Peshawar, killing 15 mourners and narrowly missing his target, ANP politician Khush Dil Khan.

Pakistan began to be directly affected by terrorism after the ouster of Taliban rule in Afghanistan by the U.S. towards the end of 2001, as part of the war-on-terror following the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington.

When their government was toppled in Kabul, the Taliban’s leadership crossed over the porous border into Pakistan and concentrated in the FATA from where they began targeting government installations, schools and music and CD shops.

“Taliban destroyed 600 music and CD shops in KP over the past five years. They also forced several singers to leave the province,” said Sher Dil Khan, president of the KP CD Shops Association.

“With a new government ruling KP, attacks on CD shops have stopped,” Khan said.

“During Taliban days, the majority of the singers, dancers and other people related to showbiz left the province,” said Gulzar Alam, a crooner, who fled to Karachi himself. Gulzar and other singers are now signed up for back-to-back cultural programmes.

The government has even started construction for an art academy where talented youths will be provided training in singing, dancing and playing musical instruments.

“About 100 youths have expressed willingness to undergo training in different genres and we are going to start training programmes very soon,” said KP’s director for culture, Pervaiz Khan Sabatkhel.

The province has been traditionally rich in music and art. “People organised musical events to celebrate their weddings and other festive occasions. They cannot be forced to stop listening to music or watching dramas…it has always been a part of their lives,” Sabatkhel said.

Minister Hussain says his government is providing security to the CD shops and singers so they can carry on their business fearlessly.

“We have broken the command and control system of the Taliban and they cannot come back. We hope that art and culture activities will increase in the days to come,” he said.

Excerpt:

By Zofeen Ebrahim and - -
KARACHI, Mar 16 2012 (IPS)

By winning an Oscar at this year’s Academy awards, filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy has brought home the genius of Pakistan’s women as well as the extreme violence they often suffer in a male-dominated society.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. Credit: Bina Khan/IPS.

Valerie Khan, who heads the Acid Survivor Foundation (ASF), told IPS that the film brought a “message of pride and hope” to the many victims of acid attacks and projected “their struggle more than the issue.”

ASF has, since it began its work in 2006, provided medical, psychosocial, socio-economic and legal aid to about 160 acid survivors and has also recorded 700 attacks.

The film has “reactivated the pride of Pakistan as a country that can do wonders and also mobilised women, policy makers, stakeholders and Pakistani citizens to act in a synergetic and democratic manner to eradicate a phenomenon that has no place in an Islamic republic,” Khan said.

“Other countries can learn from this success story,” said Khan, adding that while acid violence was a global phenomenon many countries, including India, have “not even taken the first necessary steps to tackle the issue.”

The film tells the stories of acid attack survivors as well as the struggle of civil society and women politicians to get a law that criminalises acid attacks passed in Pakistan’s parliament in December 2011.

Naila Farhat, 22, and Rukhsana Yasir, 26, the real heroines of ‘Saving Face’, told IPS that it was not easy to go public with their gruesome stories.

“Finding the courage to come in front of the camera, showing our disfigurement to the world and telling our tales has not been easy,” Farhat said.

“But if this can save other women from the hell we have been through, and are still going through, it is a small price to pay for this kind of stardom,” she said.

Unlike other victims of acid attacks, Farhat took her case to the Supreme Court where Pakistan’s Chief Justice, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhary, heard the story of how she was scarred with acid by a teacher for spurning his advances.

Farhat was among a group of six acid victims who had gathered at the ASF shelter on Feb. 26 to watch the Oscar ceremony in Hollywood, California, on TV. Several of them had figured in the film.

“The room at the shelter was filled with shrieks of happiness as we saw Sharmeen walking gracefully up the stage and receiving the statuette,” said Farhat. “There were tears of joy as we hugged each other.”

Chinoy told the world: “Daniel (Junge, her co-director) and I want to dedicate this award to all the heroes working on the ground in Pakistan… Rukhsana and Zakia who are our main subjects in the film, whose resilience and bravery in the face of such adversity is admirable. And, to all the women of Pakistan who are working for change, don’t give up on your dreams. This is for you.”

“I’m very happy for Sharmeen,” Yasir, told IPS over phone from Islamabad. In 2009, Yasir’s husband had thrown acid on her during an altercation. “My eyes and nose were saved but the acid seared my mouth, neck and the front of my body,” she said. “My lips cannot close.”

Yet, this mother of three has gone back to live with her husband.

“What I liked about Sharmeen was that she was not only good-natured, but she actually came and hugged you,” said Yasir. “Few people find the courage to come near us, let alone touch us.”

On Dec. 13, 2011, the upper house of parliament passed the Acid Control and Acid Crime Prevention Act 2011 that punishes the throwing of acid at women with a maximum of 14 years in jail and a minimum fine of one million Pakistani rupees (11,000 dollars).

Acid throwing is now a non-bailable crime with the possibility of an out-of-court settlement precluded, but for the campaigners the fight is not over. Khan says the bill is inadequate and demands that the state support survivors with legal aid and rehabilitation.

She also wants to see tight regulation in the sale and distribution of acid. “To date, highly concentrated sulphuric and hydrochloric acids are available for as little as 54 cents and anyone can buy them with no check, tracing and limitation of any kind.”

Also passed on Dec. 13, 2011 was a bill aimed at protecting women from barbaric customs like forced marriages, child marriages and denial of inheritance.

Other bills passed recently cover prevention of domestic violence, sexual harassment at the workplace, a fund for women in distress and the giving of financial and administrative autonomy to the National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW). Nasreen Azhar, a member of the NCSW, thinks it is indeed a “big deal” to have so many pro-women bills passed by the present government in the last four years, six of them in the last two.

Azhar says attitudes have changed since the day in 1999 when Saima Sarwar was killed by a gunman hired by her family in the chamber of her attorneys, Asma Jahangir and Hina Jilani, while seeking divorce from her husband.

“A group of us went to the Senate, then in session, and asked the senators to move a resolution condemning the incident,” recalls Azhar. “The senators refused saying Sarwar was killed in accordance with age-old tribal customs which they could not oppose.”

In contrast, the present national assembly voted unanimously in favour of the pro-women bills.

Excerpt:

By Zofeen Ebrahim and - -
KARACHI, Mar 9 2012 (IPS)

Dark and smoky, the cinema hall reeks of hashish. An overly made-up woman on screen in provocatively figure-hugging clothes dances suggestively to the beat of loud music. The audience, all men, cheer and whistle. The music stops, the scenes get racier and sexually titillating. The crowd abandons all caution. The whistles turn to grunts and growls, chairs begin to bang.

A cinema hall in Peshawar. Credit: Abdul Majeed Goraya/IPS.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Peshawar in particular, continue to reel from bomb attacks on girls’ schools and even shrines. Shops selling CDs, and net cafes have been sporadically attacked. Billboards showing women have been defaced or pulled down. Yet, cinemas showing porn continue to flourish.

“Every show in those cinemas is house-full,” says Lala Fida Mohammad Khan, former producer of films in the local language Pushto, and who now runs a cinema in the garrison city Rawlapindi next door to capital Islamabad.

“Everyone knows what fare each cinema churns out, everyone is involved. Daily three shows are run and on Sundays there is a morning matinee as well. On the auspicious Eid days, there are usually five shows so people can come right after the congregation.”

The hundreds of thousands of rupees in bribes or “monthlies” that cinema owners pay as protection money ensures their business continues uninterrupted, says Khan.

The Shama cinema in Peshawar is owned by the Bilour family, some of whose members are in the Awami National Party that holds a majority in the province. “They had three cinemas,” says Khan, “one was attacked several years back so two of these have been turned into shopping plazas, and the one that remains shows porn films.”

There are just nine cinemas left in Peshawar (five have been turned into commercial plazas). Of these, says Aijaz Gul, a well-known film critic, only one run by the Pakistan Air Force “avoids” porn.

Since the Taliban started wielding power in the province, says Khan, two cinemas have been attacked, but only from outside. A number of cinema hall owners were kidnapped for ransom. “They paid huge sums and got themselves freed but have not left their occupation.”

Khan says he stopped making films because “no one wants to watch clean, decent films; these don’t sell any more.”

“Pushto films have always been infamous for both soft and hard porn,” says Gul, “though there was a time when clean Pushto films were produced too.”

Younus Qiyasi who has scripted some 22 Pushto films quit the cellular world in the 1980s after “vulgarity and obscenity became the hallmark of these films,” he says.

Khan remembers the time in Peshawar some two decades ago when “tickets would be sold out days and weeks in advance” and when cine-goers included women. “There always was strict purdah, even then, but women went to the theatre and sat in family boxes. Now, with the kind of trash shown in cinemas, even if it is not porn, there is no question of women venturing into cinema houses in Peshawar,” he tells IPS.

Film trade is at its lowest generally, and only the lifting of the ban on exhibiting Indian films in 2006 gave Pakistan cinema halls a new lease of life.

Just a little over 200 cinema halls are left, down from 700 in 1977. The Pakistan film industry produced just 20 films last year, of which five were in the national Urdu language, seven in Punjabi and eight in Pushto.

Qiyasi says the men watching the porn films are “mostly Afghan mohajirs (refugees from Afghanistan who are also ethnically Pakhtuns), not Pakhtuns (natives of KP).” Khan says “it would be rare to see Pakhtuns venturing into such places.”

Afghan refugees mostly fled during the 1980s Soviet war. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), there are 1.7 million registered Afghan refugees still based in Pakistan. A majority of them are in KP, the tribal regions, and parts of Balochistan province.

After 30 years, there seems to be growing disenchantment among the local Pakhtuns with the Afghans who have taken over many businesses and done well for themselves.

Pakhtuns comprise over 15 percent of Pakistan’s population (174 million) and an estimated 42 percent of the population in Afghanistan (35 million).

In Nishtarabad, Peshawar’s wholesale DVD and CD market, which houses some 180 shops, a whole new world of films on CDs is doing roaring business, especially among Afghans.

Musafir Khan has been in the business since 1991. He gets about two Pushto films made on CD in a month. “These are mini-films and cost me anywhere between 300,000 to 350,000 rupees (about 3,300 – 3,900 dollars) for the production, and on top I pay the producer 10,000 rupees (110 dollars) for his service.

“The day it is released we sell about 12,000 CDs at 35 rupees (38 cents) per film.” But business is down, he says. Earlier he would sell almost 30,000 CDs on the day of release of the film. “These are clean films and can be seen with family,” he says.

According to Fida Khan, these mini-films usually take no more than ten days to produce and three weeks to edit. The shopkeepers who finance these sell them all across Pakistan and even across the border to Afghanistan and beyond. “These travel as far as Kabul, Jalalabad, Dubai and even London,” says Khan. “These films are decent family-type movies.” Khan says cinema halls now hook digital projectors to DVDs and CDs and show films at a fraction of the price they would have to pay to buy the older 35 mm print films. These films are usually made in Punjab province with little known actors and later dubbed into Pushto.

Excerpt:

By Beena Sarwar and - -
BOSTON, U.S., Mar 8 2012 (IPS)

When the Oscar-nominated film “Saving Face” won an Academy Award in Hollywood for Best Documentary (Short Subject), it was the triumph of several “firsts”: the first time ever that a Pakistani filmmaker had won an Oscar; Pakistan’s first Oscar winner was a woman; and it was the first time that an American and a Pakistani had co-directed an Oscar-winning film.

The film follows Dr. Jawad and two of his patients, 39-year-old Zakia and 23-year-old Rukhsana, both disfigured by their husbands. Credit: Courtesy of "Saving Face"

The 40-minute film was showcased at the Women+Film Voices Film Festival at Junge’s hometown of Denver, Colorado on Mar. 7. And on Mar. 8, International Women’s Day, “Saving Face” premiers on the U.S. television channel HBO (at 8.30 pm ET), which funded it, and which broadcasts to millions in the country and around the world.

The film is particularly relevant to Women’s Day because of its focus on a particularly vicious form of gender violence, acid attacks, and its stress on the strength and struggle of acid attack survivors fighting back.

Although it is set in Pakistan, the film is also relevant to other countries where such attacks take place, most notably, Bangladesh, India and Afghanistan. But such attacks are not limited to “developing countries”. It was in Britain in March 2008 that 33-year- old Danny Lynch orchestrated an acid attack on vivacious 24-year-old aspiring model Katie Piper, who had begun dating him just two weeks earlier and broken up with him.

Piper’s story is now legend, but then, horribly disfigured and in great pain, she thought she would never live a normal life again. The man behind her miraculous rehabilitation was the burns specialist at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, Pakistan-born Dr Mohammad Jawad, who used an innovative reconstruction technique to treat her.

The procedure involved removing all the skin from her face, before rebuilding it with a skin substitute from her back, and then a skin graft.

“That was the first such case in the world,” Dr. Jawad told IPS by telephone from London. “The results were very good. The best anyone had ever seen.”

Later, visiting Pakistan, he mentioned the case to his former professor Maqsood Noorani at Dow Medical College in Karachi.

“He told me that there were such cases in Pakistan too. I didn’t know about it,” said Dr. Jawad. “He put me in touch with his sister-in-law Sultana Siddiqui, who runs Hum TV (a private Pakistani channel), and they had me come over for a morning show interview. The host put me on the spot, saying why don’t you come back to Pakistan and look after your own people. I promised her I would.”

Since then he has been regularly returning to Pakistan, where he has assembled a team of specialists at the Indus Hospital, an acclaimed state-of-the-art, free hospital in Karachi that serves disadvantaged communities.

“Each case is premeditated,” says Dr. Jawad. “And it happens to young, pretty women, taking away their faces. Your face and your hands are your portals of expression and communication. When someone is deprived of those, it’s more difficult to restore them to normalcy.”

When Britain’s Channel 4 broadcast its documentary “Katie: My Beautiful Face” about the Katie Piper case in October 2009, Dr. Jawad found himself invited to more television shows (“Katie gave me a lot of acknowledgement”) – including on the BBC World Service Radio.

“They have an audience of over 120 million. And guess who was listening on the other side of the pond? Daniel Junge. He called me and asked, do you know anything about acid attacks in Pakistan?” laughed Dr. Jawad.

Speaking at the Asia Society in New York on Mar. 6, Junge said he “knew about the phenomenon of acid attacks in South Asia and much of the Muslim world – and indeed, it’s a global phenomenon. But of course I wasn’t about to pack my bags and start this film. You always need an entry point as a filmmaker.

