Stories you couldn't make up

I'm just back from the African Film Festival of Milan, which was on all week. We were due to go up for a day to get the films we need for our own African film festival, which starts tomorrow, but I ended staying for 3 days because the catalogue was so intriguing.

The word most frequently used by the Italians to indicate films they'd appreciated is "bello" - which of course generally translates as beautiful, or nice.

After having watched some of the films recommended under this epithet for myself, I couldn't help feeling that such a qualification was terribly inappropriate. These films aren't nice and and with a few exceptions, they aren't beautiful either. They depict some of the ugliest, most miserable, desperate places & situations on earth. Prisons, shantytowns, warzones, slums, ghettos, refugee camps... The kind of environments that could strip any human being of their spirit, but yet in the midst of which glimpses of humanity occasionally appear, which makes it all the more poignant & unbearable.

I learnt pretty rapidly that the films I watched at the festival would not be noted on my next christmas list. You wouldn't want to watch films with scenes of murder, torture, rape & incest over & over, first because its too upetting, but also because seeing it again would make it less shocking, less traumatising, the initial effect is the most important, after which a second view would make you somewhat immune, & desensitised.

The two which stood out for me, in terms of provoking just this kind of trauma, delivering the kind of punch in the stomach that leaves you twitching for days, were these:

To See if I'm Smiling (Israel) - A documentary made up of interviews with young female Israeli soldiers. In Israel, apparently, military draft is obligatory for all youths as of the age of 18. I think this goes a long way to explaining the collective mentality of the country, as I see it. Why Israelis never seem to be capable of measured, rational debate, but never fail to hop on the defensive, to react as if under attack when criticised. To see themselves first & foremost as Israelis whatever the context. When every single member of a population has experienced being in that defensive position, of insecurity and fear, where there is no empathy whatsoever with the people regarded as the "ennemy", it's quite logical that they should become reactionary as a result, and lose all perspective. When an entire population has suffered the trauma of war & combat, this is the result.

Leonera (Argentina) - I won't try to review it but all I can say is I left with a feeling in my chest of actual physical tightness that I can't quite describe properly. A film about how "ordinary" people can be drawn to the depths of desolation, how normality can become hell overnight, and humanity can vanish in a second.

The films I saw at the festival, especially these two, weren't films that make you cry, like Titanic, Cold Mountain, or Love Actually.

Rather, they just leave you feeling limp (in the sense Chinua Achebe describes in "Things Fall Apart"), drained in the face of the unfathomable horror of it all - the unbearable lightness of death, as one of the Israeli girls puts it.

Films like these are not a pleasant experience so much as an ordeal. Within them play out scenes that leave you at a complete loss, about everything, because they are just so difficult, and so ambivalent. Scenes of the awful things people do to one another, and others of the incredible sacrifices they can make. Stories that portray human fragility and human resilience, but don't answer the question of which ultimately wins out most of the time. All this paints a disturbingly complex picture where good & bad are impossible to distinguish, a million miles from the easy Manichaeism of Hollywood & its reassuring conclusions about the state of universe.

Watching the films and hearing the directors speak about them got me to thinking about the relationship between film-making and activism. I suppose shedding light on injustice is a laudable endeavour, but spending millions on film-making somehow seems excessive. I suppose it can depend on the concrete results, Blood Diamond for example, has lead to massive raise in awareness of the ties between the diamond mining industry and civil conflict in Africa. The result has been a much greater interest in obtaining ethically sourced diamonds. There is an argument to be made for art for the sake of art, of course, but that particular can of worms I'll save for another post.

It was fitting really, for the festival to be happening in Milan, which I'd describe as a difficult city itself. There's something incredibly alienating about the place, I don't know if it's the emphasis on the commercial which makes it feel somewhat soulless and superficial, or perhaps the contrasts of the slick city centre a few minutes away from the frighteningly ugly grey tower blocks on the outskirts. I suppose both lack some kind of human quality, in different ways, and it makes the city quite a sad place. Seeing a roma camp on my train ride from the suburbs into the city, with all the squalid little shacks made out of iron and cardboard jostling for space in the darkness of the tunnel under the motorway also came as a bit of a shock. This is northern Italy for goodness sake, not Kosovo. It seems that everywhere has its ugly, shadowy places but in Milan I felt I encountered more than usual.