“I heard an extended version of Katie Piper’s story in which she credited her surgeon Dr. Jawad, and I thought to myself, does that sound very… Anglo? I called him up at Chelsea Hospital and asked him if he was aware of this phenomenon, he said indeed I am, I’m Pakistani, and I’ve been going back to work there.”

They met in Islamabad in March 2010, and the rest, as they say, is history.

“But it became absolutely apparent on my first trip (to Pakistan) that I needed a partner on the ground, preferably a woman,” said Junge, “and as it happened, Pakistan’s finest filmmaker is a woman, and was available.”

That is how he and Obaid Chinoy (who won an Emmy award in 2010 for her documentary “Pakistan: Children of the Taliban”) came to work together.

She had not looked into this issue before but when she saw the footage that Junge had shot, she felt “compelled to be part of this project more so because I’m a product of Pakistan, I was born and raised there. Pakistan can produce women like myself – and produce women like Zakia and Ruksana (acid attack survivors who feature in the film).

“There’s a great schizophrenia that goes on in the nation and it’s important for the educated women to be the voice of those who are not able to voice what’s happening to them,” she said, speaking at the Asia Society event.

“Saving Face” follows the story of Dr. Jawad and two of his patients, 39-year-old Zakia and 23-year-old Rukhsana, both disfigured by their husbands, and their arduous attempts to get justice.

“This film is a very powerful lesson to those men, by the women, that we are not going to give up, we are waking up, and we are strong,” said Dr. Jawad. “They’ve changed the destiny of lots of other women by giving them courage. They risk speaking out for a better tomorrow.”

Excerpt:

By Daan Bauwens and - -
BERLIN, Mar 8 2012 (IPS)

Women have been at the forefront of each uprising in the Arab world. Last week, the ‘8 Arab Women Filmmakers’ festival offered a platform to Arab women directors to give their perspectives on the future of the region.

Nadia El Fani. Credit: Daan Bauwens/IPS.

“The idea was born three years ago at a meeting between Latin American and Arab women filmmakers in Cairo,” Paola Rodriguez Sickert, an internationally renowned Chilean-German documentary filmmaker and one of the festival’s curators tells IPS. “At the meeting, I discovered a lot of similarities between the Latin American and Arab cultures. Since then, I wanted to organise an Arab women film festival in Europa, but after the Arab Spring the idea got a totally new dimension.”

“All the news we hear about Arab women comes to us through the media,” Chus Lopez Vidal, a Spanish- German video artist and the festival’s other curator, tells IPS. “Western reporting about Arab women makes us believe they are oppressed by men, and mostly the discussion draws down to one thing: the headscarf.

“We realised that this image doesn’t even come close to reality. Arab women are stronger and more powerful than we think, and they do take part in their societies. So we wanted to bring these women to Berlin, let them show their films and we asked the audience to do nothing but hear them out. We made a platform for these women to speak freely.”

At the festival, both short fiction films as long documentary films were shown. ‘Forbidden’ (2011) by co- curator Amal Ramsis describes the Egyptian people’s daily confrontations with numerous bans and regulations just before the uprising. It will be screened at the One World International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival in Prague later this month.

The semi-animated ‘Kingdom of Women’ (2010) by the Palestinian artist and activist Dahna Abourahme tells the story of how Palestinian women in the Lebanese refugee camp Ein el-Hilweh organised their lives in the midst of war.

One of the main features of the festival was ‘Ni Allah, ni Maître’ (Nor God, nor Master, 2011) by Franco- Tunisian documentary filmmaker Nadia El Fani, which was also screened at last year’s Cannes film festival. The film caused a hate campaign by Tunisian Islamists who won last October’s vote.

“I cannot return to my country, there currently are six indictments against me,” Nadia El Fani tells IPS, “all of them caused by this movie. The Islamists found the title of the movie insulting to God and to religion. When I declared on Tunisian television that I was an atheist, they accused me of inciting hatred against religion.”

In the film, El Fani has numerous discussions with people about laicism on the streets of Tunis during the beginning of the uprising. “I was heavily criticised at the time,” she tells IPS. “People told me: this is not the time to talk about laicism. Now the Islamists are demanding the Sharia to be the founding principle for the new Tunisian constitution. So I think I was right during the revolution to say: this is the time to speak about laicism. You cannot discuss, let alone talk about laicism on the day the Sharia becomes the new constitution.”

Even though she is now living in exile, El Fani remains optimistic: “This is the beginning and we are a minority, but one day we will win. It’s not because we’ve lost the battle today that you should stop fighting.”

In the short fiction film ‘A Game’ (2010), 26-year-old director Marwa Zein from Sudan takes a closer look at personal relationships in the Arab world. In the film, based on a short story by Italian writer Alberto Moravia, a divorced mother and daughter exchange roles for a brief moment.

“Being divorced is not accepted in the Arab world,” Marwa Zein says, “it is a curse, but at the same time divorce is getting more and more widespread in our region. So there’s a certain doubleness in our culture: everybody knows it, it happens everywhere but nobody talks about it and if you ignore the problem, it doesn’t exist. It works like this from East to West in Arab communities. People are having serious problems with it, but instead of trying to solve the problem, they hide it.

“As an effect we are having an unhealthy society,” Marwa Zein continues, “we are having a double life, a double character and it is psychologically exhausting. But the youth and the artists, the people who are leading the revolution and are trying to change our society, they are the people who are trying to be themselves. This revolution is not the end, it is only the beginning. It’s a long road to freedom and we have to walk it. It will help the whole of society to express itself in a free way.”

Other screened films were ‘Letter to my Sister’ (2006) by the Algerian documentary filmmaker Habiba Djahnine, ‘Damascus Roof and Tales of Paradise’ (2010) by Syrian director Soudade Kaadan, ‘Lemon Flowers’ (2007) by Lebanese documentary filmmaker Pamela Ghanimeh, and ‘Shouting in the Dark’ (2010) by the American journalist for Al Jazeera May Ying Welsh.

During the six days the eight directors were staying in Berlin, curators and filmmakers Paola Rodriguez Sickert and Chus Lopez Vidal gathered footage of every interview, screening and public discussion, to make a new documentary which will soon be shown all over the world.

Excerpt:

By Beatrice Paez
TORONTO, Canada, Mar 7 2012 (IPS)

The often heroic struggles of some of the world’s human rights victims and advocates are on full view at the Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival, which runs through Friday at the TIFF Bell Lightbox theatre.

The 10-day festival, now in its ninth year, features films that are not for the fainthearted, with subjects that include abuse, trauma and violence.

However, “although they deal with difficult subject matter, the subjects of these films are inspiring…in how they overcome human rights abuses in the past or how they’ve been defending the people who’ve had their human rights violated,” Alex Rogalski, the festival’s programmer told IPS. “They’re (going to) make you look at the headlines in a different way.”

The festival takes off with “Special Flight”, a documentary propelled by portraits of asylum seekers and illegal migrants stranded at the Frambois detention centre in Switzerland.

Stuck in limbo, the residents face three possible fates: amnesty, deportation via “special flight”, or the option to leave the country voluntarily. The verdict seals the fate of the residents, with no recourse for an appeal.

The film is a follow-up to Fernard Melgar’s documentary series, which will lead into a string of web-based films that trace those deported back to their next destination.

“This is My Land…Hebron,” directed by Stephen Natanson and Giulia Amati, weaves the testimonies of Israeli settlers and Palestinians as well as interviews with those caught in the middle of the long- standing conflict.

Among the brave souls captured on film was a former Israeli soldier, who traded sides to work as a tour guide, offering visitors an intimate and unbridled view of life inside the divided streets of Hebron.

“There are many things that we’re not getting news of and I think some of the Israeli interviews are wonderful because they very clearly explain what the situation is in Hebron,” Natanson told IPS.

An ancient city fabled to house the tomb of Abraham, Hebron is home to 160,000 Palestinians and roughly 600 to 800 Israeli settlers, flanked by a contingent of 2,000 Israeli soldiers tasked with protecting the settlers.

The daily grind of taunts, threats and stone throwing has become a routine experience for Palestinians who sometimes find themselves the target of children who have been drawn into the conflict by their parents.

Once a vital trading post, the city, which holds special significance to monotheistic believers, has been transformed by the conflict into a veritable ghost town with boarded shops and deserted streets.

Directors Natanson and Amati set out to capture the widening rift that alienates residents from one another and the rest of the country.

“We could only observe the situation and ask the questions. These are the questions we asked and the answers we got,” Natanson told IPS. “It’s difficult to see the situation in Hebron and imagine that it’s going to get better.”

Lee Hirsch reels us into the lives of Tyler, Alex, Kelby and Jameya – teenagers who have become a target of bullying.

“The Bully Project” not only captures the emotional and physical abuse that confronts them, it also exposes the flawed and startling reactions of school administrators who brush off the incidents as a part of childhood experience – “kids will be kids”.

The festival will close with “The Island President”, a film that trailed the former president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed. Acting as Nasheed’s shadow, director John Shenk taps into the challenges of mending the country’s economy and cultivating democracy, along with the pressing fight against climate change.

Given access into the political underworld during Nasheed’s first year in office, Shenk’s documentary, which screened at the Toronto Film Festival in 2011, offers an inside look into political brokering.

Other festival highlights include Pamela Yates’ “Granito: How to Nail a Dictator,” which covers the genocide campaign in Guatemala through to the search for justice, and “The Price of Sex”, an investigative piece on international sex trafficking that led Mimi Chakarova to the streets of Moldova, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece and Dubai.

“I think these movies are the opposite of escapism, these films are engaging you in someone’s reality…a reality you may not be familiar with,” said Rogalski.

Excerpt:

The Arab world is talking about a revolution; not just out on the streets but in films, in newspapers, in songs – using any means necessary to document events, expose the horrors of war and explore the struggles and possibilities that lie ahead as the Arab Spring feels the wintry chill of post-revolutionary democratic challenges.

Caught between repression and the struggle for change, filmmakers have been documenting the tidal wave of transformation sweeping across Arab countries and creating a new, collective culture of resistance.

Many feel the artistic process has been a personal and political quest for reconciling the tensions between Islam, faith, freedom and democracy, but by far the strongest consensus among media makers has been – as Julius Caesar famously remarked while leading his armies across the River Rubicon in Northern Italy – “the die has been cast.”

Image production in war-torn Syria

Filmmakers from Syria, where images of daily civilian massacre slip through the cracks of censorship, brought home the relation between image production and democracy, which has become painfully obvious in the conflict-ridden country.

According to film journalist Alaa Karkouti, Syria has no national commercial cinema and only Hollywood movies and Egypt films are publicly available, resulting in the total absence of a common film culture among civilians.

This was no accident – most authoritarian regimes thrive on placing severe restrictions on the collective imagination of their populations, limiting their ability to conjure up alternatives to the daily routine of repression.

While working on a documentary about the ‘caricature scandal’, a story about freedom of expression circumventing censorship, Syrian producer and film activist Hala Al Alabdallah unearthed a law forbidding the use of “images devoid of commentary”. The discovery highlighted just how insidious repression can be.

But while state forces attempt to control everything from free association to artistic production, resistance and creativity have come together in the squares or “agoras” of the Middle East and North Africa, opening up new public spaces for social solidarity, overcoming collective fears and expressing hope and a new sense of belonging.

For the first time, it seems, the feeling of being a citizen of one’s own country is proliferating among the Syrian masses, buoyed by a cultural resurgence that includes street dancing and turning old folksongs into revolutionary anthems.

“People came to the streets asking for freedom; even in a (muzzled) country like Syria we hear slogans chanting that Syrian people are one. I see the incarnation of freedom in poetry,” said Al Alabdallah pointing out the powerful nexus at work between insurgency, culture and engagement.

Mohamed Ali Atassi, a cultural producer in exile, turned to filmmaking out of psychological necessity, “when I realized I could no longer express the complexity I was feeling without picking up a camera,” Atassi, whose “creative solutions” include obtaining footage from inside the country using the internet and Skype interviews, told IPS.

“Reporting what is happening is a survival strategy. We went to the streets and we lost friends, hands, eyes. We realised this is no longer an action but a style of life, a choice to be against injustice now and forever,” explained Nora Younis a 34-year old online journalist, human rights activist and founder of Al Masry Al Youm a multimedia company and the Arab world’s first WebTV in Cairo.

Despite her fear, Younis felt compelled to order her newly trained team of young video journalists to “get out there and keep the cameras rolling.” In their toughest assignment yet, the 20-year-olds had to get on the streets and ‘learn by doing’ the dangerous process of reporting a revolution.

One of the video journalists reporters, Ahmed Abdel Fatah, was shot in the eye while filming people being killed on the Qsr el-Nil bridge during the Internet blackout of the 18-day-long Cairo revolution last January.

The resulting dramatic footage was edited into a documentary entitled “Reporting… a Revolution” – a powerful example of witness-filmmaking by six young reporters including Abdel Fatah.

“I am a videographer, my eye is my most precious asset,” he said. “But we will never stop. This is our job, it’s what we know how to do best and we’ll keep doing it.”

Well aware of the contradictions implicit in “guerrilla journalism”, Younis faces a daily struggle with the ethics of journalistic objectivity, as the lines between documenting revolution and revolutionary documentary filmmaking blurred into non-existence.

Arab women face the camera

Many acts of defiance amongst women are increasingly poignant expressions of a new readiness to speak up without fearing the consequences of being heard.

Examples like Aliaa Magda Elmahdy’s subversive act of posting a nude photo of herself was seen as a groundbreaking statement on the dignity of the naked female body trapped in a gender power struggle.

“The nude picture is indicative of a new state of fearlessness and this gives me hope because an incident of this kind would not have occurred before the revolution,” pointed out Viola Safik, a German- Egyptian documentary filmmaker talking in Berlin about changing perspectives in the Arab world.

Safik also warned that the opening up of cultural frontiers could lead to an era where art will become more aggressive, potentially engendering violent backlashes, like the power of the regime to label cultural producers as “traitors” or “unbelievers”.

Undeterred, women are slowly and tentatively facing the camera. Long-repressed controversial issues like marriage freedom, the meaning and implications of financial independence, tradition, what to accept and what to refuse, were all central questions in Hanan Abdalla’s debut documentary “In the Shadow of a Man”.

Born in the backstreets of Cairo, 69-year-old Wafaa, the documentary’s protagonist, looks back at the “honour” check she was forced to submit to on her wedding night and has no qualms or regrets about her divorce, though she sadly never recovers a sense of respect for men.

As violence rages throughout the Arab world, with the spotlight largely on Syria and Bahrain, Berlinale Festival jury-member Boualem Sansal, the Algerian novelist and poet, pointed out that Algeria has somehow escaped scrutiny, despite the fact that president Abdelaziz Bouteflika “strangles his people morally and culturally, an act that is tantamount to cultural genocide,” Sansal said on the last day of the Berlin film festival.

His words are a sombre reminder that the die may be cast but crucial dominoes in the Arab world have yet to fall; and when they do, the cameras will be rolling.

(END)

By Francesca Dziadek
BERLIN, Mar 1 2012 (IPS)

The Arab world is talking about a revolution; not just out on the streets but in films, in newspapers, in songs – using any means necessary to document events, expose the horrors of war and explore the struggles and possibilities that lie ahead as the Arab Spring feels the wintry chill of post-revolutionary democratic challenges.

During Arab Spring World Cinema day at Berlin’s 62nd international film festival, Arab filmmakers expressed hope, fear, defiance, resolve and resilience.

Caught between repression and the struggle for change, filmmakers have been documenting the tidal wave of transformation sweeping across Arab countries and creating a new, collective culture of resistance.

Many feel the artistic process has been a personal and political quest for reconciling the tensions between Islam, faith, freedom and democracy, but by far the strongest consensus among media makers has been – as Julius Caesar famously remarked while leading his armies across the River Rubicon in Northern Italy – “the die has been cast.”

Image production in war-torn Syria

This was no accident – most authoritarian regimes thrive on placing severe restrictions on the collective imagination of their populations, limiting their ability to conjure up alternatives to the daily routine of repression.

While working on a documentary about the ‘caricature scandal’, a story about freedom of expression circumventing censorship, Syrian producer and film activist Hala Al Alabdallah unearthed a law forbidding the use of “images devoid of commentary”. The discovery highlighted just how insidious repression can be.

But while state forces attempt to control everything from free association to artistic production, resistance and creativity have come together in the squares or “agoras” of the Middle East and North Africa, opening up new public spaces for social solidarity, overcoming collective fears and expressing hope and a new sense of belonging.

For the first time, it seems, the feeling of being a citizen of one’s own country is proliferating among the Syrian masses, buoyed by a cultural resurgence that includes street dancing and turning old folksongs into revolutionary anthems.

“People came to the streets asking for freedom; even in a (muzzled) country like Syria we hear slogans chanting that Syrian people are one. I see the incarnation of freedom in poetry,” said Al Alabdallah pointing out the powerful nexus at work between insurgency, culture and engagement.

Mohamed Ali Atassi, a cultural producer in exile, turned to filmmaking out of psychological necessity, “when I realized I could no longer express the complexity I was feeling without picking up a camera,” Atassi, whose “creative solutions” include obtaining footage from inside the country using the internet and Skype interviews, told IPS.

As revolution and the struggle for change spreads across the Arab World “witness-filmmaking” is emerging, as a formidable art enabled by YouTube – a new form of dissent-inspired ‘auteur’ film. Increasingly, a generation of mobile-savvy youth are becoming gatekeepers of the visual world, archiving that which cannot be denied to people rising up against state power.

Despite her fear, Younis felt compelled to order her newly trained team of young video journalists to “get out there and keep the cameras rolling.” In their toughest assignment yet, the 20-year-olds had to get on the streets and ‘learn by doing’ the dangerous process of reporting a revolution.

One of the video journalists reporters, Ahmed Abdel Fatah, was shot in the eye while filming people being killed on the Qsr el-Nil bridge during the Internet blackout of the 18-day-long Cairo revolution last January.

The resulting dramatic footage was edited into a documentary entitled “Reporting… a Revolution” – a powerful example of witness-filmmaking by six young reporters including Abdel Fatah.

“I am a videographer, my eye is my most precious asset,” he said. “But we will never stop. This is our job, it’s what we know how to do best and we’ll keep doing it.”

Well aware of the contradictions implicit in “guerrilla journalism”, Younis faces a daily struggle with the ethics of journalistic objectivity, as the lines between documenting revolution and revolutionary documentary filmmaking blurred into non-existence.

Arab women face the camera

Many acts of defiance amongst women are increasingly poignant expressions of a new readiness to speak up without fearing the consequences of being heard.

Examples like Aliaa Magda Elmahdy’s subversive act of posting a nude photo of herself was seen as a groundbreaking statement on the dignity of the naked female body trapped in a gender power struggle.

“The nude picture is indicative of a new state of fearlessness and this gives me hope because an incident of this kind would not have occurred before the revolution,” pointed out Viola Safik, a German- Egyptian documentary filmmaker talking in Berlin about changing perspectives in the Arab world.

Safik also warned that the opening up of cultural frontiers could lead to an era where art will become more aggressive, potentially engendering violent backlashes, like the power of the regime to label cultural producers as “traitors” or “unbelievers”.

Undeterred, women are slowly and tentatively facing the camera. Long-repressed controversial issues like marriage freedom, the meaning and implications of financial independence, tradition, what to accept and what to refuse, were all central questions in Hanan Abdalla’s debut documentary “In the Shadow of a Man”.

Born in the backstreets of Cairo, 69-year-old Wafaa, the documentary’s protagonist, looks back at the “honour” check she was forced to submit to on her wedding night and has no qualms or regrets about her divorce, though she sadly never recovers a sense of respect for men.

As violence rages throughout the Arab world, with the spotlight largely on Syria and Bahrain, Berlinale Festival jury-member Boualem Sansal, the Algerian novelist and poet, pointed out that Algeria has somehow escaped scrutiny, despite the fact that president Abdelaziz Bouteflika “strangles his people morally and culturally, an act that is tantamount to cultural genocide,” Sansal said on the last day of the Berlin film festival.

His words are a sombre reminder that the die may be cast but crucial dominoes in the Arab world have yet to fall; and when they do, the cameras will be rolling.

Excerpt:

By Omid Memarian and - -
NEW YORK, Feb 28 2012 (IPS)

Amid mounting tensions between Iran and the United States over Tehran’s nuclear programme, perhaps nothing less than an Oscar to the acclaimed feature film “A Separation” could have brought smiles to the faces of millions of Iranians who see most news as bad news these days.

From left: Merila Zarei (Actress), Asghar Farhadi ('A Separation' Director) and Tahmineh Milani (Director). Credit: CC BY 2.0

In 1997, Majid Majidi’s “Children of Heaven” was nominated for an Oscar, but lost to “Life Is Beautiful” from Italy.

“‘A Separation”s position has surpassed the Iranian independent cinema; it is now (emblematic of) national hope,” the prominent Iranian director Tahmineh Milani told IPS in a telephone interview from Tehran.

“A lot of people really need for this film to be more successful, like a public hope, because Iranian society, especially among the youth, is so depressed that this prize has created hope and public solidarity,” she added.

The film portrays a struggling middle-class couple whose moral values are put to the test when an incident reveals hidden layers of the characters’ personalities and dignity.

In January, when Asghar Farhadi won the Golden Globe Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category, in his short speech, he said only that his people are a “peace loving” people. Many criticised him for not using the podium to send a stronger message from such a unique venue when millions of people were watching.

But Farhadi, well-known for not getting involved in politics at home, had the most political speech of the 84th Academy Awards, a speech that not only pleased millions of Iranian viewers but also Iranian officials who have been hammered by the international community with a series of severe sanctions and threats of a military attack against Iran’s nuclear sites over the past months.

“At this time many Iranians all over the world are watching us, and I imagine them to be very happy,” said Farhadi, adding, “They are happy not just because of an important award or a film or filmmaker, but because at the time the talk of war, intimidation, and aggression is exchanged between politicians, the name of their country, Iran, is spoken here through its glorious culture, a rich and ancient culture that has been hidden under the dust of politics.”

Farhadi, who is expected to go back to Iran shortly after his trip to the U.S., walked a fine line in keeping his speech neutral, not specifying Iran or the West as the source of ongoing tensions, and made his speech all about the Iranian people.

“I proudly offer this award to the people of my country, the people who respect all cultures and civilisations and despise hostility and resentment,” Farhadi added.

Merila Zarei, a veteran actress in Tehran who appears in “A Separation” told IPS, “The fact that the film was made by a group of Iranian cinema professionals and has been seen able to compete with films from other parts of their world, based on international standards, is an honour for Iran’s cinema and film industry, and it helps our country’s culture and film industry to be recognised in the world.”

“Perhaps this Oscar can be a good starting point for others to follow the Iranian cinema more seriously,” she said.

For Zarei, working with Asghar Farhadi was an extraordinary experience. “As an experienced actress, working with him was like learning in a classroom,” Zarei said. “He taught us so many nuances expertly, affecting the way our work flowed. I believe that was the result of his knowledge, awareness, and expertise.”

“A Separation” earned a first Oscar for Iran at a time when the country’s film industry, particularly since the 2009 presidential election, has been under unrelenting pressure from authorities.

Last month, the government shut down the independent “House of Cinema” (Khane Cinema), the Iranian Alliance of Motion Picture Guilds, which has more than 6,000 members.

In September 2011, Iranian authorities arrested five documentary filmmakers and accused them of working or cooperating with the BBC Persian Service. The five documentarians were never tried in court and were released weeks later.

Last year, Jafar Panahi, one of Iran’s most prominent directors, was sentenced to six years in prison and banned from filmmaking, interviewing and traveling for 20 years for making a movie on Iran’s 2009 electoral unrest and subsequent crackdown. Panahi’s co-director, Mohammad Rasoulof, was also sentenced to one year in prison.

“The atmosphere was so constricted last year, and the inappropriate implemented policies have now reached a negative stage in the government-sponsored cinema,” Tahmineh Milani told IPS when asked about the freedom filmmakers exercise inside Iran.

“When we bring up issues and report on the shortcomings and deficiencies, we prepare the background for cultural and social growth,” Milani said in a telephone interview from Tehran. “Artists are not obligated to prescribe remedies for the society. They can only report the pain. The one who (should) come along and find the solution is the person who is the country’s macro manager.”

“It is these types of criticism that solve the problem,” Milani said. “But now the authorities say, ‘We don’t have any problems at all for you to bring up. Whoever brings up the problems is my enemy.’

“But it isn’t like that at all. I am not considered a political person myself, but I cannot withhold my reaction to the shortcomings or to the deep social issues in our society, I cannot remain silent.”

Excerpt:

Amid mounting tensions between Iran and the United States over Tehran’s nuclear programme, perhaps nothing less than an Oscar to the acclaimed feature film “A Separation” could have brought smiles to the faces of millions of Iranians who see most news as bad news these days.

From left: Merila Zarei (Actress), Asghar Farhadi ('A Separation' Director) and Tahmineh Milani (Director). Credit:CC BY 2.0

Written and directed by Ashghar Farhadi, “A Separation” was Iran’s entry for the Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Film category. An acclaimed and powerful drama, the film received the first Oscar in Iran’s cinema history Sunday night in Los Angeles for a sophisticated story that captures the essence of everyday life and the difficulties of being honest when it’s costly to do so.

In 1997, Majid Majidi’s “Children of Heaven” was nominated for an Oscar, but lost to “Life Is Beautiful” from Italy.

“‘A Separation”s position has surpassed the Iranian independent cinema; it is now (emblematic of) national hope,” the prominent Iranian director Tahmineh Milani told IPS in a telephone interview from Tehran.

“A lot of people really need for this film to be more successful, like a public hope, because Iranian society, especially among the youth, is so depressed that this prize has created hope and public solidarity,” she added.

The film portrays a struggling middle-class couple whose moral values are put to the test when an incident reveals hidden layers of the characters’ personalities and dignity.

In January, when Asghar Farhadi won the Golden Globe Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category, in his short speech, he said only that his people are a “peace loving” people. Many criticised him for not using the podium to send a stronger message from such a unique venue when millions of people were watching.

But Farhadi, well-known for not getting involved in politics at home, had the most political speech of the 84th Academy Awards, a speech that not only pleased millions of Iranian viewers but also Iranian officials who have been hammered by the international community with a series of severe sanctions and threats of a military attack against Iran’s nuclear sites over the past months.

“At this time many Iranians all over the world are watching us, and I imagine them to be very happy,” said Farhadi, adding, “They are happy not just because of an important award or a film or filmmaker, but because at the time the talk of war, intimidation, and aggression is exchanged between politicians, the name of their country, Iran, is spoken here through its glorious culture, a rich and ancient culture that has been hidden under the dust of politics.”

Farhadi, who is expected to go back to Iran shortly after his trip to the U.S., walked a fine line in keeping his speech neutral, not specifying Iran or the West as the source of ongoing tensions, and made his speech all about the Iranian people.

“I proudly offer this award to the people of my country, the people who respect all cultures and civilisations and despise hostility and resentment,” Farhadi added.

Merila Zarei, a veteran actress in Tehran who appears in “A Separation” told IPS, “The fact that the film was made by a group of Iranian cinema professionals and has been seen able to compete with films from other parts of their world, based on international standards, is an honour for Iran’s cinema and film industry, and it helps our country’s culture and film industry to be recognised in the world.”

“Perhaps this Oscar can be a good starting point for others to follow the Iranian cinema more seriously,” she said.

For Zarei, working with Asghar Farhadi was an extraordinary experience. “As an experienced actress, working with him was like learning in a classroom,” Zarei said. “He taught us so many nuances expertly, affecting the way our work flowed. I believe that was the result of his knowledge, awareness, and expertise.”

“A Separation” earned a first Oscar for Iran at a time when the country’s film industry, particularly since the 2009 presidential election, has been under unrelenting pressure from authorities.

Last month, the government shut down the independent “House of Cinema” (Khane Cinema), the Iranian Alliance of Motion Picture Guilds, which has more than 6,000 members.

In September 2011, Iranian authorities arrested five documentary filmmakers and accused them of working or cooperating with the BBC Persian Service. The five documentarians were never tried in court and were released weeks later.

Last year, Jafar Panahi, one of Iran’s most prominent directors, was sentenced to six years in prison and banned from filmmaking, interviewing and traveling for 20 years for making a movie on Iran’s 2009 electoral unrest and subsequent crackdown. Panahi’s co-director, Mohammad Rasoulof, was also sentenced to one year in prison.

“The atmosphere was so constricted last year, and the inappropriate implemented policies have now reached a negative stage in the government-sponsored cinema,” Tahmineh Milani told IPS when asked about the freedom filmmakers exercise inside Iran.

“When we bring up issues and report on the shortcomings and deficiencies, we prepare the background for cultural and social growth,” Milani said in a telephone interview from Tehran. “Artists are not obligated to prescribe remedies for the society. They can only report the pain. The one who (should) come along and find the solution is the person who is the country’s macro manager.”