And everywhere I went I heard foreign languages, which I would try to place... Russian on the metro, amharic in the ethiopian call shop, arabic on the train, polish in the restaurant, something balkan spoken by the musicians on the tram... I couldn't help wondering each time if maybe they had similar stories to those I'd just been watching. In Milan, it seems everyone is an immigrant. Even the italians we encountered seemed to have all migrated from the South. And the result isn't exactly a picture of multicultural harmony. Back in september a black youth was beaten to death by an Italian shopkeeper and his son. But unfortunately, I don't think these are the kinds of people who go to this festival (not to say turnout was lacking - the showings were invariably packed out) which makes me wonder whether such a festival really helps in a city like Milan. With the much loathed Roma stuck hiding in the shadows of the underpass, and poor italian & foreign migrants alike stacked up in isolated high-rise flats, is it any wonder the situation seems on the verge of exploding.

A paradoxical piety

Far be it from me to come across as a religious sympathiser (as my earlier affirmation that maybe the death of religion would make the world a more boring place might have suggested), but I have to agree with what the defenders of Pope Benedict are saying. I.E. that one shouldn't just focus on two lines taken out of context, and ignore the rest of what someone says which qualify an assertion by putting it within a certain paradigm and system of values. It's true that if you read the full speech the Pope actually gave, it lends at least a shred or two of credibility and meaning to a statement that appears otherwise completely absurd, something only an idiot or a madman could say. The Pope thinks condoms make the problem of AIDS worse not because they spread the HIV virus in themselves but because they are a means to having control over one's own sex life, as opposed to being bound by the laws of reproduction, something it's no secret the Catholic Church disagrees with. It may not be right, but it at least has the virtue of consistency and a certain logic. The Catholic Youth such as those who so maliciously and violently attacked Green & Communist youth in Paris a few days ago, have deplored the short-sightedness of the media in ignoring the rest of their Pope's words and merely zooming in on a small but crucial fragment of what he actually said. As someone who tires of media polemics which constantly make "news stories" out of (frequently misquoted) statements from famous people rather than out of actual news in the form of real events that are taking place, I think they have a point.

Communist & Green Protesters outside Notre-Dame last sunday needed police protection

But what they don't seem to understand is that by making this point they've hit on exactly the reason why the pope's words were so irresponsible and deplorable. As someone with access to the internet and many other sources of information besides, I can look up the pope's speech in full after having read the outraged media headlines provoked by his "condoms aggravate the problem of AIDS" statement, should I be so inclined. But many people in Cameroon, Angola, and the various other African nations hosting him during his visit, do not. Therefore if the message extracted from his pious speech is just that: condoms to be avoided at all costs, basically there is little reason to believe the discussion will go any further, for many. Not because Africans lack any kind of cognitive capacity for critical thinking, but it's no secret that information about HIV/AIDS and sexuality in general is hardly widespread, and frequently subject to distortions and myths about how the disease is contracted and cured. We know this.

The NGOs who have been so upset by the pope's words are not necessarily against sexual abstinence, of course, just horrified that in one breath he has no doubt set them back a good few years in their work trying of trying to stem the spread of the disease and educate people about how to protect themselves.

There is no reason to suspect that Africans are not prone to the same tendencies of simplified assumptions and short-sighted thinking as everyone else has been. There is no reason to expect, especially with less access to information and less resources, that they should analyse the pope's words any more deeply than anyone else has bothered to. If Catholics are hoping that the full meaning and nuances of what the Pope was trying to say in terms of promoting abstinence and sexuality reserved for reproduction, will be not only understood but also adhered to by all Africans at risk of contracting AIDS, they really will need to be praying for miracle.