“It is these types of criticism that solve the problem,” Milani said. “But now the authorities say, ‘We don’t have any problems at all for you to bring up. Whoever brings up the problems is my enemy.’

“But it isn’t like that at all. I am not considered a political person myself, but I cannot withhold my reaction to the shortcomings or to the deep social issues in our society, I cannot remain silent.”

(END)

Palestinians in East Jerusalem can once again go to the movies, after Al Quds Cinema reopened its doors this week after being closed for 25 years. Organisers say this signals the rebirth for Palestinian arts and culture in the city.

The new Al Quds cinema opens in East Jerusalem. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/IPS.

“We have been cut off for a while from the rest of the world, so I think that this is the perfect place for Palestinians to come,” Rima Essa, the cinema coordinator tells IPS. “I’m trying to bring a lot of films from areas that we never thought of bringing films from; from Iran, Syria, Lebanon. We hope that this centre will give the Palestinians a different cultural experience.”

Housed in the Yabous Cultural Centre in East Jerusalem, Al Quds Cinema celebrated its relaunch with an inaugural film festival called ‘Freedom Films Week’. Nearly a dozen films were shown, on issues ranging from revolutions in Tunisia to sexual harassment in Egypt and daily life for Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

“You see that people are really hungry for these kinds of films. People come at the end and speak with you and a lot of people you start to see day after day,” says Essa, who curated the Freedom Films Week festival.

“It’s creating a very interesting and specific cultural centre for Palestinians. We are hoping also that we can reach the everyday Palestinians who are just walking past this building and want to see what’s going on.”

Built in the 1950s, the popular East Jerusalem cinema once held up to 800 people and screened commercial films from the region and around the world until the Israeli authorities closed it in 1987, at the start of the first Palestinian Intifadah.

Most of the film reels and equipment dating back to the cinema’s founding were destroyed due to exposure to sun and rain over the years. A few old film canisters and negatives reels, and one projector, were restored, however, and are now exhibited in the lobby of the Yabous Centre.

Essa says that while construction of additional performance halls and screening rooms is still ongoing, she hopes Al Quds cinema will help fill the cultural void created by the Israeli occupation.

“Economically and socio-economically, it has been a big hassle for them. At most of the cinemas in West Jerusalem, if you want to go to see a film, you will pay 37 shekels (ten dollars). And this is money that Palestinians, because of the situation they are living in, cannot afford, so they are not exposed to cultural events and not exposed to things around them.”

“We are more and more inside a siege that Israel is forcing on Jerusalemite (Palestinians). So I’m hoping that this place actually will give the Palestinians, not only East Jerusalemites but Palestinians in general, the ability to come and to see films.”

Palestinian human rights groups estimate that since August 2001, the Israeli authorities have closed nearly 30 organisations serving the Palestinian community in Jerusalem, including the Orient House, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) former headquarters in the city, the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce, and the Arab Studies Society.

In 2009, the Israeli authorities also banned numerous Palestinian cultural and educational events scheduled to celebrate the declaration of Jerusalem as the ‘Capital of Arab Culture’ for that year.

“In general, the Israelis are trying to close everything related to the Palestinians, it doesn’t matter what kind of organisation, cultural or otherwise. This is one of the pressures to push the Palestinians out, and to make the Palestinians feel that they are not related to this city,” says Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER).

Al-Hammouri tells IPS that the closures of Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem must be seen in the context of Israel’s ongoing Judaisation of the city, and the Israeli stance that any Palestinian connection to Jerusalem constitutes a demographic threat.

“It’s a demographic issue. They want to bring (Jewish-Israeli) settlers (to take) the place of the Palestinians. This kind of pressure on the Palestinians is to get them to leave Jerusalem and make them feel afraid, and it’s related to other kinds of pressures, like home demolition orders and the confiscation of ID cards,” al- Hammouri says.

For Rima Essa, who is herself a respected filmmaker, reopening of Al Quds is not only a way to fight the impact of the Israeli occupation, but can also serve as an important tool to educate and inspire youth.

“Children are not used to go to the cinema. They haven’t had the chance to see films. Now they can be exposed to intellectuals and writers that they never heard about. It’s to be more connected to the Arab world and also to the international world,” says Essa, adding that she wants to organise practical filmmaking workshops for young people and perhaps eventually open a film school.

“As an artist, I can dream. For me, the important thing is cinema.”

A landmark concert featuring artistes from eight of the ten South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) took place here on Jan. 21, in an effort to build a regional community through the common language of music.

A landmark ASEAN concert in Laos on Jan. 21 2012 featured performers from eight of the bloc’s ten member countries Credit: Kalinga Seneviratne/IPS

Still, the performers and the organisers of the event agree unilaterally that regional governments need to play a major role in promoting this shared culture through dedicated national efforts.

“Laos took the initiative in organising this first ASEAN concert and we hope other member countries will take turns hosting the event every year,” Khamphanh Phonthongsy, the Lao representative on the cultural sub-committee of ASEAN’s committee of culture and information (COCI) told IPS.

Organized by the Lao ministry of information, culture and tourism, the concert featured representatives from Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Brunei, Philippines, Malaysia, Laos and Cambodia. Singapore and Myanmar were the only countries that did not send performers.

Each country artist sang two songs, one in their own language and one in English.

Though there was no live orchestra, most of the musical numbers were accompanied by dancers adorned in their traditional dress, which added extra colour to an already vibrant evening.

“All the dancers were local,” explained Phonthongsy. “ASEAN performers sent us DVDs of their dance routines and we trained Laotian dancers to perform them.”

The singers and dancers only rehearsed once together the day before the concert. The smooth movement of the Laotian dancers on stage proved that there are deep similarities between the musical cultures of the regions.

“I used to search YouTube for ASEAN music but now I can experience it for myself. I (was) so excited to be part of this first ASEAN concert and think we need to do more,” said Laotian pop star Tee Oudalai.

Vietnamese pop star Lo Ngoc Hau agrees. She said that TV channels in her country do not air musical programmes from other countries in the region. “I have to listen to CDs (to find out about ASEAN music),” she lamented.

The Lao national television network ran a live broadcast of the two-and-a-half-hour concert from the national cultural hall in Vietiane and beamed the show to 20 other countries via satellite feed.

Sadly, the Lao organisers told IPS, no other member country took up the feed to broadcast it on their local channels.

Filipino artist Jan Pablo argues that the common denominator for most ASEAN countries is agriculture, a theme that runs through many of the region’s traditional folk songs. Though most of the performers sang in different languages, Pablo believes this common theme could be exploited to bond the region together via musical exchange.

“We can influence people though music,” he told IPS. “But we need more publicity and promotion. Government radio stations must help in this, since we cannot expect commercial radio to make us popular.”

The concert reflected the rich diversity of ASEAN music, featuring numerous items that could potentially become cultural hits in the region.

Speaking to IPS after the concert, Brunei pop star Putri Noriza said that the audience seemed excited by the songs “because they came for a cultural exchange.”

However, she isn’t sure the time is ripe for introducing the Malay dangdut or joget rhythms – popular dance forms with beats as infectious as Indian bhangra or Latin America’s lambada – as a form of dance music for the region, even though Indonesian singer Indri Tribuana received an encore for her dangdut performance.

“Some say that they don’t like it, but when they hear it for the first time they change their minds,” noted Tribuana. “I chose dangdut because it represents my country and most Indonesians love it.”

Pablo argues that the domination of Anglo-American recording companies in the region has made it very difficult for someone singing in their local language to make it big in the region.

Even within the Philippines, he complained, most commercial broadcasters prefer English music because they believe it will generate the most revenue.

“If you want to become popular singing original Filipino music you have to do it through the pubs and the underground (music scene) – not commercially,” he stressed.

The omnipresence of Western music in the region was a primary reason for organisers’ stipulation that each artist performs one of their two songs in English.

But though this is the official language of communications within the regional bloc, few of the performers were fluent in it. Despite memorizing English songs using CDs, these performances paled in comparison to the numbers done in a local language.

ASEAN has set 2015 as the date for integrating the ten nations into one community, but often music and culture take a backseat while business people and politicians discuss trade and economic integration.

The COCI was set up in 1979 with the aim of promoting regional integration through cultural exchanges. It acts through national committees, which usually function under their respective information or cultural ministries.

However, prior attempts to unify the region through music, like the ASEAN Golden Voice Festival pioneered by Vietnam in 2008 or Thailand’s 2009 ASEAN concert in honour of King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s 60th anniversary of coronation, did not make it onto COCI’s official ASEAN calendar.

Khamphou Phiasakha, secretary for ASEAN COCI said that he was awaiting approval of next year’s concert from the committee of permanent representatives to ASEAN at their meeting in Thailand later this year.

These women are not fashion models, nor are they advertising any product, yet their images look down on passersby from giant black-and-white posters in the Venezuelan capital. There are 52 of them, and they are all mothers who have lost one or more children to the criminal violence that is plaguing the country.

Faces of mothers whose children were killed peer out from walls in Caracas. Credit: Fidel Márquez /IPS

“I have not moved out of this house, because whenever I cross the threshold I remember the day each one of them was killed,” María Elena Delgado, who lost two sons and a daughter, Erasmo, Wilmer and Norka between 1999 and 2008, told IPS. “I stayed to support the community, so that the same thing would not happen to other youngsters in the barrio.”

Most of the murders occur in the “barrios”, as Venezuela’s poorest neighbourhoods are known. And these areas are home to most of the mothers who lent their images for a social and artistic cause.

Proyecto Esperanza (Project Hope) seeks to call attention to and move people to think about the other victims of violence: the mothers and other family members of the slain. It is headed by two communicators, María Fernanda Pérez and Carolina González.

“We wanted to give faces to the victims of this violence, to which we are so accustomed on a daily basis that our feelings seem to be anaesthetised. We want passersby to take a minute to reflect on the anguish of these mothers, and to see that victims are not just numbers relayed in the press; that’s why we put up the photos,” Pérez told IPS.

A group of photographers took portraits of the 52 mothers, which were printed as posters, mostly 1.80 by 2.40 metres, and some 3.60 by 5.40 metres. Then a couple of dozen volunteers stuck the images on walls with “eco-friendly glue,” a paste of flour, sugar and water.

“Rather than an accusation, it is a cry for peace. It is not just complaining about the anguish, but a demonstration that there is also hope that justice will be done, and ways will be found so that every day, more and more lives can be saved from the violence,” Pérez said.

In this South American country of 29 million people, there are 13,000 to 14,000 murders a year, and an additional 8,000 violent deaths for resisting authority or that are still under investigation, bringing the violent death rate to over 70 per 100,000 population per year, according to the human rights organisation PROVEA.

The official homicide rate of 48 per 100,000 population per year is one of the highest in the world, comparable to those of El Salvador, Honduras and Jamaica in the Americas, and Côte d’Ivoire and Swaziland in Africa, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Caracas, with a homicide rate of 122 per 100,000 population according to UNODC, is by far the most violent capital city in South America.

“Living like this is a nightmare,” said Bebeka Pichardo, whose 24-year-old son Taner was murdered in 2010. “When they kill one of our children, they are branding us like cattle. You wake up, see the sun and feel absolutely indifferent – the sun is indifferent to your grief, and it shows you that life goes on even though you feel dead. The sun does not care about you, it keeps on shining.”

“Although over 90 percent of the victims are men, most of them young, it is women who take the pursuit of justice upon themselves,” said Liliana Ortega, head of the Committee of Victims’ Relatives (COFAVIC) which was formed after the deaths of hundreds of people during the week of protests, looting and repression in 1989 known as the “Caracazo”.

Ortega draws a parallel with other causes that had very little visibility until women, and especially mothers, assumed the challenge of going out on the streets to confront society with the issue, like the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, or the Women in White in Cuba, she told IPS.

In Venezuela, “women are the ones who are trying to seek justice, but they suffer from revictimisation: because of the cause they espouse, they are often not only ignored, but actively threatened, harassed, and sometimes mistreated or even criminalised,” she said.

Writer Alberto Barrera praised the project’s work because “suddenly, human experience comes to the fore, and it is even capable of turning anguish into art, absence into solidarity. Victims are transformed into images of faith for the future.”

The faces of the 52 mothers “are not here to reproach us for the loneliness the bullets forced on them, but to invite us to think and to build peace,” said Barrera.

Project Hope was supported and encouraged by Inside Out, a global participatory photography movement led by a French artist who identifies himself only as “JR”. Over the past decade Inside Out has made an impact on different cities, using photographs as huge as they are unusual in conflict environments.

Among its actions were placing photographs of Palestinians and Israelis looking at each other in cities in both Israel and Palestine, and of women living in the dangerous Morro da Providencia “favela” or shanty town in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Another series, “Women Are Heroes”, was displayed on a train in Kenya; elder citizens were portrayed on walls in the Colombian city of Cartagena; and people smiling or making faces were splashed around Ciudad Juárez, the Mexican city on the border with the United States that is plagued by violence and in particular, femicides (gender-based murders of women).

The results are far from immediate. The weekend after the Nov. 19 debut of the 52 photographs was the bloodiest of the year in Caracas, with 70 violent deaths in the metropolitan area, and the authorities have not even mentioned Project Hope’s photographic display.

However, Pérez said that many other mothers and relatives of victims have called the project to offer their walls for displaying more photographs, to contribute their testimonies to a book in progress on this experience, or to request that Project Hope be replicated in other Venezuelan cities.

“Achieving peace does not require only very big or very difficult efforts, but many small efforts in different spheres,” Pérez said.

Excerpt:

Forget about finding Cantarrana on a map or travel guide to Cuba. “Nobody knew about us; we didn’t exist,” said one resident of this working-class neighbourhood on the west side of Havana.

"I think my mural is the best," says Caridad Acosta. Credit: Patricia Grogg/IPS

Cantarrana, which means “frog croaks,” is so called because these critters used to fill the streets when heavy rains would cause nearby rivers to overflow.

But a street full of art – instead of frogs – has drawn attention to the neighbourhood, and is bringing about a change in the local residents. “Now people feel important and proud to live here,” Aleida González, a 47-year-old mechanical engineer who was born at No. 4405 63rd Street, commented to IPS.

Her home is one of the few on the block that do not have murals painted on their outside walls. “I prefer to care for the plants on my terrace, but I must admit that this idea of artists displaying their work on our homes has improved the image of our street. The neighbours are taking more of an interest in taking care of their walls, and there is more respect among everybody,” she said.

The participating artists came together in a project supported by the International Committee for the Development of the Peoples (CISP), an Italy-based NGO that has been working in Cuba for 20 years.

“It began two-and-a-half years ago, and is showing what can be done,” Eduardo Lima, who recently stepped down as the neighbourhood’s official representative after 12 years in office, told IPS.

“I think there are many social benefits, because it has even improved people’s moods; they’re happy because their street looks nice. Relations have improved in the community, and people are more sociable and interested in working together,” said Lima.

He said he hopes the idea will spread beyond Cantarrana, which borders Puentes Grandes, another neighbourhood in the Playa municipality on the outskirts of the capital. “For now we are going to focus on this street, which has 300 residents, look after it and make it an example of what can be done,” he said.

Inspired by the project, some neighbours have taken up painting under the guidance of the professionals. “This is a population group that was considered somewhat marginalised and isolated, and now they feel better because somebody is thinking about them,” said Miguel Angel González Pi, one of the artists involved in the teaching.

“It has been an incredible experience. This is the first time I’ve painted in the open air, with a wall as my canvas. Besides, the locals have showed us a lot of trust and affection, and they’re always willing to support and participate,” said Isabel María Llamas, a self-taught artist with 10 years of experience.

According to Paola Larghi, the CIPS representative in Cuba, the project is unique in that it did not emerge from the community, but was “somewhat induced” by the artists. “However, the people began getting increasingly involved in fixing up their houses, even contributing materials, which are not easy to obtain here,” she said.

In her opinion, another positive result of the project is that people now have a better appreciation of the visual arts and take better care of their surroundings. “There has been a real impact on improving hygiene, sanitation and the environment in the community,” said Larghi, who described the project as a “small spark” that lit other, broader fires.

Some of the other new undertakings by the CIPS include “Espacio Abierto” (Open Space), which seeks to promote transformative actions through art in several underprivileged neighbourhoods in the Playa municipality, joined progressively by local cultural institutions and groups of young people interested in community work.

“Our experience in Cuba led us to decide that socio-cultural development would be our sphere of action, and that art had an important role as a tool for transformation,” Larghi said during a forum on the subject held during the 14th Italian Culture Week in Havana, Nov. 21-27.

Cuban architects like Mario Coyula back the idea of active citizen participation in the challenges involved in rebuilding an urban environment hit by the accumulated deterioration of the last five decades. In a recent article about the city of Havana, Coyula said it was necessary to take advantage of the potential offered by public spaces “to create a sense of belonging.”

In statements to IPS, Italian Ambassador Marco Baccin said that Italian cooperation with Cuba included support for restoration projects in the Old Havana historical district, as well as social initiatives and renewable energy programmes.

Baccin said that Cuban-Italian relations were very good in every sense, including a successful Italian Culture Week. Political relations between the two countries are quite smooth, as is the dialogue on bilateral and international issues of common interest.

“Within the European Union, Italy takes a position that is very favourable to opening up the possibility of a new framework for relations with Cuba,” he said.

The film is set in a shantytown in Ciudad Bolivar. Credit: Alison McKellar/CC BY 2.0

By Constanza Vieira and - -
BOGOTA, Nov 30 2011 (IPS)

A teenage love story is the fictional plot device in a new Colombian film, Silence in Paradise, about the all-too-real phenomenon of the “false positives” – the euphemism used to describe army killings of young civilians passed off as guerrilla casualties.

The film is set in a shantytown in Ciudad Bolivar. Credit: Alison McKellar/CC BY 2.0

The film premiered in Colombia on Nov. 25. But on Nov. 19 there was a pre-premiere in Bogotá before a military audience – who were not pleased with the film.

The film is set in the shantytown of El Paraíso (Paradise) in the hills on the south side of Bogotá, where armed bands charge shopkeepers and transport workers “protection money” in exchange for leaving them alone.

El Paraíso is one of the neighbourhoods in the vast working-class district of Ciudad Bolívar, where some 400,000 people displaced by the armed conflict live in poverty, with a spectacular view of the capital down below as their only luxury.

Esmeralda Pinzón, the actress who plays the complex role of Susana – one of the links in the “false positives” business – actually used to live in El Paraíso. Forced to leave her home at the age of 10 after her father was murdered, she and her mother settled in the neighbourhood like so many other people fleeing the violence in different regions around the country, she told the web site ConfidencialColombia.com.

The film deals carefully with a touchy subject: the recruitment of mainly poor young men, who are killed and tallied up as combat casualties. They are offered a few days of work outside the city – and are never heard from again. After they are taken away, they are forced to put on camouflage fatigues like the ones worn by leftist insurgents, and are shot by members of the security forces.

That’s how far Silencio en el Paraíso – Silence in Paradise – goes.

There is no movie yet about what happens after that: the drafting of the legal documents showing that they were guerrillas killed in combat, which will be reviewed by the military justice system and are thus drawn up in a language perfectly adapted to the requirements of the country’s criminal code or international humanitarian law (IHL).

The formalities include photos of the corpses, fake autopsies and even statements from witnesses who took part in the purported firefights.

Rank-and-file soldiers, noncommissioned officers and officers give declarations, closely following the script of the orders for staging nonexistent military operations that comply with the rules of combat under IHL and national forensic standards for handling corpses.

In other words, “they aren’t unaware of (the standards) and the noncommissioned officers themselves know how to use the terminology of IHL. The orders given to the battalions for the operations are impeccably written. The people who draft them are closely familiar with IHL,” said Jesuit priest Javier Giraldo, the director of the human rights and political violence databank of the Centre for Popular Research and Education (CINEP).

“Maybe what that knowledge really does is help them to see how to get around those standards in practice,” he added.

Everything is done in such a way that the justice system ends up concluding that the bodies are really those of people killed in combat.

But when Judge Alexander Cortés, a retired army captain, reported signs of fraud in a number of the cases, he ended up in exile.

In 2007 and 2008, he was a military judge for army Brigade 17 in Carepa, a town in the banana-growing region of Urabá in the northwestern province of Antioquia. In compliance with a rule requiring that the military courts verify whether the casualties actually occurred in combat, Cortés reviewed a large number of cases.

After reviewing 55 and finding abundant signs of fraud, he referred the cases from the military justice system to the civilian courts.

The cost he paid was persecution from high-ups in the army.

Cortés did have the support of Luz Marina Gil, who was director of the military justice system at the time. But she was later sacked.

The case of Judge Cortés is in the appendices of the report “23 years of false positives (1988-2011)”, which the CINEP databank happened to present in Bogotá the same week that Silence in Paradise premiered.

The study covers 951 cases from 28 of the country’s 32 departments or provinces, involving 1,741 victims. Of that total, 40 percent of the killings occurred in 2007, when President Juan Manuel Santos was defence minister for then President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010).

To what extent was the current president of Colombia responsible for this phenomenon? “It’s a paradox: the largest number of cases was reported when Santos was defence minister, but at the same time, the number of cases started going down,” the director of CINEP, Catholic priest Mauricio García, told IPS. “The statistics attest to that.”

The number of cases plunged between 2007 and 2009, as heads rolled and measures were adopted after the “false positives” scandal broke in 2008.

Although human rights organisations had been reporting the phenomenon for over two decades, the story was first covered by the press in September that year, when a human rights official in Soacha, another sprawling shantytown southwest of Bogotá, denounced that the bodies of young men who went missing from the neighbourhood in January of that year had appeared in a morgue in northeastern Colombia.

The scandal had international repercussions, and as a result of pressure from donor countries, the number of extrajudicial killings started to go down.

The army killings had become more and more widespread since 2002, when Uribe took office. His administration officially implemented a system of promotions and awards for members of the military, depending on the number of “guerrillas” killed.

But the practice continues. CINEP documented eight cases involving 10 victims in 2009, another eight cases involving 12 deaths in 2010, and again, eight cases, this time leaving 17 victims, in the first half of 2011.

“Additional measures are needed if they really want to put an end to this practice which clearly undermines the legitimacy of the institutions,” García said.

The investigation by the attorney general’s office has covered a larger number of cases, around 2,500, in which 3,800 members of the military are implicated. But it only provides numbers, not names.

The CINEP databank refuses to reduce the victims to mere numbers. For that reason, 196 of the 327 pages of the report contain brief paragraphs giving dates, names, places and information about what happened in each case.

But the CINEP study does not list the local, regional or national commanders under whose leadership the crimes occurred.

Excerpt:

By Patricia Grogg and - -
HAVANA, Nov 24 2011 (IPS)

The story of Saúl, a violent husband, and Odalys, an abused wife, has been on Cuban TV screens for several weeks now, bringing the touchy and often silenced issue of violence against women into millions of homes. It may cause shock or repulsion, but few can escape the controversy or discussion.

“Making this issue visible is this soap opera’s great contribution,” Danae C. Diéguez, an expert on gender and film, told IPS. The soap, “Bajo el mismo sol” (Under the Same Sun), is divided into three seasons, each with its own story line, and Part II (called “Soledad” or Loneliness/Solitude) addresses the loneliness that people can feel even if they are not alone.

Saúl and Odalys have more than just a bad marriage: in their relationship, hitting has replaced dialogue. The tall, burly husband beats his wife, who gradually leaves behind her passive vulnerability and starts to react, with the help of a friend.

“I don’t understand how you can put up with so much,” people have remarked to actress Tamara Castellanos, who plays Odalys.

“People who say that have never been in that kind of situation,” commented Magaly, a 70-year-old woman who admitted to IPS that she had suffered continuous abuse from her husband. “I was saved by the fact that he decided to leave the country. At least Odalys has hit back sometimes at her husband. I never dared to do that; what I did was prevent him from hitting my face.”

“If it was me, I would have kicked him out of the house a long time ago,” stated Dunia Piquera, 35, who has been married for 14 years. “The soap is good, because it shows reality” and has many messages for society, she said. “Although it’s true, people don’t always learn, and they keep making the same mistakes,” she told IPS.

Perhaps like no other Cuban soap opera, the most popular type of TV programme in this country of 11.2 million, “Soledad” – especially the case of Odalys – is stirring debate inside and outside the home. Nobody remembers that it is fiction when they start talking about it, as they wait in line for the bus, at the bakery, or to pay the phone bill.

For Castellanos, it was a “searing” experience, but it also helped her to “mature” and to see life from another perspective, she says. “We have taken the first step; the wall of silence has come down, because there are a lot of people in that situation. I hope they can all get past that barrier and find the help they need,” she said during a conference organised by the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC).

According to Diéguez, this soap is the first television programme in Cuba to address the “cycle of violence” – a theory formulated by U.S. anthropologist Lenore Walker (The Battered Women, 1979) that explains the behaviour of some women abused by their spouses, especially about why the victim goes back to her attacker.

The cycle begins with the honeymoon phase, then moves on to the tension-building phase. This is followed by the acting out phase, which leads to remorse and a return to the honeymoon phase, when the aggressor is once again kind and affectionate and promises to change.

The woman believes him and agrees to give him another chance. After several repetitions of the cycle, the stage of remorse and pleas for forgiveness becomes shorter and shorter and then disappears. What remains is tension and violent explosions.

“Soledad” coincided recently with the National Campaign for Non-Violence, co-ordinated for the fifth consecutive year by a nongovernmental organisation, the Oscar Arnulfo Romero Reflection and Solidarity Group (OAR), with the purpose of reflecting on, making visible and dehumanising gender-based violence, and getting both men and women involved.

The campaign, set to run from Nov. 25 – International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women – to Dec. 9, includes community projects and government institutions, and is complemented by other parallel initiatives, organised by the National Centre for Sex Education (CENESEX), the Iberian-American Network on Masculinities, and United Nations agencies on the island.

In a workshop held at the OAR this week, community activists talked about the need for a help line to support women who are victims of gender-based violence. Apparently, the authorities will analyse the possible implementation of this kind of system; hot lines already exist for calling in consultations about AIDS or drugs.

The nongovernmental FMC has 175 women and family guidance centres nationwide, which provide support to victims of abuse. However, experts say their impact is not the same everywhere, either because of a lack of qualified staff or because few people know about their work.

Since 1997, the FMC, whose membership includes the majority of Cuban women over the age of 14, has been co-ordinating the National Working Group for the Prevention of and Attention to Domestic Violence. This group, comprising various government agencies, is considered an official recognition of domestic violence as a social problem in Cuba.

In any case, gender-based violence has tended to be silenced or minimised in Cuba, in the government-controlled media as well as other official spaces.

But this situation could change, since the issue has been included in the central document to be discussed at the governing Communist Party’s upcoming national conference, set for January 2012.

The Cuban constitution and many of the country’s laws guarantee women’s equality and protect the family, but abuse that happens within the home is not always reported, nor is it reflected in the statistics. The experts say a law against gender-based violence is what is needed, not just the improvement of existing legislation.

Excerpt:

A poster of "The Lady". Credit: IPS.

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, Nov 24 2011 (IPS)

Twenty years after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and a year after being released from house arrest, Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is the subject of a sweeping film that may increase international pressure on Burma’s ruling regime to speed up tentative reforms.

A poster of "The Lady". Credit: IPS.

“The Lady”, by renowned French director Luc Besson, has gained the support of Amnesty International France and will be in cinemas at the end of this month. Special screenings here have already sparked debate and spurred viewers to sign petitions calling for the release of prisoners of conscience.

“The film is a powerful portrait of what a human rights defender has to give up in the fight for freedom,” says Mireille Boisson, spokesperson for Amnesty International France and an expert on Burma.

“Suu Kyi had to leave her life as a wife, as a mother. She sacrificed a lot of things with the approval of her family and that’s typical of what human rights defenders have to go through,” Boisson told IPS after a press screening of the film this week.

“The Lady”, with Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh in the lead, focuses as much on this huge personal cost as on the facts of Suu Kyi’s battle for democracy in Burma. The film shows the impact on her husband and her two sons, and it is meant to be a love story as well as a true political account.

Suu Kyi’s husband Michael Aris, played by English actor David Thewlis, was a professor at Oxford, and he supported her tirelessly in her fight against the Burmese junta. But he died of cancer without having seen her for three years because he was repeatedly refused a visa to visit her in Burma.

Her sons were stripped of their Burmese nationality and also not allowed to visit for several years, as the authorities sought to break Suu Kyi’s will and force her to leave the country without any guarantee of being allowed back in.

The film sticks to historical facts, without seeming too much like a docudrama. A prologue shows the assassination of Suu Kyi’s father, Gen. Aung San, in 1947, as he worked to form a new government following independence from Britain. Suu Kyi was two years old at the time.