I'm not too optimistic that the Catholic Youth will be able to get their heads around this, especially since they don't seem to realise how physical and verbal attacks on a small group of peaceful protesters desperately undermines their otherwise perfectly legitimate and laudable calls for a more nuanced and informed debate about the issue. But these are just the kind of frequent inconsistencies and blatant displays of hypocrisy that always make me wonder whether people who still, apparently, manage to be staunch Catholics are really just having us all on, and in fact it's all an elaborate hoax.

A European pathology

Upon a first reading of this article (thank you l'Internazionale) I was deeply offended.

The arrogance of one yank undertaking the psycho-analysis of an entire continent - classified as "schizophrenic" and afflicted with "stockholm's syndrome" is breath-taking. The characterisation of the collective European personality as completely neurotic, not to mention cowardly and naive, desperate the hide under the skirt of mother America, seems almost too provocative to be taken seriously at all, more like satire. It reminds me of the name-calling and insults that were targetted against the European countries that decided not to go to war in 2003.

On a second reading, this time in my own language (thank you the Times Online), I like it. It rains on the parade of the kind of Obamaphilia and euphoria that I was never really convinced by. I mean yeah, this kind of thing is poignant but you know it's just too good to be true. Obama's speeches always made me somewhat uneasy, because of the religious overtones (a million people chanting back "yes we can" in repetition is just too close to the chorus of "amen" after every line in a sermon) and because of their poetic, vague, and abstract nature.

That said, in our defence, I think Europeans can be glad Obama was elected even though we know he isn't going to be any kind of saviour or great redeemer. Of course he is not going to eliminate all the injustices in the world. He is a politician and as such part of the establishment, and as George Monbiot points out in Bring on the Apocalypse, you simply can't expect to acheive global justice or attain goals such as "making poverty history" without confronting the current global order and distribution of power. It's really inconvenient.

But! If the United States were to start showing signs of engaging with the rest of the world, to seriously commit to tackling climate change and cutting carbon emissions, to close Guantanamo bay, it seems to me these would already be significiant improvements and evidence of progress towards making the world a safer and fairer place. It is not as if the politics and actions of a country like the US have no bearing on the rest of the world, and affect, directly or indirectly, the quality of life of billions.

In this sense, Obamamania is not misguided, nor it "idiocy" or "political blunder". It might be excessive, and over-zealous, but it is at least somewhat justified. Besides, part of the euphoria and air of celebration is also to do with saying goodbye and good riddance to Bush which, after 8 years, I think justifies a party. Or at least a drink.

Rieff certainly doesn't mince his words when it comes to harshly criticising Europeans, in all their naive idiocy, for supporting Obama because he will not act in a way that serves their best interests. But what he doesn't focus enough on are the dangers of such a collective attitude, not just for Europeans but for everyone who lives in the world (including Americans - because who said he can solve all of their problems anyway?).

It reminds me of the "Spice Girls argument", a theory a friend of mine came up with. The theory goes that it's actually very dangerous when apparent improvements and progress seem to be occuring, because it tips people into complacency, into thinking the problem is on its way out. For example, the Spice Girls did more damage to the feminist movement than anything because they made people THINK this was evidence of gender equality and female empowerment, which in fact it wasn't, or at least - might have been only at a very limited, and superficial level.

Applied to this case, it holds that Barack Obama is very bad news because people will "go back to sleep" as Rieff puts it, stop criticising and scrutinising the US as they did when Bush was in power, even though in reality, american politics will probably remain business as usual, in many ways. Now America has got its credibility back. The old-school "Fuck Bush" anti-americanism is muted if not defunct entirely, and the most worrying thing is that maybe now a page has been turned. Perhaps our memory will not stretch back to the awful, fatal mistakes of the Bush administration, because they are seen as belonging to another era. This is the danger, that perhaps next time America, with its brand new face, suggests going to war to its Western allies, we will give them the benefit of the doubt.