The more recent story begins with her life in England alongside her husband and sons, and describes her return to Burma in 1988 to care for her sick mother. Without the intention of being involved in politics, she is confronted by the brutal crackdown against young people demonstrating for change in the August 1988 movement and is a witness to the bloodshed.

The film shows her being asked by students and university lecturers to continue the work her father began, and it documents the beginnings of her fight for democracy. It also portrays the violence and human rights abuses carried out by the regime against her supporters after her party won 392 of the 485 seats in parliament in the 1990 general election.

Yeoh, an actress who gained international fame with “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, manages to capture the dignity and calm determination of the “steel orchid”, as Suu Kyi has been called. But she also expresses the vulnerability and isolation when Suu Kyi is first sentenced to house arrest in 1989.

The Burmese pro-democracy leader would spend 15 of the next 21 years in detention, becoming an international icon of the fight against oppression, much like Nelson Mandela of South Africa earlier.

Besson told journalists that he became involved in the project after Yeoh approached him with the script. He was busy with other projects at the time, but he said that the screenplay moved him enormously, and he subsequently told Yeoh that if she could not find another director, he would do the film.

He says he sought to verify major events through Amnesty International reports and by reading all the books available on his subject. He added that he made a conscious decision not to involve Suu Kyi in the production so that she would not be blamed for the contents of the film.

The result is a work far removed from Besson’s usual high-energy fare, such as “The Fifth Element” or “Yamakasi”. Instead, “The Lady” moves at a stately pace and mostly avoids gratuitous images, even if the human rights abuses and military atrocities are vividly revealed.

In some places, the film might be criticised for romanticising Suu Kyi’s personal life as well as the landscape and ethnic groups of Burma (some of the costumes seem a tad too perfect). And the dialogue in parts may seem stilted and predictable. But Besson said he had to make certain artistic choices.

“It’s always frustrating to tell the story of a living person that you cannot meet,” he has said. “You are afraid of betraying the truth or, conversely, accentuating it too much.”

The film has already had one predictable effect: Yeoh was refused entry to Burma earlier this year, with the authorities putting her on the next plane out after she landed at the airport. “The Lady” is not expected to see public release in Burmese cinemas any time soon, although the French Cultural Centre in Yangon will screen it.

Suu Kyi herself will run as a candidate in a coming by-election, after her party called off its boycott of Burma’s political system.

The regime also released 250 prisoners in October and may free more in the coming weeks, Amnesty International says. Another change is that officials have now said that there are 600 prisoners of conscience, after previously denying that there was any such category of detainees, Boisson told IPS.

With the film, their story and that of Suu Kyi will become more known, and international activism on their behalf is already increasing. At a special screening in the town of Amiens last week, Amnesty ran out of petition forms because so many people lined up to sign them.

On a small stage, a woman appears, grief written on her face as she wanders through the streets of Kabul, searching for her missing child. Suddenly, she stops by a scene of ruins and stares.

A scene from "Infinite Incompleteness". Credit: Hjalmar Joffre-Eichhorn/AHRDO

“This wall should not be rebuilt,” Butimar-e Kabul says. “Otherwise, people will forget the pains and I will be left alone.”

The story of the fictional character named Butimar-e Kabul is unfortunately not unique. In the 30 years of conflict throughout the country, Afghanistan’s victims of war have amassed tragedy and struggle, and – despite the odds – hope.

In “Infinite Incompleteness”, the tale of Butimar-e Kabul is interwoven with nine other stories of the victims of Afghanistan’s 30-year conflict. It was presented by the Afghan Human Rights and Democracy Organisation (AHRDO) in the first-ever U.S. performance held Saturday at the American University’s Kay Spiritual Life Center in Washington.

AHRDO, an Afghan-based civil society organisation using theatre and the arts to present transitional justice and gender platforms, has been developing the piece since the organisation’s inception in 2009.

Transitional justice, or the idea of redressing human rights violations following conflict, can be a controversial issue, and one that is difficult to execute. In Afghanistan, the documentation and accountability for human rights abuses has fallen off the agenda internally, and had little push from the international community, said AHRDO’s co-founder and current director Hadi Marifat.

“The immediate focus is on security and stability, but the judicial system is not working here,” Marifat told IPS. Thus, he said, the role of citizens in organising a collective movement to not only address human rights violations, but to move on from them, is extensive.

A crucial component of transitional justice is giving voice to victims – and was the inspiration for AHRDO. Through participatory theatre, says Marifat, they are not only able to engage with victims, but help to portray the broader issues at play.

“It’s not possible to do everything, to show everything that has happened in Afghanistan from the 1970s to now,” he told IPS.

Marifat said that they want the audience, whether in Afghanistan or globally, to understand that it is possible for the atrocities of war to happen again. “(We can) put it in a simple language, and the message at its core is to stop the return of these kinds of tragedy.”

“Infinite Incompleteness”, which has been performed four times in Afghanistan and now is on a two-city U.S. tour, features four actors bringing scenes of victims in Afghanistan – warlords taking over towns, wives losing husbands, parents losing children- presented in three languages, Dari, Pashto, and Hazaragi.

To gather these stories and create a thematic production, AHRDO engaged victims’ groups through five intensive theatre training projects in different regions throughout the country, with the goal of creating an environment of trust, where their personal stories could be told.

Sayed Mohammad Jawid, an executive member of AHRDO and who plays the “Man in Green”, said that there was a strong sense of responsibility on the part of the actors and activists working to tell these stories, because, in many cases, this was the first time that stories from these individuals had been collected, or told at all.

“This was a new methodology working with victims on the grassroots level,” Jawid told IPS. “As an Afghan and a human being, it was shocking for me to hear these things from them. It was the only thing we could do (to) make a strong play to reflect the emotion.”

AHRDO used different types of participatory theatre genres in their programmes throughout the country, most prominently, Playback Theatre, and more than 150 games and exercises to engage victims, who represented a cross-section of ethnic and social groups in Afghanistan.

“When they first come and interact with one another, there’s the feeling at the beginning of ‘you’re less victimised, I’m more victimised,'” Marifat told IPS. “But at the end, there’s a consensus – we’re all victims, and we have to collectively work to address that wrong.”

AHRDO worked extensively with the Afghanistan division of the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), and to facilitate its U.S. performances in Washington and New York City, with the Open Society Foundations, to bring the issues of Afghanistan’s transitional justice to the international arena.

“What this process does is give you another way of thinking about the problem,” Nadia Siddiqui of ICTJ’s Afghanistan team told IPS about the mission and structure of AHRDO’s participatory theatre. “It makes you realise that you have a shared experience with someone that you thought you never did.”

In a panel discussion following the performance at American University on Saturday evening, it was revealed that the actors presenting the play were not, in fact, actors at all – they are Afghan citizens, AHRDO workers, human rights activists, and victims themselves.

Zahra Hussaini, who plays the role of Butimar-e Kabul, came as a participant at one of the AHRDO workshops in Afghanistan, asked to attend by her employer at the time. She gradually overcame an initial timidity of telling her story through the workshop’s atmosphere of “nothing is wrong, and nothing is right.”

“The respect within these workshops, it trickles throughout life,” Hussaini, who is now an executive member of AHRDO, told IPS. She said that she was like other participants, who valued the safe space of respect for whatever was said, or felt. “It’s a positive way to change the whole society.”

“Transitional justice is a long process,” Mohammad Zaman Khoshnam, who played the “Man in White”, told IPS. “But it can bring changes from the bottom to the top.”

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic and - -
BELGRADE, Nov 4 2011 (IPS)

The path of reconciliation in former Yugoslavia has taken a musical turn, as the philharmonic orchestras of Ljubljana, Zagreb and Belgrade team up for their first joint season since 1991.

Credit: Astroturfer/CC BY 2.0

Since Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro were all born out of this bloodshed, their process of reconciliation has been slow. Animosities and hatred run deep, particularly between Croats and Serbs.

To promote cooperation and better communication between the new nations, the national directors of three Balkan philharmonics have organised a programme of five performances that will rotate through the capitals of Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia.

They chose to name the programme ‘Pika, Tocka, Tacka’ – the Slovenian, Croatian and Serbian words for ‘dot’ or ‘full stop’ – to symbolise an end to animosities in the region.

“The national orchestras are confident that they can cooperate despite our history of conflict and believe that this cooperation depends on the people,” Ivan Tasovac, director of the Belgrade Philharmonic told IPS.

“Changes cannot be dictated from the top and smart politicians have recognised this message,” he added.

The programme began to drum up support two months ago, following a concert by the Belgrade ensemble in the Croatian coastal town of Dubrovnik for the first time in 20 years, Tasovac told IPS.

In 1991-1992 Dubrovnik was heavily bombarded by the Serbian army and forced to live under siege for six months.

Thus the Belgrade Philharmonic’s classical music performance, directed by the internationally renowned conductor Zubin Mehta, was first met by a wave of Croatian nationalist protest.

However, the situation calmed when Croatian media welcomed the performance with an article by the prominent music critic Branimir Pofuk entitled, ‘Why I’m not afraid of Serbian violins.’

Pofuk told IPS that ‘Pika, Tocka, Tacka’ represents “yet more proof that musicians are re-building old and making new bridges and that politicians can only follow.”

For his colleague Denis Derk, the joint programme marks, without any doubt, “putting an end to mutual skirmishes and prejudices” that still exist in the region, which was torn by wars two decades ago. “It (the cooperation) opens new doors for new cultural cooperation in this part of Europe, and the beginning was marked with maestro Mehta’s support at the Dubrovnik concert.”

Prior to that concert, Mehta told reporters that “friendship and building of bridges” was the goal of Belgrade Philharmonic’s performance in Dubrovnik. “The concert represents much more for me than simply music,” he added, expressing support to the joint ‘Pika Tocka Tacka’ project as a step in the right direction. “To prove this, we’ll leave our hearts at the stage in Dubrovnik.”

“The ‘Pika, Tocka, Tacka’ programme proves that art has the power to unite people; the players and audience become one family,” Tasovac said.

“Besides this, all three national philharmonics share the same history of being held hostage to politically motivated funding,” he said, adding that each government has been reluctant to invest in fine arts, while simultaneously allocating large sums of money to pop music festivals or Balkans brass band competitions.

To combat this problem of underfunding, the Belgrade Philharmonic launched an unusual appeal to the public a few years ago, drawing attention to the state’s negligence in financing the arts.

In a self-parodying newspaper advertisement, it called on music lovers to show financial support by promising that an “85-year-old orchestra with a rich repertoire will play at your house for a reasonable fee. We can be booked for weddings, funerals, baptisms and birthdays – we have appropriate attire for all occasions.”

The ad succeeding in securing more funding from the state, as well as drawing immense support from the Zubin Mehta Belgrade Philharmonic Foundation, which solicited donations from a variety of large international and Serbian companies, and contributions from private individuals.

The Belgrade Philharmonic also stunned the public with its ‘New Years’ cycle, a performance series that celebrates the Jewish, Islamic, Gregorian and Julian calendars as well as the Chinese New Year, with concerts taking place a day before each holiday featuring music from local and international composers and conductors.

Belgrade-based leaders of Jewish, Islamic, Catholic and Orthodox communities all attend the concerts, which have drawn huge audiences since the beginning of 2010.

“We created this concert cycle out of respect for all the multicultural, multi-ethnic countries in the world,” Tasovac said. “The more people learn about each other, the fewer misunderstandings there are in the world. Though we are a small and (financially) deprived ensemble, we have created something big and we have big ambitions.”

Excerpt:

By Ashfaq Yusufzai and - -
PESHAWAR, Oct 29 2011 (IPS)

“In the last few years, I have sung more than a dozen songs against the Taliban,” award-wining singer Khyal Muhammad tells IPS. “I got threatening messages on the mobile phone. But I will continue to sing because it gives me strength.”

A music shop in Peshawar being restored after a Taliban attack last month. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS.

“I still want to sing because it is my passion, but my brothers want me to stay away from singing,” she tells IPS. “Several actors and singers from this province had sought political asylum after they were warned by the Taliban to abandon singing or face death.”

Music is becoming the language of a challenge to the Taliban, as surely as the Taliban have attacked music. And music seems now to be on a winning track – despite repeated attacks on musicians and music stores.

“The endless series of bomb attacks on CD and music shops has become the order of the day, but we are undeterred,” says Sher Dil Khan, president of the CD and Music Shops Association in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the north of Pakistan. “We will continue to produce new dramas and songs for the Pakhtuns. They are in love with songs and with watching films.”

Standing where the debris was from the bomb blast in the Nishtarabad CD market in Peshawar last month that killed seven and injured 30, Khan says Taliban militants are seeking to destroy the business. The district has about 500 shops selling music and films.

“We have been receiving phone calls and threatening letters from the Taliban to stop selling music CDs, because they see these as against Islam,” he tells IPS. But shop owners in the music district have already repaired about 20 shops damaged in the blast, and are getting on with business.

Last month was the third attack in Nishtarabad. In March a similar blast in the market killed one person and wounded 16. The market, that supplies audio and video CDs also to Afghanistan, Malaysia and Middle Eastern countries, came under attack earlier in October 2007, when two persons were injured.

“During their rule in Afghanistan from 1997, the Taliban had placed a complete ban on music. Transporters and hotel owners were not allowed to play music,” local singer Irfan Khan tells IPS. Musicians had to leave Afghanistan for fear of Taliban reprisals, he says.

After the Taliban crossed the porous 2,400 km border to Pakistan when their government was toppled by the U.S.-led coalition forces in the wake of 9/11, they began targeting music shops in the sprawling Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) near the Afghan border. Later their activities spread to adjacent Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – one of the four provinces of Pakistan.

Shabana, an artist who used to sing and dance to earn her living, was shot in the head in January 2008. Her body was hanged from an electricity pole in Swat, one of the 25 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Swat is a famous tourist resort and was home to about 500 women dancers and about 800 music shops before 2007. When the Taliban took over, all shops were removed within a year. Dancers migrated to other areas for safety or just stayed home.

“The majority of showbiz people who had migrated from Swat have now returned after the successful military operation towards the beginning of 2010,” Javid Babar, president of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Artists Association tells IPS. “Now everything in back to normal and the activities are in full swing.”

Babar, a recipient of the Presidential Award, says the Taliban were forcing people to follow their own brand of Islam. But music and drama are an integral part of the culture of Pakhtuns, he says.

The former local Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) government, that was close to militants, closed Nishtar Hall, the lone theatre in the province, soon after coming to power in 2003. The religious parties (MMA) government also cleared out the Dabgari Gardens market. Several musicians had their offices there. They made a living performing at weddings and on festive occasions.

The Awami National Party (ANP) which now runs a coalition government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) led by President Asif Zardari, widower of twice prime minister Benazir Bhutto, reopened Nishtar Hall. Many musicians reopened their offices.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain tells IPS the government has ordered a tightening of security at music markets throughout the province.

“The shopkeepers in Nishtarabad have been asked to keep vigil and inform the police in case they spot any suspected element or unclaimed bag, motorcycle or vehicle,” Hussain tells IPS.

Omar Shah, 17, a student at the Government College in Mardan, says militants had destroyed about 100 music shops in his hometown but all have been rebuilt. The Taliban cannot eliminate music by force, he says.

“People are buying CDs of Indian and Pakistani movies, songs and telefilms which are produced by local artists. We watch the stuff with enthusiasm because they depict our indigenous culture, and there is no element of obscenity or vulgarity.”

Excerpt:

By Christian Papesch and - -
NEW YORK, Oct 27 2011 (IPS)

In a move that highlighted its sub-par human rights record, the government of Burma announced Oct. 11 that it would release 6,359 prisoners, but how many of these will be drawn from the country’s estimated 500 to over 2,000 political prisoners remains uncertain.

Elaine Pearson of Human Rights Watch, Jeanne Marie Hallacy, director of "Into the Current", and Thet Moo, former Burmese political prisoner Credit: Christian Papesch/IPS

Among them was comedian and activist Zarganar, who was arrested in June 2008 for speaking to foreign media about the precarious situation of millions of Burmese left homeless in the Irrawaddy delta following a devastating cyclone. Five months later, Zarganar had been sentenced to 59 years in prison for public order offences.

Even though international activists and organisations such as New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) generally appreciated the initial wave of releases, they remain critical about the actual reach of the announcement.

“It is a positive step in terms of those individuals and their families, but in terms of bigger amnesties they should really release all prisoners unconditionally,” Elaine Pearson, deputy director of HRW’s Asia division, told IPS.

“It is really quite a small step forward. These people are not bargaining chips or hostages for the military to play with. They’re people who have been unjustly imprisoned.”

“Into the Current“, a documentary by Bangkok-based American filmmaker Jeanne Marie Hallacy, portrays some of those prisoners and gives an overview of the political and social situation in Burma, a country that was under military rule from 1962 to 2011.

“The most challenging aspect of the film was that we knew that we had to rely upon memory,” the director said in an interview with IPS.

“It was really challenging for us to find a way that we could be provocative and evoke the kind of deep emotion and passion that people experienced in prison without having visual evidence of what they actually experienced,” she explained.

But this lack of visual imagery also lends itself to the oppressive and alarming atmosphere of “Into the Current”. By relying on statements made by former prisoners, the political terror of an oppressing regime acquires a face, a voice and a destiny.

One of the thousands of prisoners who endured the cruelty of Burma’s jails is Thet Moo, imprisoned for seven years for being a member of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU), which helped organise the 1988 pro-democracy national uprising that was violently suppressed by the military junta.

In prison, “we don’t know our future,” Moo told IPS. “I don’t know if I can get out alive or not.”

Not only are mental and physical punishment the order of the day for the majority of prisoners, but filmmakers like Hallacy along with journalists supporting her work in Burma also face serious daily threats.

“Working inside the country is extremely difficult for journalists and media,” the director, who has not been granted a Burmese visa since the late 1990s, said.

“We have seen Burmese journalists who have been sentenced for 65 years for one story. And we have gotten corroborated information that they have been tortured in order to have them spill out other information about their colleagues in this underground network of media who gather information.”

For this reason, a lot of the material used in the film is old footage shot by Hallacy during the 1990s, secretly filmed recordings or personal statements and objects – portraits of families, letters to friends or a song sung by a prisoner himself.

“People respond to stories of individual human beings – people who are fathers or mothers or have sisters or brothers who are in prison,” Hallacy said.

“They’re numbed by numbers,” she elaborated. “If you cite a statistic, it’s meaningless to most people. But if you try to bring into focus a few of these heroes and heroines and their acts of courage it speaks on behalf of the whole.”

The broader image that “Into the Current” draws of Burma is a negative one, but the film’s message is not completely pessimistic. At the end, protagonist Bo Kyi, a former political prisoner who is currently in exile in Thailand, finally gets to see his wife and little daughter again.

Even though their family cannot yet lead a normal life in Burma, hope for a better Burma does exist, especially after last year’s election of a new government.

“The problem of the new government is that their bureaucracy is very slow,” Thet Moo explained. “We are waiting for them to change. If they are changing, everybody would want to return to Burma.”

For Pearson, the second largest country in Southeast Asia still has a very long way to go. “Burma has one of the most desperate human rights situations in the world,” she said. “We haven’t seen the new government really putting in the effort to effect change in the country.”

The great white hope of Burma – and one of the characters to which the film repeatedly refers – is Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese opposition politician and 1991 winner of the Nobel Peace Price “for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights”.

“The message of the film was to convey that non-violence is their path,” Hallacy pointed out.

“That’s what will prevail change – not vengeance, not hatred, not retribution but actual inclusion and responding to cruelty with kindness, because that’s what changes people. When you change people’s hearts, you change people’s politics.”

Aung San Suu Kyi has never been in jail, but she has been under house arrest for 15 of the last 21 years. This is one of the reasons why the politician has become a symbol of opposition against oppression for many Burmese, especially those who still remain in prison for their resistance against the governing system.

“We saw the release of 200 political prisoners, there is still another 1800 that remain in prison,” Pearson concluded. “These are people who have criticised the government, written controversial articles in the media, participated in demonstrations. They are not people who should be in prison. They are people who should be part of the community.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
BEIJING, Oct 21 2011 (IPS)

A Chinese independent film festival showcasing the work of some of the most daring Mainland directors has been forced underground following a police visit to the event’s launch last Saturday.

The Sixth Beijing Independent Film Festival (BIFF) has had to switch venues twice following pressure by the police, obliging the organisers to inform festival-goers of the last-minute location changes.

The clampdown comes at a particularly sensitive time and has coincided with the Communist Party’s Central Committee’s annual plenum, a four-day closed door event for the country’s top officials, which ended on Tuesday. Among topics discussed at the plenum were ways in which the authorities can promote Chinese culture and the nation’s soft power.

BIFF, now in its sixth year, is showing over 50 cutting-edge feature films, documentaries, experimental works and animations in Songzhuang, a village on the outskirts of Beijing which is known as a hub for its avant-garde artistic community. The meddling by the authorities – while stopping short of shutting down the festival itself – has thrown into the spotlight the heavy scrutiny that the independent arts face in China by the one-party state.

BIFF’s week-long event, which kicked off last Saturday, is ‘independent’ because the works are not submitted to the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) beforehand, thereby bypassing the often crushing state censorship machine.

On Saturday, however, police showed up at the launch event where over 100 directors, artists, writers and festival-goers were assembled to watch the opening film. According to witnesses, around 12 police officers insisted on recording down the attendees’ identification before leaving.

After the police visit the organisers changed the venue from its original location in a local arts centre and basement cinema to a hotel. Following a request by the hotel for the festival to move on, it is now being held in the office headquarters of the Li Xianting Film Fund, the organisation behind the festival.

The disruption follows the cancellation of the 8th Documentary Film Festival China in May, an event also put on by the Li Xianting Film Fund. According to state media reports at the time, organisers cancelled the documentary festival themselves due to a ‘tense’ situation and unexplained ‘pressure’.

Karin Chien, founder of dGenerate Films, a New York-based distribution company that specialises in distributing independent Chinese film to audiences worldwide, says she that was not surprised by the most recent interference from the authorities.

“Authorities caused BIFF to change venues twice, to the point where screenings were being held in the festival’s headquarters,” Chien, who was present at the launch event, wrote to IPS in an email. ‘So when the police showed up to stop the first screening, it wasn’t a surprise. The documentary version of BIFF was canceled by the authorities in May, so I suppose we were all holding our breath to see what would happen this time.”

The news, while failing to register with the majority of Internet users in a country where independent film is still a fledgling art form, provoked a number of responses from the film community on Sina Weibo, China’s popular micro-blogging site.

“Could not such a huge city tolerate a small screen showing independent films?… It is shameful for Songzhuang and also for China,” commented Zhang Zanbo. Another Weibo user calling himself ‘Director Kefeng’ wrote: “I pay tribute to those film makers and the organisers of this film festival. Suddenly film is considered to have a subversive function. We are not far from Iran, where film makers are prisoned.”

Despite the difficulties, around 50 people showed up to Wednesday evening’s screening of The Ditch, a brutal uncensored feature film by controversial director Wang Bing, which portrays a Chinese ‘re- education’ labour camp in 1960. Like many others films during the festival – which touch on topics ranging from forced land grabs to the plight of ethnic minorities – The Ditch cannot be distributed through regular channels or shown in Mainland cinemas.

Hao Jian, the BIFF national programme curator and a professor at the Beijing Film Academy, explains that the festival organisers keep the police at bay by claiming that the gatherings at the Li Xianting Film Fund headquarters are a private ‘party’ or merely friends getting together to roast lamb chuan’r, popular kebabs.

“Sometimes we show the films at midnight, we don’t make any announcements – we just go mouth to mouth,” says Hao, who spoke to IPS after the screening Wednesday. “Before last year (the police) sometimes stopped the films from showing, such as Xu Xin’s Karamay (a documentary on the 1994 fire in Northwest China in which nearly 300 schoolchildren died).

“This time no one has come here to stop the films. But when they see too many people over here, they will come. They are just doing their jobs. They want to maintain stability. The situation is getting tighter and tighter.”

The festival runs until Saturday.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
WASHINGTON, Sep 29 2011 (IPS)

The top one percent of earners in the United States now controls over 40 percent of the nation’s wealth, their income steadily rising while much of the country earns less than what it did a decade ago and an all-time high of 46 million Americans now live below the official poverty line.

To many on the right, this trend is the natural consequence of market forces, freedom and free enterprise rewarding the more productive members of society.

Many on the left also hold free markets responsible for the expanding gap between rich and poor and for the global economic meltdown that accelerated it, arguing for a more interventionist role by the state to promote stability and arrest the growth in inequality.

But as economist Dean Baker observes in his latest book, “The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive”, the truth is that regardless of where they fall along the political spectrum, those who assert that the U.S. economy is based on free markets and is free from state intervention are fundamentally mistaken.

Rather, what we call the “free market” has in fact been consciously designed by the wealthy and their allies in government to redistribute wealth from the working class to the rich, using methods ranging from patents that allow pharmaceutical giants to reap monopolistic profits to restrictions on labour that neuter Americans’ ability to organise and demand better compensation.

If critics of the corporatist status quo want to stop losing policy debates, argues Baker, it is time they started accurately describing the system they are up against and quit debating on its apologists’ terms.

“In reality”, writes Baker, co-director of the progressive Centre for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC, “the vast majority of the right does not give a damn about free markets; it just wants to redistribute income upward.”

The masquerade of American ideals

By cloaking their language in the rhetoric of liberty, conservative politicians – both Democrat and Republican, from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush – have in fact crafted a coercive economic system dependent on state-granted corporate privilege.

Of course, they can’t just say that, so they couch their rhetoric in terms of the American dream, of hard work and ingenuity rightly rewarded with prosperity. But politicians in Washington professing their allegiance to free markets should be believed no more than when they profess their devotion to peace.

Blaming free markets for inequality and economic catastrophe in America is not just factually flawed, writes Baker, but it also “makes for horrible politics”. It serves as a simple justification, for instance, to politicians whose allegiance is not to principles of free enterprise, but to the principle of the rich.

Accepting the right’s framing of the debate allows conservatives to cast themselves as defenders of “productive” Americans who live in bigger houses than others because they worked harder, enabling the left to be “portrayed as wanting to tax the winners in society in order to reward the losers”.

Instead of devoting so much time to taxing the rich, the left would be better off striking at the root of the problem and attacking the state privileges that enriched them in the first place, Baker maintains. Instead of allowing the right to masquerade as defenders of limited government, the left ought to reveal conservatives as the true proponents of massive state intervention in the economy.

If Baker’s assessment of the U.S. economy sounds radical to the liberal ear, his statement that “progressives should want a free market” probably seems heretical. But in most cases, he maintains, government intervention not only fails to check the concentration of wealth and the rise of monopolies, but also is in fact the underlying cause for the widening gap between rich and poor.

Unclear alternatives

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Baker repeatedly shows that a true free market would actually lead to more progressive outcomes. Moreover, corporate America fears nothing more than unbridled competition and is more dependent on the U.S. government than on any other institution.

Many liberals and progressives have been conditioned to view the state as the public’s last best defence against corporate power; Baker shows that it is more often than not its chief enabler. But while his assessment is radical, his solutions are reformist – perhaps overly so. If Baker is to be faulted, it is for thinking too much like an economist than a progressive visionary.

While Baker demonstrates the many ways state interventions in the economy are designed to enrich the wealthy, he never fully articulates his vision of a more progressive economy, so when he advocates a major government stimulus to reboot the American economy, the reader is left to wonder: absent radical reform, what is really the point?

Direct payments from the state could be more “loser liberalism” and syndicalism too radical for the time being, but if stimulus money is only going to help reboot the same crony capitalist economy as before, with its fixed wages and debt-based consumerism, will short-term reductions in unemployment come at the expense of more fundamental – and necessary – reform?

If the American left is to capture the public’s imagination, it will ultimately need to put forward a broader, more holistic and more compelling vision of society than the one offered by its opponents on the right, one based more on consensus and cooperation than corporations and coercion. That vision is alluded to but not detailed in “The End of Loser Liberalism”.

But that’s a minor quibble. Before it can achieve radical social change, the left needs to radically change its rhetoric and quit debating on the right’s terms. And if leftists want to quit losing to conservatives, they would do well to start listening to Dean Baker.

“The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive” is available as a free download on the website of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 28 2011 (IPS)

With 432 murders reported last year, Chicago’s homicide rate is over 50 percent higher than that of New York City or Los Angeles, according to the 2010 crime report of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The filmmakers with real-life interrupters after a screening of "The Interrupters" in New York. Credit: Christian Papesch/IPS

In their documentary “The Interrupters“, American filmmaker Steve James and journalist Alex Kotlowitz follow three of CeaseFire’s street workers: Ameena Matthews, daughter of a Chicago gang leader; former criminal and gang member Cobe Williams; and Eddie Bocanegra, convicted of murder at age 17.

By hiring local workers familiar with the situation and people of Chicago’s most violent neighbourhoods, the organisation caused shootings and killings in specific zones to drop by 73 percent.

“Their efforts were groundbreaking,” states the U.S. Department of Justice Study on the Effectiveness of CeaseFire Chicago. “In every program area there was a substantial decline in the median density of shootings following the introduction of CeaseFire.”

“We wanted to do a film that was not so much about CeaseFire, but that was really about that violence and about the communities,” explains producer Kotlowitz, who got involved with the project because of an article he wrote for the New York Times.

“And I hope that the film does that. It obviously talks about what CeaseFire does; but it also talks about these larger social and political issues that really have an impact on the people and the community,” he told IPS.

“The Interrupters” follows Ameena Matthews, Cobe Williams and Eddie Bocanegra for one year on their work in the streets of West Garfield Park, Little Village and Englewood, which, according to the FBI crime report, are some of the most violent areas in the nation.

James and Kotlowitz film as observers, stepping back from the situations they document and documenting without interrupting. In fact, the only persons to interact with community members are the interrupters themselves.

For that very reason, the movie does not have a voiceover or narrator. The only statements viewers hear are those of the protagonists themselves.

“I think the change that film does is to encourage people to give voice to things they might not otherwise say,” states Kotlowitz. “But I think most of those people forget about you. There are many things that are much more important to them that they focus on.”

Most of the people portrayed in the film focus on their daily routine of violence, crime, threats and fears of rival gangs whose main goal is to hurt members of other gangs to avenge previous injuries – a vicious circle that has cost the lives of hundreds of young people over the past decades.

“I was part of the problem,” recalls Williams, who was in and out of prison until he became one of the violence interrupters shown in the movie. He told IPS, “When I was out there, I had to live that life. Seeing people killing each other, slaying each other, every day. I had to do something about it.”

Most of the interrupters share a background similar to Williams’s. They grew up in the neighbourhoods they now work in; they know the people and the issues they are dealing with.

“There is common ground,” explains Bocanegra, who spent 14 years in prison for murdering a boy when he was 17. “We are able to truly empathize with them because we have been there. We understand the dynamics of the community, the dynamics of their family. That’s what allows us to operate in that area,” he says in an interview with IPS.

Matthews is one of only two female violence interrupters in the CeaseFire project. As a former drug ring enforcer and daughter of Jeff Fort, one of the city’s most notorious gang leaders, she got to know the life of a criminal from her childhood on. “My mother was on drugs her whole life, my father went to jail when I was 10,” says Matthews. “We all come from broken homes.”

This courageous woman has been working as a violence interrupter for almost 2 years now and has already stopped more than 500 conflicts. While her former principle was “If somebody hits you, you better hit him back,” she now acts upon the motto, “You never should give up on (anybody).”

Two of the reasons she changed her life were the birth of her children and her Muslim faith. Another reason was Derrion Albert, a 16-year-old high school student whose murder was filmed and published on Youtube, after whose death Matthews decided she had to act.

Although she claims she has never been scared during her work, she knew that she would put herself in danger. “When I got hired, I did not tell my husband what job that was,” the violence interrupter recalls. “But he immediately accepted what I was doing. This is so phenomenal for me.”

Yet Bocanegra felt jeopardised and afraid during his work “plenty of times”, he admits. “When we filmed, there were scenarios when people said, ‘You (have got to) go right now. You are okay, Eddie, but things here are getting pretty bad.’ So we leave – and sometimes somebody gets killed.”

The film communicates this atmosphere of threat and danger, but also shows moments of hope and change, such as when a gang member tells Williams that he has also prevented a fight earlier that day.

“Some people reject us, but we don’t give up on them,” says Williams. “We (aren’t) judging them, we meet them where they’re at. We create a relationship. They are like family for us.”

“The Interrupters” is a sensitive documentary that does not interrupt the actual events it portrays. When others might do a voiceover, it listens; it watches when others would interfere or run away.

Like films in general, it can only be seen as a version of reality, filmed from a certain perspective to show a certain perspective. But it does that without judging, without exaggerating and without stereotyping. It shows life in some of Chicago’s infamous neighbourhoods the way they are: cruel but not miserable, and tragic but not hopeless.

Excerpt:

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Aug 25 2011 (IPS)

Women are still a small minority on Cuba’s hip hop scene. “If the situation is hard for us nationwide, imagine what it’s like in the eastern region, where this genre has very little recognition,” says Yaneidys Tamayo, leader of the group Las Positivas.

Las Positivas performing at the Riviera theatre in Havana. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Their goal is to cultivate a genre that some people consider violent and masculine. “We don’t have any institutional support in Santiago, either,” Tamayo told IPS during a break in the 7th international hip hop symposium, which from Aug. 17 to 21 brought local artists and theorists together in Havana with colleagues from Canada, Colombia, the United States, France and Haiti.

For the last six months, nevertheless, Las Positivas have had a venue for their shows, at least one Sunday a month. “It was a big effort for us to achieve this. It’s given us stability, because the response from the public has been good, and based on that, we can carry out actions of community participation,” explained Ana Lidia Rivera, the group’s producer.

“That is why we call ourselves Las Positivas (The Positive Ones), because we are sure that good things can be done with rap,” Rodríguez commented.

As they chat with IPS, these women look like the everyday workers and students that they are. But they light up on stage as they dance energetically from one side to the other, sing, recite and sprinkle their performance with touches of humour.

Even though they have existed as a group for 14 years, they are still amateurs. “We think that when we become professionals, a lot of doors will open for us,” said Mayet, for whom hip hop is a reaffirmation of her identity, among other positive things it has meant for her. “Yes, because I was able to develop the real me. That is why I am going to fight for what we do,” she said.

Mayet agreed with the other women in the group that “it’s not about singing just for the sake of singing,” but about sending out positive messages, about change and “a little bit of thinking.” Las Positivas’s lyrics are related to the roots that keep them together, when they sing to “mother Africa”, about gender equality (“if you get some, baby, then I get some too”), and against racism and other forms of prejudice.

In a conversation with IPS, Magia López, director of the Cuban Rap Agency and a singer with the (coed) group Obsesión, said the 20 or so professional rap groups in the country include two from Santiago de Cuba. She also confirmed that women are a minority in this genre that includes just a few soloists, along with Las Positivas.

López is the second woman to take on the challenge of directing the Rap Agency, a project she describes as still under construction. “It was created eight years ago, and it has been very important for the movement, but it is still a project, to see whether or not it works in the capital, and it has a lot of tasks ahead,” she commented.

“The agency is taking a new look at a number of things, including its identity, the image it wants to project, what groups it should represent, and what its most important venues are,” she added.

“Another pending issue is having a permanent venue specifically for rap,” she noted. For now, the agency has 11 groups under its wing in Havana, its principal area of operations.

Unlike rock music, which has a well-equipped locale for its shows, hip hop is still awaiting financing to properly set up a venue assigned to the agency in Havana.

“There is a beautiful architectural plan with the spaces we want, but we need the resources to make it happen,” she explained.

In that respect, she noted that it is hard to market rap at this time, even more so given a lack of permanent venues that are financially within the reach of its followers.

“We are talking about a cultural scene that has suffered a lot of setbacks,” added López. Despite all of that, she admitted, the agency has helped to bring visibility to some of the rap movement’s projects, and to connect them.

In her opinion, the immediate way forward involves the artists themselves, who must analyse the spaces in which they move, find the most appropriate mechanisms, and generate projects to achieve a level of stability that vouches for them. “We have to take into account the process of (economic and social) reorganisation that our country is going through,” she commented.

With the sponsorship of the Cuban Institute of Music, the Rap Agency has been organising the Hip Hop Symposium since 2009, based on the original idea of the “La fabric K” collective, the Cuban Hip Hop Factory, which ran five previous versions of the event. One of the main functions of these annual events is to provide a tool for the work of artists and cultural promoters.

“We have participated in several of these gatherings, which allow us to share experiences with other groups and analyse what it is we want to do,” said Rivera, producer of Las Positivas.

This year, the symposium was dedicated to peace, to highlight the contribution of culture to the fight against military intervention, violence, social injustice, pollution and discrimination. It also dedicated a space to the issue of race this year, declared by the U.N. as the International Year for People of African Descent.

The symposium agenda included workshops on body language, break dance, gender and life experience, where artists and activists shared their experiences in work and in community projects using the art of hip hop as a contribution to the process of educating young people and improving the quality of life in their communities.

Hip hop began spreading in Cuba essentially during the economic crisis of the 1990s, especially in the poor suburbs of cities like Havana and Santiago de Cuba, where young people in neighbourhoods that are mostly black and to a certain extent marginalised adopted U.S. rap music to express their own concerns and ideas.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
WASHINGTON, Aug 4 2011 (IPS)

The “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby group J Street has drawn a lot of attention in its short lifetime. Despite decidedly moderate politics, its leader, Jeremy Ben-Ami, has repeatedly been the centre of controversy, and the group’s very existence has stirred debate in the U.S. Jewish community about the boundaries of acceptable discourse on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Ben-Ami’s book, “A New Voice for Israel”, is both a memoir and a manifesto laying out J Street’s political programme. His personal tale is gripping and revelatory. But the book leaves one wondering whether he can put together a strategy to impact U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Many readers will be surprised as Ben-Ami devotes the first part of the book to drawing a parallel between his activities with J Street and his father’s work in the Irgun. The Irgun was the armed wing of Revisionist Zionism, regarded by the British as Jewish terrorists. Revisionism was the precursor to today’s Likud, the right-wing party of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Ben-Ami uses this provocative analogy for two purposes.

The first is to remove any doubt about commitment to Israel, as his family stretches back to the first wave of Zionist immigration to Palestine.

The second is to compare J Street’s efforts to sound the alarm about the threat to Israel and the Jewish Diaspora from the ongoing occupation of Palestinian lands to the Revisionists’ vain effort to rouse the U.S. and Palestinian Jewish communities to do more to rescue the Jews of Europe in the face of escalating Nazi atrocities more than 70 years ago.

“Voices of dissent…bring views and ideas…that are at times uncomfortable to consider,” Ben-Ami writes. “But they may also have a critical message to convey – a message that can save lives and change history. If the experience of the Bergson Group (the American delegation of the Revisionists) teaches us anything, it is that the appropriate way to deal with those new voices is not to reflexively shut them down but to engage them on the merits and see what value there may be in what they are trying to say.”

Ben-Ami’s father was ignored and blackballed by the Jewish establishment in Palestine and the United States, just as Ben-Ami now faces ostracism and attacks from major Jewish institutions for his efforts to rally the Jewish community behind a viable two-state solution that would provide Palestinians their right to self- determination.

He has an impressive organisation behind him. It has expanded its staff quickly and spawned a political action committee (PAC) that distributed 1.5 million dollars to Congressional candidates in 2010, more than any other single pro-Israel PAC ever, according to its website.

Still, Congress has remained remarkably impervious to Ben-Ami’s arguments. And, if the U.S. discourse on Israel has opened up to some extent, it seems this is due at least as much to Israel’s sharp turn to the right and policy excesses in recent years than to J Street’s efforts.

Ben-Ami lists the lobbying forces arrayed against him – Jewish groups led by the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, (AIPAC); neo- conservative think-tanks; Christian Zionist groups; dozens of hawkish PACs and individual contributors – that promote an “Israel right-or- wrong” policy. At the same time, he rejects the notion “that the organized Israel lobby… exercises control over American foreign policy. I think it is one influence, not the only or even necessarily the most important force.”

And while he stresses that the Israel Lobby does not represent the views of most U.S. Jews, he concedes that what he calls “the loudest eight percent” has been able to “write the rulebook” for acceptable political discourse about Israel.

It’s hard to reconcile that with his contention that the Lobby does not have decisive influence in Washington on issues of direct concern to Israel.

More to the point, this apparent contradiction leads to the main question that Ben-Ami’s book raises, and which he leaves largely unanswered: how is J Street going to change U.S. policy regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict?

Ben-Ami illustrates this very question when he describes President Barack Obama’s failure to get Israel to agree to freeze settlement construction. He says “…no one in the Obama administration seemed to have thought about what would happen if and when… Israel said no.”

Yet Ben-Ami does not answer that question. Instead, he says the U.S. should “publicly put the widely accepted parametres of a peace agreement on the table and ask the parties to respond.” But those parameters are on the table – in agreements like the Oslo Accords, the Arab Peace Initiative, and the Clinton Parameters. So what is J Street’s plan to stop Israel from saying no this time?

This issue was crystallised by Ami Eden, editor-in-chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “During the past year,” he wrote recently, “one could make the argument that the upstart Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has emerged as the main challenger for the hearts and minds of Jews on the left who feel alienated from Israel and the Jewish establishment.”

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which is often depicted as “too radical” to be allowed inside the mainstream policy discussion on Israel-Palestine, is a grassroots organisation that calls for divesting from corporations that are complicit in Israel’s occupation and suspending the three billion dollars Israel gets in annual U.S. military aid until Israel withdraws from the Palestinian territories.

JVP employs direct-action tactics and stakes out a human-rights stance that places Israelis and Palestinians on equal footing. JVP’s approach appears to hold great appeal to the same younger generation of U.S. Jews that J Street has targeted.

J Street has so far opposed the pressure tactics favoured by JVP. But Ben-Ami’s alternative of “opening up the debate” here in the United States, hoping that will change Israel’s policies looks increasingly dubious, particularly when President Barack Obama, in whom J Street had placed great hope, has shown little appetite for taking on the Lobby, despite his clear dislike for Netanyahu.

How will J Street muster a force that can counter The Lobby? Though broad, its base has been relatively apathetic about Israel. Alarm over Israel’s future as a “Jewish and democratic state” and the growing alienation of young Jews from the organised Jewish community are not sufficient motivators for that base, particularly at a time of economic turbulence and growing inequality at home. The “Israel Lobby’s” backers, on the other hand, are much more narrowly focused.

Meanwhile, a growing number of mainstream peace groups, such as Americans for Peace Now, have endorsed boycotts of settlements, which is very close to JVP’s position, and are coming to believe that Israel under Netanyahu’s coalition has gone so far astray that only tangible pressure can change its course.

J Street is precisely the organisation that many people have been hoping would arise for years: a mainstream, Jewish group seeking to make a serious political push inside the Beltway for a real resolution to this conflict.

But has it come too late? “…given the urgency of the situation, we need to [organise political backing for peace] swiftly and convincingly,” Ben-Ami writes. But if he opposes tangible pressure on Israel, it’s hard to see how he can do that.

Excerpt: