No Other Land, Occupied Palestinian Territory, / Norway 2024

“This film made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective shows the destruction of the occupied West Bank’s Masafer Yatta by Israeli soldiers and the alliance which develops between the Palestinian activist Basel and Israeli journalist Yuval.”

The filmmakers are Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor. They were delighted when their documentary won  a major award at the Berlinale. Two of the collective, Yuval Abraham and Basel Adra, were at the award ceremony to receive the prize. However, their acceptance speeches  provoked a furore in Berlin and in Israel. That grossly abused word ‘ant-semitic’ was raised as was ‘anti-Israel’, and questions raised about funding for the Festival. Other speeches at the ceremony supporting Palestine and hackers placing extracts of the speeches on the Berlinale web pages raised even more ire. It is worth adding that an award winner, Jonathan Glazer,  at the Academy Awards was also vilified for quite mild comments regarding the war on Gaza; comments which, likewise, were misquoted.

A Press release by the Berlinale was, as in many other media reports, rather lacking in detail or a vigorous defence of free speech;

““We understand the outrage that the statements made by some of the award winners were perceived as too one-sided and, in some cases, inappropriate. In the run-up to and during our festival, we made it very clear what the Berlinale’s view of the war in the Middle East is and that we do not share one-sided positions. However, the Berlinale sees itself – today, as in the past – as a platform for open dialogue across cultures and countries. We must therefore also tolerate opinions and statements that contradict our own opinions, as long as these statements do not discriminate against people or groups of people in a racist or similarly discriminating way or cross legal limits. From our point of view, it would have been appropriate in terms of content if the award winners and guests at the Award Ceremony had also made more differentiated statements on this issue,” says Mariëtte Rissenbeek. “The Berlinale stands for democracy and openness. We explicitly oppose discrimination and all forms of hatred. We want to exchange ideas with other social and political institutions on how to conduct a social discourse on this extremely controversial topic in Germany – with the inclusion of international perspectives – without individual statements being perceived as anti-Semitic or anti-Palestinian. We have to face up to this controversial topic – as an international film festival and as a society as a whole.”

A report in Screen Daily at least had the merit of greater detail.

Basal Adra and Yuval Abrahama with the award

The responses are fairly typical of matters in Germany, and indeed here in Britain. Authorities seem to have a difficulty in distinguishing between the ‘ant-Semitic’ and the ‘anti-Israel’ The much discussed IHRA definitions have played a misleading role here. However, the term ‘anti-Semitic’ is itself deeply problematic. The term ‘Semitic’ was introduced in Europe in the C18th and Edward Said, in his magisterial ‘Orientalism’ (1978), comments on the proponents of this discourse and their racism. The term ‘anti-Semitic, appeared in the late C19th, used by European racists as they propounded their prejudices against Jewish people. One of the oddities of its use is in discussions of prejudice against Jewish people over centuries before the term was actually coined. And the Semitic languages  include Arabic, Amharic, Aramaic, Hebrew, and numerous other ancient and modern languages. It is notable that almost no-one uses the term ‘anti-Semitic’ to describe prejudice against Arabs, including Palestinians. Critics write about Zionists ‘weaponising’ the term; this is valid but the logical response should be either to attack the ‘anti-Semitism’ of Zionists against Palestinians or to drop the term from one’s lexicon. The latter response would be the more logical. Other oppressed peoples, such as Africans, African-Americans, African -Caribbean, Aboriginal and other colonised or enslaved peoples do not have a special term when subjected to racism. So this is an example of that dubious practice, ‘ hierarchy of the oppressed’

The responses in  Germany, as with so much comment on the genocide war waged by the Zionists against the Palestinian people, is an example of  ‘Eurocentrism’. This point-of-view is common in contemporary discourses, used and misused by commentators. It is best understood in the terms set out by the Marxists, Joseph Needham and Samir Amin:

“Eurocentrism is defined as the notion that European culture is the universal culture to which all other cultures must conform, given that non-Western cultures are reduced simply to being particular cultures. As Needham argued, “The basic fallacy of Eurocentrism is therefore the tacit assumption that because modern science and technology, which grew up indeed in post-Renaissance Europe, are universal, everything else European is universal also.” Likewise, Amin writes: “Eurocentrism…claims that imitation of the Western model by all peoples is the only solution to the challenges of our time.” Eurocentrism both projects itself as the universal culture and rejects the true universalism of peoples.” (Monthly Review)

Europe and North America are full of examples of this expressions of both colonial and neo-colonial interests and values. The treatments of the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan are recent examples; as are the common responses to migrants from Africa, the Americas and Asia.  In terms of Germany critics have pointed out how the German policy on Israel is so different from the way that Germany treats its own history, including the genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples in South West Africa. British equivalent actions would include those perpetrated in colonial Kenya during what is still called ‘the Mau-Mau rebellion’.

Herero monument to the genocide

Unfortunately the Berlinale Press Release does not really confront the reactionary content of the criticisms. But European cinema, like that in North America, has a poor record on addressing the colonial violence inflicted and still being inflicted on oppressed peoples and nations. There are many films about oppression and repression in Europe, or in North America; these include numerous films on the holocaust perpetrated by the Third Reich. To the best of my knowledge, whilst there are literary and dramatic works on German colonial atrocities, I am not aware of a film addressing this. And as for Britain, whilst there is the 1955 Simba, dramatising the perils, not for Africans, but for white settlers in Kenya: and there is White Mischief (1987) with a n almost total absence of the indigenous peoples.

The most problematic omission is the genocide in the Congo under Belgium rule, in what was called the Congo Free State; over the space of only 23 years, some eight to ten million Africans were slaughtered with many more mutilated by the authorities. There is a single documentary, King Leopold’s Ghost (2006),  and two poor adaptations of Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness.

There are exceptions to the dominant Eurocentric narrative Michael Winterbottom worked with a Palestinians film-0maker on Eleven Days in May (2022): Film socialisme (2010) is another. Third Cinema film-makers have addressed these events,  Sembène Ousmane is one example; his Camp de Thiaroye (1988), dramatises not only a massacre perpetrated by the French military at the end of World War II of African recruits who fought for the French but also the values and interests that underlie such crimes.  And European and North American Television actually performs better than western cinema. There are documentaries about many of the European colonial atrocities and genocides,  If readers think the commentaries by filmmaker in Third Cinema are exaggerated then the best of these is a good antidote. Exterminate All the Brutes is still available on HBO, Now TV, Sky Go and Just Watch streaming. This should be mandatory viewing for U.S. British and German politicians and media chiefs. Perhaps then Al Jazeera would not be the lone television channel providing a detailed coverage of the latest chapter in the actual implementation of Eurocentrism  and its costs to millions of people outside the privileged western circle. Hopefully the reactionary voices will not be able to censor No Other Land and we will see it soon here in Britain.

The Patience Stone / Syngué Sabour, pierre de patience, Afghanistan, France, Germany, Britain, 2013.

 

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This was the first seriously impressive film that I saw in 2014. Unfortunately it seems to be suffering from a very limited release in the UK. It is definitely worth seeking out. The DVDs, shown online, seem to be from other territories.

The film is adapted from a novella of the same name – translated from the French by Polly McLean (Vintage 2011). The author, Atiq Rahimi, has also directed this film version.   The book is set in one room in a small dwelling in Kabul. On a mattress on the floor lies a wounded mujahid. His wound is in the back of the neck and he is in a seemingly permanent coma. He is tended by his younger wife who has to arrange the saline drip, or often a water and salt substitute. She talks to him constantly, however she talks about matters and experiences that she would presumably avoid if he was conscious. At times she reads briefly from a Koran, marking her place with a feather. The title of book and film refers to a precious object that the woman recalls that her father told her of: “You talk to it, and talk to it. And the stone listens, absorbing all your words, all your secrets, until one fine day it explodes. Shatters into tiny pieces. …. Sang-e sabur!”

The book is sited almost wholly in the small, bare room where the woman tends her husband. We find out about what happens beyond these walls from the woman and from an unidentified narrative voice. A couple of times her two daughters venture into the room. Later she takes them to stay with her sister, who has both employment and a place to live. A battle ebbs and flows in the streets. A Mullah calls several times to pray for the man, but the wife manages to avoid letting him in. We hear her call to neighbours on occasions. And two sets of mujaheddin visit the room: once when she is absent once when she is present. The book struck me as having a fairly detached description and commentary upon the characters and events in the story.

Not surprisingly the film has a less detached sense, seeing and hearing the characters and their actions is a much more immediate experience. And the performance of Golshifteh Farahani as the woman is both powerful and involving for the audience. Moreover, the film, unlike the book, shows us the events beyond the room. We follow the woman and her children into a basement shelter where we also meet her neighbours. We see the Mullah a he makes his brief calls. We follow the woman through the streets of Kabul and to the rooms of her sister. And we see the visits of the mujaheddin and the consequent actions.

Even so the film follows the book’s plot and characterisations fairly faithfully. One difference that puzzled me was that in the Koran is taken away by the first group of mujaheddin, leaving only the feather behind. In the film it remains in the room.

This appears to be Rahini’s first film. He had the good sense to arrange for Jean-Claude Carriére to adapt the book into a screenplay. Carriére is, of course, well known for his work with Luis Buñuel. In his eighties he remains amazingly productive. The last seriously good film that I saw before The Patience Stone was The Artist and the Model, also scripted by Carriére. Whilst the film is faithful to the book it also contains themes and motifs familiar from Carriere’s other film work: a couple of moments reminded me also of Buñuel. Centrally we have the unconventional passive male in the presence of a independent woman. Then there is the exploration of sexuality linked to an oppressive obsession. And there is the contrast presented between a woman’s access to sexuality – through choice, marriage and prostitution.

The film was shot partly in Afghanistan and partly in Morocco; the latter for buildings that had an apropriate facade. The film was shot in colour and 2.35:1; the British release had English subtitles. Farahani’s performance won wide praise and is central to the film. The narrative has parallels with other films set in Afghanistan, notably Osama (2003). In different ways the films critically erxamine the treatment of women in the period in Afghanistan. It is also worth noting that the myth regarding ‘a patience stone’ is originally Persian.

[Originally posted on The Case for Global Film].

Alam, France/ Saudi Arabia / Tunisia / Qatar / Occupied Palestinian Territory 2022

This title was screened at the Hyde Park  Picture House as part of the Leeds Palestinian Film Festival. The majority of screenings seem to have been at Film Festivals. The Palestinian production company is Philistine Films, which is responsible for a number of films addressing the situation and experience of Palestinians; it includes the fine When I Saw You / Lamma shoftak 2012, set among displaced Palestinians following the 1967 war. As is usually the case this production relies on inputs from both Arab countries and European states; the production was shot in Tunis.

The title, ‘Alam’ is found in a number of languages with several meanings; one use in Arabic is ‘flag’, though literally it refers to the flagpole. The drama is set among the Palestinian Arabs who live in the part of occupied Palestine known as Israel. The drama centres round the celebration of the Founding or Independence Day of Israel; this is May 14th in the western calendar but the ‘5th of the month of Lyar’ for Israelis. Dispossessed Palestinians mourn their lost country on May 15th, Al-Nakba.

For Palestinians who stayed on the land that became Israel, Israel’s Day of Founding is not a reason for celebration; they suffer from an apartheid state.. For their exams, high school students have to learn Israel’s version of history, with the stories of dispossessed former Palestinians being suppressed.

Tamer (Mahmood Bakri) is drawn to a new high school student Maysaá (Sereen Khass) and through her becomes involved in an act of defiance of the occupiers’ celebrations. These centre on the flagpole at the school reserved for the Israeli flag. The staff at the school mainly try to comply with the dominant values of the occupier state. We see and hear one teacher who resolutely insists on the Israeli falsified version of Palestine history. Another teacher does show some sympathy with students who resist this indoctrination.

Tamar has already received several warnings over his behaviour, mainly because of his laid back attitude to study and the official curriculum.  His friendship group seems more interested in pop music, streaming and girls though they do resent the authoritarian control of the Israeli state. But Tamer, through his school detention, becomes friendly with Safwat (Muhammad Abed Elrahman) who is more outspoken about their situation and would like to take action. This leads to a plan to replace the Israeli flag on the school flagpole with the Palestinian flag, banned in Israel. The motivation of the group varies but all, including Maysaá, take part.

Tamer, Maysaá and Safwat at the demonstration

However, their approach and planning is amateur. On the actual day of the celebrations a group of students take part in a public demonstration o f opposition. The response of the Israeli police and military rapidly becomes violent. And the final response of the friends is a memorial act which is still an act of defiance.

Tamer‘s family already have the experience of Israeli repression which leads to tensions within his family. His father (Amer Hlehel) is worried because of events in the past. One of his brothers was seized and imprisoned by the Israelis: this led to the death of his father [Tamar’s grandfather] and this has led to the surviving other brother, (Uncle Naji / Saleh Bakri) to suffering a mental breakdown. He spends much of his time setting fires [a symbolic as well as actual ailments]: and late in the movie he sets fire to an old olive tree in the square outside the now vacant grandfather’s house: also obviously symbolic. For much the time Tamar uses this house rather than the family home, entertaining both friends and Maysaá there.

The film effectively combines moments of humour with more serious drama. The film is handsomely shot in colour and full widescreen. The cast are completely convincing their characters offer a range of responses of Palestinians to the heavy hand of state control. The drama develops well and the cinematography and editing provide a detailed canvas.

This feature is written and directed by Firas Khoury; he has already made some short movies. He is also involved in organising screenings and cinematic events throughout Palestine. This feature is shot in colour and anamorphic wide screen, 2.35:9. The running time is 109 minutes. The dialogue is in Arabic and Hebrew with English sub-titles.

The experience of Palestinians living in Israel is often overlooked in the media. Given the repression taking place in Israel of Palestinian expression an opposition to the war, this is a welcome opportunity to get a sense of this Palestinian world. The movie take son particular resonance because of the current repression of Palestinian Arabs who attempt to take a stand on the war on Gaza.

In colour and a ratio of 2.39:1, running time 109 minutes, in Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles.

Souvenir Souvenir, France 2020

This is a fifteen minute animated short by Bastien Dubois. Dubois has made three earlier short animation. One of these, Madagascar, a Journey Diary / Madagascar, carnet de voyage (2010), was nominated for an Academy Award as was this title. The earlier animation addressed cultural practice. However, this most recent work dramatises a personal issue for Dubois over which he has struggled for ten years before embodying it in this title.

The animated images are accompanied by actual voices which recount memories and events which he has investigated and puzzled over since his early years. Hi grandfather served in the French Army when it was attempting to suppress the National Liberation Struggle of the Algerian people. As is the case with ex-military with traumatic memories his grandfather always deflected or ignored his questions, ‘what he did in the war’. In trying to establish what was involved Dubois studied the war and the actions of the French soldiers. This was a classic example of brutal and violent action against Algerians, both armed fighters and civilians. Towards the end of the animation we learn of a moment when the grandfather’s guard dropped and  a hint emerged of his involvement.

The images in this work render, often literally how violent was the war. The voices, including Dubois himself, and friends family, interpret and comment upon these images. Whilst in one way the animation record what the French perpetrated in Algeria in another way it examines the impact on men like the grandfather who were called to carry out what must have been war crimes. This gives the animation and it’s voices a two-fold address to the colonial violence which continues against other people to this day.

The animation is featured on the Indy Film Library, a site dedicated to short films. There is a link to Souvenir Souvenir, which is on YouTube. There is also an article on the animation by the editor. He draws out some of the important political aspects of the work. He also draws parallels with the contemporary colonial violence; including that carried out against the Palestinian people by the Zionist regime.

I was impressed with the animated short and stimulated by the editor’s article. He does refer to ‘White Western’ values; there is some truth in such an assertions but it needs to be related to the more fundamentals of class in a capitalist world. In a way the working class recruits of the French army were as much victims of French colonialism as the Algerian people imprisoned, tortured and murdered in the colonial war. An important merit of Dubois’ film is that it brings out both these aspects.

 

Leeds Palestinian Film Festival 2023

This is now a regular event in Yorkshire though this year it comes against a backdrop of a genocidal war against the Palestinian people. Thus it offers an opportunity to deepen our knowledge and understanding of the experience of the Palestinian people since the British Empire sold away their land for a mess of pottage.

One film, Al-Makhdu’un (The Dupes, Syria 1972), has already been screened during the Leeds International Film Festival. This is a film adapted from the novella  Rijāl Fi Al-Shams / Men of the Sun by  Ghassan Kanafani in 1963. How the past bleeds into the present as a story of dispossessed Palestinians is presented as the colonial settler regime controlling Palestine continues the war against the actual inhabitants of historic Palestine. This film version was scripted and  directed by Tewfik  Saleh, an Egyptian who made a number of films that can be counted as part of Third Cinema. He suffered censorship in  Egypt and left in the 1970s and this film was produced by the Syrian National Film Organisation.  The film was shot in black and white academy, running for 107 minutes in Arabic; English sub-titles provided.

This digital version was a restoration by the Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project in cooperation with the  Cineteca di Bologna working with the National Film Corporation and the family of Tewfik Saleh. It was screened as part of the 2023 Il Cinema Ritrovato. The Festival  Catalogue contained comments by Saleh made for a French Film Dossier in 1971.

    I worked on the adaptation of Men in the Sun by Ghassan Kanafani – a militant of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine assassinated on 9 July 1972 in Beirut by the Zionist secret service (Mossad) – from 1954 to 1971. My intentions and my interpretation of the novel and its characters changed in light of the tragic events that took place in the region in June 1967 and September 1970. In the latest version, I wanted to emphasises the element of escape that characterise the Middle East at this time. Three characters from three different generations, representing three phases of the same collective problem, decide to flee their situation in search of what each considers or hopes to be their individual salvation. But the end is very different from their expectations; there is no individual salvation from a collective tragedy. And this is the lesson that history teaches us every day.

Saleh here refers to the seizure of Palestinian lands and the further expulsion of Palestinians during and after the six-day war in 1967; and the expulsion of the Palestine Liberation Organisation from Jordan in 1970, including the massacre of Palestinian militants and civilians. The film’s central characters are victims of the earlier Al-Nakba (Palestinian catastrophe) of 1947 and 1948. Set in the 1950s in the Iraqi desert; three dispossessed Palestinians  attempt  to journey to a new life in Kuwait.

The Festival continues until December 9th with a variety of screenings across the city and cultural events. There are eleven more events in the programme; and including both documentaries and features.

The organisers have published a statement of context on their WebPages:

The Leeds Palestinian Film Festival Team are filled with horror, grief and sadness at the current violent loss of life across Palestine/Israel.

We are motivated by a strong belief in justice, respect and dignity for all people, which is why we have selected the films for this festival carefully.

The intentions of our 13 outstanding and thought-provoking events are:

to shine a light on hidden stories of Palestinians, their history, culture and politics

to challenge stereotypes and one-dimensional views

to portray a people in all their diversity

We believe our programme provides invaluable context which can help to illuminate the root causes of the present violence, and to develop responses grounded in understanding and care for others.

All our events constitute safe spaces for constructive and respectful dialogue, with no place for racism, xenophobia or aggression. [LPFF]

 

The War on Palestinians 2023

Once again the colonial settler occupation of Palestine is subjecting the people to displacement, a humanitarian crisis and criminal violence. Once again the most reliable reporting of this is on the Al Jazeera channels and web pages.

There one finds report, comments, pictures and videos from the war zone. Here is Britain the rest of the mainstream media provide little that is not distorted by the mendacious and racist propaganda of the imperialist alliance led by the United States.

This is true not just of the present but also of the history that has bought us to this point; a point where the attacks on the oppressed people and nations wordlwide is on the increase. Hopefully it is helpful to point to earlier documentaries and films that provide a history and analysis of the class and  colonial oppression that are the foundation of this conflict.

Exterminate All the Brutes provides a history of the colonial violence inflicted on oppressed peoples in the modern era. It is a level of brutality and violence perpetrated by the advanced capitalist states in Europe and their settler states in the Americas; from the slave trade to the modern genocides.

Eleven Days in May chronicles the children killed in the last war waged on the territory of Gaza. As on that ocassion children are the most vulnerable of the victims of zionist agression.

3000 Nights presents the illegal inprisonment and frequent torture inflicted on Palestinian women in zionist prisons. This time round an increasing number of children are joining these unhappy victims.

Al Nakba is a three part documentary that chronicles the catastrophe that befell the Palestinians when the United Nations breached its own charter and partitioned Palestine.

World War I Through Arab Eyes is a three part documentary which chronicles the earlier history when Britain commenced the dispossesion of Palestians and the anachronistic division of Arab lands that bedevils the liberation struggle even today.

Concerning Violence is a film commentary on the important writings of Franz Fanon. He writes on the entitlement of opressed people to use armed resistance to occupation and colonialism; an entitlement endorsed by the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Whilst the situation of the Palestinians is dire there is at least hope in the world-wide demonstrations of solidarity. Demonstrations which imperialist goverments, including Britain, are desperately trying to criminalise. But the Palestinian National Liberation Stuggle will continue: as Fanon wrote of the Algerian Revolution against an earlier settler colonialism:

“The Revolution in depth, the true one, precisely becasue it changes man [and woman] and renews society, has reached an advanced stage.” [Studies in a Dying Colonialism, 1959).

 

Edward Said, 1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003

It is the twentieth anniversary of the death of this writer and political activist. Happily, Al Jazeera has re-broadcast their 2018 profile, constructed round Said’s final memoir, Out of Place (1999). This has been broadcast on Al Jazeera channels; that in Britain presented it with English subtitles for the different languages. It runs just under an hour and now, happily, it is available on the Al Jazeera Web Pages.

Said was an important intellectual and his major works redrew the academic discourses on literature, representation and cultural studies. Hi literary works made me, and many other people, revisit and rethink their loved writings from English literature. Orientalism (1978) was an epic study on how the Colonial and Imperialist states have denigrated people in the East, not just economically and politically but also in the representations of the dominant culture. This was a work that combined detailed and concrete examples with a general theoretical analysis.

Another important work was Culture and Imperialism (1993) which analysed the way that the Imperialist states used their hegemony over oppressed peoples to produce a value and interest laden system of culture.

In 1993 Said presented the BBC’s Reith Lectures, then a more serious set of talks that avoided the pitfalls of trying to be popular. Over six programmes he discussed the functions and impact of public intellectuals. The programmes commencing with the Representations of Intellectual, starting with the ideas of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Towards the end Said posed the question of ‘speaking truth to power’. Broadcast on BBC radio these are still available.

But Said’s real importance was as an activist; following Marx and Engels’ famous precept. He was a for a time a member of the Palestine National Council. Together with fellow intellectual and poet, Mahmoud Darwish, he contributed to the PLO Declaration of Palestinian Independence. One of the pleasures in the film is a reading of a Darwish poem dedicated to Said. Said was critical of what were called ‘The Oslo Accords’, a deal which in retrospect can be clearly seen as a fraud and a hoodwink.

In his final years, after a diagnosis of leukaemia, Said worked with the Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim to form the West Eastern Divan Orchestra. As a colleague and admirer, a contributor to the film, points out this actually went against some of Said’s earlier political principles. I suspect that this also conflicts with the analysis and principles of Franz Fanon, an important influence on Said’s work, written and political. He also tended to support the two-state solution, but twenty years on it seems unlikely that he would still maintain that as a viable option.

However, his main contribution was a rigorous and illuminating contribution to the political culture of anti-imperialism and in particular to the struggle of the Palestinian people for an Independent and autonomous Palestine. I frequently consult again his major works, especially Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism. And I am now revisiting his Reith Lectures. Gone but not forgotten.

The Mauritanian in Guantánamo Prison

This is a 2021 movie produced in the USA by Wonder Street, 30 West Production and in Britain by BBC films. It was actually mainly filmed in South Africa. Released in 2021 it seems to have had only one screening in Britain, at the Glasgow Film Festival.  Since then it has been released on Internet streaming, on Blu-ray / DVD, and now it has been transmitted on BBC 4.

The feature is based on Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi. He was rendered to Jordan: then transported by the CIA to Afghanistan: then to the Guantánamo Detention Centre, Camp Delta. Here he was interrogated by the FBI and then further interrogated and tortured by military personal, the Task Force in Special Projects at the prison; being subjected to what were termed ‘Enhanced Interrogation Techniques”. Slahi also suffered all the other deprivations which were the norm for Guantánamo prisoners; manacles and chains: hooding; isolation: and such secrecy that neither his family nor any legal representatives knew of his captivity.

This changed in 2005 when the internationally recognized criminal defence lawyer Nancy Hollander got involved in Slahi’s case, together with fellow lawyer Theresa Duncan. They successfully pursued a habeas corpus case. Earlier the military appointed a prosecution lawyer; he subsequently resigned stating that he could not ‘in good conscience’ conduct the case. A hearing ordered Slahi’s release but the Department of Justice appealed the decision. Conveniently then Slahi was left in a legal limbo. It was not until 2016 that Slahi was finally released. But his life since has suffered from following restrictions and the U.S. administrations have never admitted any fault.

Slahi’s memoir, Guantánamo Diary, was written in prison; he taught himself English there, though he did already have some basic words and phrases. The manuscript was held for ten years by the military censors and finally released to his lawyers and published in 2015 with heavy redactions. In 2017 an unredacted version was published. It was edited by Larry Siems who wrote an introduction and added numerous footnotes; the footnotes fill in known detail relating to Slahi’s memoir and these include numerous online documents on the case and on the conduct at the Guantánamo Base. It makes for harrowing reading.

At least it has bought some light to bear on the appalling war crimes committed by several successive US administrations. It is apparent that the USA continues to suffer from a racist and imperialist set of values in relation, in particular, to oppressed peoples. Ironically, the Order for Slahi’s release came on March 22nd 2010; this was a mere week after the 42nd anniversary of the My Lai massacre by U.S. combat troops in Vietnam, March 16th 1968. A month later one of a number of  documentaries on the massacre was aired on PBS. It detailed the atrocities but also the way that the US administrations covered up the war crime for forty years.

US troops in Vietnam

This is one of a number of war crimes committed by the U.S. military which include the atrocities at Abu Ghraib, committed at the same time as the Guantánamo imprisonments and documented in the 2008 Standard Operating Procedures. A contributor to the BBC radio documentary, The My Lai Tapes, blithely suggested that the US military had learned from the earlier experience in its conduct in the Iraq war; clearly he suffered from undue optimism.

It is worth adding that the Guantánamo base was a acquired in a colonial treaty imposed on Cuba by the more powerful USA. Since the Revolution the Cuban Government has continually protested this occupation but the USA administrations take no notice; indeed they continue their illegal boycott on Cuba. An article in the treaty states that,

“The U.S. may occupy, use, and modify the properties to fit the needs of a coaling and naval station, only.”

The movie itself opens with the statement that

‘This is a true story’.

Also in the end Credits it notes,

‘Based on the book Guantánamo Diary’.

The second claim is not fully accurate. The memoir does inform  readers what Slahi’s says in interviews with his lawyers, often verbatim in the movie. And there is a long torture sequence in the movie which is obviously based on his accounts. But the overall narrative itself owes as much to the experiences of the two lawyers. In fact, the movie is structured from their point-of-view rather than that of Slahi. This is a typical convention for western features dealing with issues concerning people from what is often termed ‘The Third World’, i.e. the oppressed peoples and nations. It is a problematic convention. There are, though, far worse examples of its use than in The Mauritanian. But it is till the case that this movie offers Slahi’s voice only partially. Slahi’s Diary, in most cases, contains the dates of transfers, interrogation and the torture. In movie, opening shots for a number of sequences include an onscreen title with the place and the date; but not for all separate places and dates.

The adaptation means that we only see and hear part of Slahi’s story. The movie opens with a wedding ritual in Mauritania when Slahi (Tahar Rahim) is taken for questioning by the Mauritanian authorities; he has a last look at his mother in his rear-view mirror. This is followed by the case being bought to the attention of Nancy Hollander (Jodie Foster). Thus the rendition to first Jordan, and then Afghanistan is missing. Moreover, the movie also gives us the legal work and increasing doubts by the lawyer appointed by the military to prosecute Slahi. However, the officer appointed, Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Couch (Benedict Cumberbatch), resigned from the case in 2004, whereas in the film it appears to be later, likely 2007. In fact in 2007  this became public knowledge following a report in the Wall Street Journal. We first see Couch at a location identified onscreen as a ‘Naval Law Conference, New Orleans, Louisiana’ but without a date. A proceeding sequence opened with a shot of  Nancy Hollander, followed by  a long shot of a city with onscreen;

“Albuquerque, New Mexico February 2005.”

All through the movie it appears that the investigation by the prosecution and the defence are running tandem; this was not the case. One of the sequences involving Couch and his team has an assistant telling Couch that

‘Slahi has got himself a lawyer’

with Couch checking a profile of Hollander on his computer; ‘flash-forward’? There are also two sequences where Couch and Hollander meet. The first is in the PX at Guantánamo Detention, referred to as ‘Gitmo’ by the military. This follows Hollander receiving boxes of redacted Government evidence, seen by Couch in a parallel cut with an unredacted version. Thus this meeting, if it occurred, took place late 2005. The second sequence is when the pair meet in a bar before the Court hearings; this would be 2008 or 2009. Couch tells Hollander that she has not investigated ‘box 32’ of the Government evidence; how does he know?

Hollander, Duncan and Slahi

Thus, the main narrative is presented from the point of view of the two  legal teams. We do see and hear Slahi’s experience but mediated through the lawyers. We see his interviews with the lawyers but the base surveillance system means that he cannot speak openly. So he is forced to write his testimony which he is able to pass in a seal envelope to the lawyers. Note though, there is an intermediate legal process, the Privilege Team Office, which checks and redacts wordings on the basis of security. So his memoir is read by the Nancy Hollander and her assistant Teri Duncan (Shailene Woodley) but still has to pass through the censorship system.

These testimonies are presented visually. So we see Slahi writing in his cell. Hollander and her aide are called to the Privilege Team Office and in a secure room are able to read the testimony. This is then visualised on screen as Slahi’s experience. The image is presented in academy, mirroring the black and white image we see on the Base surveillance system. This first submission details Slahi’s treatment on arrival at Guantánamo and then the early interrogations with a translator present. These sequences are interrupted twice: once to show Hollander reading the testimony: and once to show Couch telling the widow of a friend who died in the twin tower event that he is prosecuting Slahi. This happens after a church service, and it should be noted that it has been moved since if it happened at all it would have happened prior to Hollander’s involvement in the case.

This trope is common in movies dealing with members of the oppressed peoples, both when set in an advanced capitalist state such as the USA and also when set in the territories under colonial and neo-colonial control. The western characters, often white and male though not in this case, provide a familiar face and voice with which that of the victim is presented. The examples of an autonomous voice for the oppressed are rare; Exterminate All The Brutes is one good example, one which uses unconventional narratives to achieve this.

This limitation at the personal level is mirrored at the more general political level. As noted, important parts of Slahi’s experience of rendition and incarceration are missing from the movie. We do actually see something of the Guantánamo Base and its routines. But we only see the other inmates in long shots and briefly. The one recurring contact that Slahi has with a fellow inmate is by voice alone as they exercise in shrouded exercise spaces. We subsequently learn that this character, known only by his number 142 or by the name Slahi uses ‘Marseille’, died, possibly by his own hand; this character does not appear in the book in this form. In the movie Duncan finally receives a photograph which identifies 142 with his family.

In fact, the Diary records frequent interaction between the prisoners held in Guantanamo. Slahi also records a greater amount of interaction between inmates than depicted in the movie. They were able to talk to each other in their cells. There was an organised hunger strike at one point over religious observances. After his confession he was allowed to actually see and talk to fellow detainees.

“In the early summer of  2005 they moved Tariq next to my hut and were allowed to see each other drying recreation. Mr al-Sawah was on the older side, about forty-eight years old.” (page 346 Diary, names and dates redacted. Note, the longest redaction in the book is several pages recording a lie detector test; odd?

We never see the politicians responsible for Slahi’s imprisonment; just on a couple occasions we see or hear the name of ‘Donald Rumsfeld and once that of George W. Bush. We do see the interrogators. The FBI interrogators appear friendly and relatively courteous; clearly trying to establish a relationship with Slahi that will lead him to admit something incriminating. Slahi remains resolute in refusing this. One is an African-American but Slahi records in the Dairy that none of his interrogators were black, only some of the guards. Then we see the military interrogators who, in contrast to the CIA, are brutal and violent, and indeed stoop to what is effectively rape. The leader, at one point, tells Slahi that his mother is now detained and suggests that she could be molested in the prison. It is the latter interrogation that leads Slahi to sign a confession, complicating the fight for his freedom. The Diary records that Slahi reckons that he was interviewed by possibly up to a hundred individuals. These included the Mauritanian and Jordanian security: the CIA: the FBI: the U.S. military and a number of translators.

FBI interrogators

As far as identifiable villainous characters in the movie these are supplied by the military. In particular there is one army officer Colonel Bill Seidel (Corey Johnson) who is contrasted with the conscience motivated Crouch. And there is a fellow officer, Neil Buckland (Zachary Levi),  who is actually involved in the interrogations with his superior General Mandel (Mathew Marsh). These characters are involved in a tussle over secret records, Memorandum for the Record, which actually detail the interrogation/torture techniques used on Slahi. At one point we see an observer filling in such a form whilst watching through a one-way screen. It is when Couch finally reads one of these that he resigns. Among the ordinary guards we get characters who treat Slahi is a brutal manner but also those who are almost helpful; as the guard who quietly tells Slahi that Number 142 is dead.

This is also at the level of individualised characters and drama. There is not any overt reference to the overall political process and objectives of the USA. There is the character who lost a family member in the ‘9/11’ attacks. In fact, the charge against Slahi is that he was the ‘mastermind’ of the plot. The ‘war on terror’ is there is in the background  But there is not a sense of how the U.S. policy of a rendition, secret incarceration and torture fits into this. One could compare a HBO documentary, Exterminate All the Brutes, which quite consciously relates the numerous atrocities committed by US forces to the underlying racist and colonial values and interests of that culture. To do so that series has to use non-conventional visual and aural techniques. The Mauritanian uses quite conventional techniques. So, whilst the interrogations of Slahi are visualised in the same ratio as the surveillance cameras, [academy], the actual filming involves a range of cameras shots, positions and angles; and being so conventional it is likely that viewers pay little attention to the actual style and its significance.

The screenwriters for this movie include Michael Bronner, also responsible for the original story,  who also scripted United 93 and Green Zone. The former is an uncritical story of one of the hijacked airliners in ‘9/11’; it ends with the heroic passengers downing the jet plane heading for the White House, an assumed rather than factual resolution. Green Zone presents a rogue US security officer critically pursuing the fallacy of Iraqi nuclear weapons. Both films fail to present the point of view of either the hi-jackers or the Iraq people.

The co-writers on the movie were duo of migrants who studied in the USA at Columbia University and who have continued to work there; Rory Haines (British) and Sohrab Noshirvani (Iranian). Their previous work has included television/streaming projects for Fox and for the BBC. Their one movie script is a super-hero story, Black Adam. Their work does seem to have been almost totally mainstream though addressing issues that affect minorities or groups perceived as minorities.

The other key player in the movie is the director Kevin MacDonald. He hails from Scotland and has worked in British television and in the film industry since the mid1990s. One of his relevant titles is the documentary One Day In September 1999, which presents the events at the Olympics in Munich in 1972; an event involving the deaths of both Israeli athletes and Palestinians militants. Some of the problems with the treatment in the film are written in reviews by Robert \Ebert and Nick Davis, [both reviews are on ‘Rotten Tomatoes‘].

The balance is uneven, the style is closer to a fictional feature than a documentary: and the context is limited; whilst there is mention of the Holocaust under the Third Reich there is no discussion of Al Nakba or of an explanation regarding Black September.  MacDonald’s later films include several that deal with actual people and actual events: including Touching the Void (2003, mountaineering): The Last King of Scotland (2006 – Idi Amin): and  My Enemy’s Enemy (2007 – Klaus Barbie). This recent movie continues that strand and with some of the problems associated with the earlier films.

The cinematography is by Alwin H. Küchler working in colour and a scope ratio with digital cameras and format. The version that I viewed was from video so at a marginally faster frame rate that the cinema screenings. The academy sequences are framed in a 16:9 range with the scope image letterboxed; I am not sure how this was presented in the cinema. And it is worth noting that the DCP version seems to have been in 2K though the cinematography was in 4K.

Alwin H. Küchler has worked with MacDonald before, including on One Day in September. Overall the camera work is conventional, using a variety of shots and angles in ways familiar from mainstream titles. Some scenes start with establishing shots but others present a partial shot designed to emphasize the process; so when Hollander and Duncan attend the Privilege Team room after the Government provides the evidence in their case we first see the line of boxes stacked three high and blocking off the room . With the scene where Hollander and Couch meet in the PX we first get a close-up of items on sale; items far removed from the privations of Slahi’s incarceration. And a number of the interrogation sequences start with a close-up or mid-shot of Slahi before showing the actual interrogation room. The opening sequence at Guantánamo  has a very subjective feel, though not from Slahi’s point-of-view; and the camera seems to be handheld, [though likely a steadicam].There are very frequent large close-ups as the film presents its characterisation of Slahi; and the emotional responses of both Hollander and Couch are presented in this way. There are also ironic close-ups: at one point we see one of an iguana: at another point we get a close-up of a sign stating

“Do not harm the Iguana Penalty $10”

And there is an image of the U.S. Stars and Stripes shot through coils of barbed wire.

As well there are several overhead shots of Camp Delta, setting out something of the layout but also suggesting the power exercised there. One  is of Slahi’s exercise space, shut off from other people on every side. Another precedes the point when Slahi receives the letter stating he has won his case; the dominance is questioned. The film uses light and shadow to present counterpoint; the exterior shots of Slahi are brightly lit but the interrogations frequently create shadows. And a key scene between Couch and Buckland leaves the latter surrounded by darkness. A different effect is used when Hollander confronts Slahi with the knowledge of his confession: a florescent tube suddenly produces a flicker which exacerbates Slahi’s emotional response.

The editing was done by Justine Wright who has worked on several features by MacDonald including One Day in September. The editing worked to bind together the different strands of the narrative. Thus whilst the feature follows Slahi’s written record, this is constantly interspersed with shots of other characters and their actions, notably Hollander and Couch. The editing also parallels the narrative strands concerning Hollander and Couch; creating an impression that they are parallel in time if not in space. The editing also sets up motifs and ironic comments. Thus a cutaway shot is presented as Couch and Hollander meet in the PX, showing Base personnel surfing in the bay. Irony is a quality lacking in the US Agencies involved. Thus when Hollander and Duncan fist visit the base they are escorted to see Slahi. a guard intones ‘Honour Bound’ to which the escorting guard responds ‘Defending Freedom’.

The most notable sequence in terms of editing is the military interrogation which works as a type of montage. Their is a mêlée of shots and sound, including actions recorded by both Slahi and the Memorandums; there are flashbacks which presumably afflicted Slahi in the interrogation: and what appear to be subjective imaginings by Slahi produced by the effects of disorientation, deliberate. And the montage involves a wide range of shots, angles, light and shadows together with a sound track of noise and discordant music.

The sound track was presumably headed by Ben Barker, the sound designer, with a large team credited. The music is by Tom Hodge, who has mainly worked previously in television. The soundtrack includes dialogue, noise and music. I found  the dialogue tricky to follow at times; I find this in many modern movies which seem to aim for a naturalistic  use of dialogue which often is not that distinct. The music is often mixed with noise. There is an amount of music in the movie but for much of the time it is played at a low level and is not obvious. It tends to rise in volume and tone at particular points: at the end of the scene where Couch is recruited for the prosecution: in  the scene where Slahi hears the news of prisoner 142 we hear a cello swelling to strings. And in the scene where Hollander and Duncan first encounter Slahi’s confession we hear a string instrument increasing in volume as Duncan becomes agitated with the music ceasing when she leaves the room.

A recorded song is used over Hollander leaving the base at one point signifying a festival, ‘Christmas Island’.  There are several African songs: two by a Mauritanian griot and singer, and one by a fellow singer/songwriter: and one by a Tuareg Collective: none are translated. In the end credits we see the actual Slahi listening to Bob Dylan’s ‘The Man in Me’. The soundtrack music has been released on a digital recording. It lists the themes by Hodge in the movie by their titles, which clearly relate to the sequence in question. There are 34 tracks which include:

Mohamedou’s Theme: They Want To Talk To You: Your Name Came Up: Step Up To The Line, IDs Out: Focus On Our Client’s Testimony: Marseille: I Don’t Know This Man: Redacted

The art and design departments produced the facsimile of Capt Delta on Guantánamo in South Africa, near Cape Town. This location also provides the exterior ocean seen by Hollander and Couch. but by Slahi only through gaps in the fencing..

Benedict Cumber batch is among the numerous names as Producer but not Jodie Foster; Slahi is credited as a co-Producer, which I suspect carries less influence.

The end credits of The Mauritanian carry the claim that the movie is adapted from M  Slahi’s book Guantanamo Diary, published in a redacted version in 2015 and then, after Slahi’s release, in 2017 a ‘repaired’ version. Slahi worked with the editor Leonard  to replace the large number of redactions. It was not possible to just reinsert what Slahi originally wrote but they needed to work out what had been censored and write in what Slahi remembered writing. His original manuscript had been written in the summer of 2005 after Nancy Hollander suggested that he provide them with written testimonies. These would enjoy client / lawyer confidentiality though the system mean that the Privilege  Team Office checked the documents and redacted words, phrases and more on the grounds of national security. The book’s narrative starts by describing Slahi’s transfer from a Jordanian Prison to Afghanistan and then to Guantánamo. Earlier events are recalled later in the text by Slahi as he describes his imprisonment.

The description of imprisonment and ‘enhanced interrogation’ are far more shocking than anything in the movie. For a start the sheer length, intensity and grinding pain of hours, even days, under torture are far grimmer than the quite fast-paced sequence in the movie; the military investigation lasted 70 days, indicated in the movie by onscreen dates, but the sequence itself only runs 15 minutes. There are three chapters, 172 pages, on GTMO. This includes the preceding harsh imprisonment, the actual torture and the period after his ‘confession, which still included some of the lesser forms of torture.

Torture included the ‘Water diet’;

“No sleep was allowed. In order to enforce this, I was given 25-ounce water bottles in intervals of one to two hours, depending on the mood of the guards, 24 hours a day. The consequences were devastating. I couldn’t close my eyes for ten minutes because I was sitting most of the time on the bathroom.” (Page 268 Diary).

Not a torture easily visualised in the sort of sequence in the movie and toilets are a space that movies often shy away from.

There were also more bizarre aspects in a ‘specially prepared room’;

“It was freezing cold and full of pictures showing the glories of the U.S.: weapons arsenals, planers and pictures of  George Bush. “Don’t pray. You’ll insult my country  pray during the national anthem. We’re the greatest country in the free world, and we have the smartest president in the world,” he said. For the whole night I had to listen to the U.S. anthem, … “Oh say can you see …””(Page 243 Diary).

It is worth noting that much of the torture is similar to that recalled by the Tipton Three in The Road to Guantanamo. More than  this, the conventions and censorship rules of mainstream cinema do not allow the complete visualisation of some of the worse torture.

The discrepancies in the movie version start as the film opens. We see Slahi alone of a beach and then at a Mauritanian traditional wedding. He is called for by the local police and security. In the Diary Slahi records that this happened whilst a wedding occurred but he was elsewhere. And the arrest with rendition occurred several weeks later when he returned from work. Other changes follow but they do not necessarily affect the impact of the main story; they are the sort of embellishments common in this type of fictional feature. However, there are the more serious discrepancies in the narrative outside the prison. These are mainly not in the Diary, though there is occasional hearsay. But the events and actions involving Nancy Hollander and Lieutenant Couch must come from some other source; but I could not see any reference for this in the credits.

In the actual chronology Couch’s investigation took place in 2003 and 2004; well before Hollander’s involvement. But in the movie their investigations are presented as in parallel. In fact, any knowledge of Couch’s work and his stand on conscience only became public in a newspaper article in 2007. Intriguingly one sequence in the feature involving Couch does have a likely source. The editor of the Diary including an introduction and footnotes referencing material, including that which corroborated Slahi’s account. In an interview after his resignation Couch describes wrestling with his conscience at a Catholic service; exactly as depicted in the movie. There is also the scene where Teri Duncan (Shailene Woodley) brings Hollander documents and a photograph identifying [finally] Prisoner 242. They exchange comments on ‘box 32’ which, apparently, ‘will not stand up in court’. Presumably the material was classified; other documents featured in the film are shown in large close -up and can be read, not so these.. I did wonder if it was still classified when the movie came to be made?

There were also a number of internal hearings by the bodies involved in Guantanamo where Slahi was questioned and was able to make statements. We do not get to see these in the feature. Intriguingly at an early hearing, before Hollander’s involvement, Slahi recounts being asked to,

‘State Your Name’, responding, ‘State Your Name’.

A humorous note which the audience see/hear at the Columbia Court Hearing. It seem unlikely Slahi would have repeated an earlier mistake.

The other notable feature in the Diary is the description of the interrogators and guards by Slahi. Their behaviour varied considerably, from the sadistic to the covertly helpful. In the feature the latter behaviour occurs only once before he has his court appearance and then his final release. In the Diary the different type of behaviour are found as early as in Afghanistan.

“The worst was over; at least I thought. [In Jordan] The escorting guards were almost friendly when they handcuffed and blindfolded me. There is one common thing among prison guards, whether they are Americans, Mauritanian, or Jordanian: they all reflect the attitude of the interrogators. If the interrogators are happy the guards are happy, and if not, then not.” (Page 165 Diary).

In fact, the Guantánamo guards helped Slahi learn English, correcting his British variants in favour of U.S. ones. They also taught him chess. After his confession he was allowed to watch movie videos, including The Gladiator. And he was able to read books, one he really like was Catcher in the Rye.

The Diary also records that he was interrogated by over  a hundred different people, reduced to just a few in the movie; presumably to make it easier for audiences. He is fairly trenchant about some of them. Clearly the military unit are the worse. They include men, women, US citizens and people from other territories, especially in the role of translator. One of the oddities of the US redactions is that these include all references to female interrogators or guards, including the pronouns. Intriguingly when Slahi is flown from Senegal to Mauritania by a female French pilot, her description is not redacted.

He also noted that

“… later I learned  that there was no way to speak colloquial English without F–ing this and F–ing that. English accepts more curses than any other language, and I soon learned to curse with the commoners.” (Page 312 Diary)

Slahi was also entitled to visits by the International Red Cross. During his interrogation / torture these visits were debarred. later he enjoyed such visits and the IRC arranged phone calls and mail to and from his family.

There is a line in the feature by Hollander to Couch, which may or may not have been said by her. That the prison was in Guantánamo

‘not to keep the prisoners out of court but the jailers’.

One of the interesting aspects of Slahi’s Diary is the light it throws on the people involved in the imprisonment and interrogation at Guantánamo.. I have not seen a film or read an account by one of these people. One wonders what was the affect of the appalling behaviour that they were commanded to undertake. And alongside this is what reviewers have noted in the movie and which is obvious in the Diary; that Slahi has not held his treatment against US citizens as such. In fact, the published Diary ends with an author’s  invitation:

“I want to repeat and affirm this message here, and to say that now I am at home, that dream is also an invitation. The doors of my home are open.” (Author’s Note, Diary).

There are a number of movies and documentaries that relate to the story in The Mauritanian. Wikipedia has  a page on the Guantanamo Base and there is a list of films. documentaries and television programmes there. One important film is The Road to Guantanamo (2006) which recounts the stories of three British citizens of Pakistani heritage, Ruhal Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul, who visited Afghanistan in October 2001 and ended up being rendered, interrogated and tortured in Guantánamo; a fourth friend likely died in Afghanistan in U.S. bombing raids. The film was directed by Michael Winterbottom with interviews with the  ‘Tipton Three’ conducted by Matt Whitecross. The approach of the film is to present testimony by the three which is then dramatised by a cast and crew who were filming in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, [a location standing in for Guantánamo]. The film also includes inserts of actual media coverage. It opens with shots of George W. Bush and Tony Blair, then cuts to the first of the trio. The film continues with testimony, dramatisation and inserts. The violence practised by the US military is similar to that in The Mauritanian, including brutal torture. What is additional is that we see British officials who visit Guantánamo. And initially the trio are imprisoned in Camp X-Ray, a temporary open-air structure and then later moved into Camp Delta. They were held in Guantánamo for two years and then released without charge, but also without apology or any admission by the USA of wrongful imprisonment.

A movie with a parallel plot is Rendition (2007); a mainstream title which presents fictionalised account but is based on the actual experience of Khaled El-Masri.

In the film version Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) is seized by the CIA and rendered to Egypt where he is tortured. In the USA his wife, Isabella Fields El-Ibrahimi (Reese Witherspoon) struggles to obtain his release. Finally, a CIA operative with a conscience,  Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal), engineers his release. Apart from the rendition, the torture and an operative with a conscience, there is one other parallel with The Mauritanian. Under torture Anwar ‘names names’; in fact they are the names of the Egyptian 1952 Olympic football team. In a parallel manner prisoner 241 tells Slahi that he gave ‘a name’ to the interrogators; ‘Omar Sharif’; adding caustically,

“The Americans don’t know shit that isn’t American.”

Certainly in all these sad tales one senses not only the criminal approach of the U.S. governors but also their limited knowledge of the world beyond their borders. And what is common to these movies, the mainstream media and the dominant culture is the use of the term ‘America’ for what is actually the USA; only one part of the much larger Americas with their 20 plus states and many more peoples. It should also be noted that the movie spells the site as ‘Guantanamo’, missing out the ‘á’, as do a number of the reviews.

There is The Report (2019) follows a Senate staffer as he investigates the conduct by the CIA of the investigation and treatment of suspects of the September 11th 2001 events. The movie is partially based on an actual journalist investigation. The title had a screening at the London Film Festival but apparently not elsewhere. It is streaming but only on Amazon.

There are also movies that valorise the U.S. ‘war on terror’. The most interesting is Zero Dark Thirty (2012). Based on actual events, a female CIA operative tracks down bin Laden’s hiding place. The movie includes a torture sequence which here appears to be successful. A hit squad carry out the assassination. However, the final shot of the investigator, Maya (Jessica Chastain), is a bleak long shot as she finally returns home. A shot that undercuts the valorisation of the movie.

The reviews of  The Mauritanian varied but a number were dissatisfied with the script and a frequent complaint was that making the film a ‘legal thriller’ weakened the focus on Slahi’s story. There was praise for the performances of Tahar Rahim and Jodie Foster. And a number of critics remarked on the forgiving nature of Slahi’s response to his imprisonment and torture.

Alessandra Rangel in ‘In Session  Film’ had a couple of important criticisms, though the review misspells the subject’s name;

January 12, 2021 – “The movie would be more satisfying if it focused more on the issues of human rights violations and lack of accountability in Guantanamo and less in the thriller tropes that make us question Slahi’s innocence. The movie toys with our assumptions about his character. Is he innocent or is he really a terrorist? Is his imprisonment in Guantanamo justifiable because of his unavoidable link with Osama Bin Laden? It is unfair that the real-life victim needs to earn our sympathy, and more considering the vast information, we have regarding the treatment of alleged combatants in this internment center.”

This was not an aspect that struck me; partly I think because I regard the whole ‘War on Terror’ as sham. But Rangel has a point. When Slahi is first detained in Mauritania he is shown stealthily erasing the contacts on his cell phone. He actually describes this in the Diary and, like the whole arrest, it is different.

Then when we first see Couch and his team they are looking at people associated with Slahi and with likely involvement in ‘9/11’. These fill the whole screen and would seem to justify the US suspicions. And on the first visit to Slahi at Guantanamo by Hollander and Duncan he tells them that he had one call from a relative on ‘Ben Laden’s phone’. A point that even Hollander finds suspicious.  These would seem to be tropes from the legal thriller genre rather than from a protest drama.

Rangel’s second and final point is even more serious.

“The Mauritanian’s biggest hindrance, however, is not what it exposes, but how it does it. The story is more about the American people surrounding Slahi that stand for justice and legality – even against their compatriots – and not about Slahi himself. It turns out that Lt. Couch and Hollander are two of the most righteous people in the United States, focused on uncovering the truth, getting outraged once they find it, and going against the system to right some of the wrongs that multiple people within several administrations have allowed. The story celebrates these characters through their resilience of finding the truth about their country and being patriotic enough to do something about it. Consequently, Slahi’s case becomes a means to celebrate their sense of justice.”

This is how the narrative structure of The Mauritanian works. And it applies equally to Rendition and would seem to apply to The Report. The exception in this list is The Road to Guantanamo where there is no medium between the testimony of the victims and the audience. But all four movies, and many other titles, do share a major limitation; which is to fail to place this criminal case in the wider historical context.

I mentioned earlier the cases of the My Lai Massacre and of Abu Ghraib. But they are also part of a longer and fundamental problem in the culture of the United States. The States were founded on two great wrongs; the genocide of the Native Americans: and the enslavement of the Africans. Both continued after the wars on the Indian Nations and after the legal abolishment of slavery. The USA has also suffered regular bouts of the oppression of minorities that question the dominant values and interests, notably prior to World War I: in the 1920s; and most well-known, in the 1940s and 1950s.

Then there have been the wars, economic, military and political, against other peoples in the Americas; and continuing today against the Cuban and Venezuelan peoples. And in a parallel manner to the preceding global criminals, Britain, they have conducted similar wars against peoples all round the world, either directly or by their proxies. |So oppressive systems like Guantánamo are neither an aberration or counterbalanced by the minority of U.S. citizens with a conscience who oppose these crimes.

The bones of slaves thrown overboard

Whilst there are written and visual critiques of this imperial hegemony it is difficult to think of movies or films that address this. One of the most relevant documentaries on television and streaming is Exterminate All The Brutes, which counters both the USA’s history and the basis of this in Europe’s colonial missions. But to do this the series has to eschew the conventions on which a movie like The Mauritanian in is based.

https://www.themauritanian.movie/

The quotations from Guantánamo Diary ‘The Fully Restored Text’ by Mohamedou Ould Slahi and edited by Larry Siems is the paperback edition from Cannongate, 2017.

In 2015 Slate Magazine published extracts from the redacted version; these are still online, https://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2013/04/mohamedou_ould_slahi_s_guantanamo_memoirs_part_1_the_endless_interrogations.html

wikipe4dia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mauritanian

My Lai – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_massacre

Guantanamo treaty- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_Naval_Base

In Session Film – https://insessionfilm.com/movie-review-the-mauritanian/

The Report – https://itpworld.online/2019/11/25/the-report-us-2019/

 

 

Il Cinema Ritrovato 2023

This year sees the Centenary of the birth of Ousmane Sembéne, born in Senegal at the beginning of January 1923. Happily, the Cinema Libero Programme at Il Cinema Ritrovato is celebrating this with a focus on the Cinema of Senegal and a screening of Sembéne’s masterwork, Ceddo (1975). This is one of a series of films he produced and directed between 1963 and 2004. Sembéne once remarked that putting together the finance for a film was rather like picking up cigarette butts until there was enough for one stick to smoke. But the travails of his production work resulted in many fine films and the accolade of ‘The Father of African Film’. Mostly his work was in dramatic features, as was his writing before his film career. And, as in Ceddo, his films were a rich resource of African languages and African cultures. There are accompanying films and programmes on Senegalese cinema.

From elsewhere in West Africa comes a film from Burkino Faso, Yam Daabo / (1986), directed by Idrissa Ouédraogo. This is a ‘return to source’ feature set in a village in the Sahel; a place of poverty and misery.

From Syria comes Al-Makhdu’n/ The Dupes (1972) directed by Tewfik Saleh. Set in the desert with long-distance lorries, the drama addresses the experience of the Palestinians with the intense heat a metaphor for the Palestinian struggle. There is also a short film Le Femmes Palestiniennes (1974).

From Iran comes Gharibeh va meh / The Stranger and the Fog (19740 directed by  Bahram Beyzaie. This rarely seen drama is set in a sea-side village where the arrival of stranded man gives rise to conflicts over tradition and women’s social position. There is also a second film from this director, Cherike-ye Tara / The Ballad of Tara (1979); another film addressing women’s roles in the story of a young woman.

The programme owes much to the work of The Film Foundation which has restored many fine films which belong to Third Cinema and which [unfortunately] are often difficult to access.

Eleven Days in May, Gaza / Britain 2022

Eleven Days in May  is a documentary that charts the eleven days in May 2021 when Israel once again waged war on Gaza, killing civilians, including sixty seven children, and injuring many more.  Here we are presented with the actual stories of fifty four of the innocent children killed in what were clearly war crimes.

The documentary has been made by Mohammed Sawwaf and Michael Winterbottom. Mohammed Sawwaf is a Gaza based journalist and film-maker and founder of Alef Media  Company which produced the documentary. Michael Winterbottom is a British filmmaker whose work has not generally received the attention or praise it deserves. His earlier films include The Road to Guantanamo (2005) and In This World (2002) about Afghan refugees. He is also part of the production company Revolution Films which is distributing this title.

The documentary was filmed by Mohammed Sawwaf together with cinematographer Salah Alhaw and a small production team. They then sent about one hundred hours of footage to Michael Winterbottom in London who edited this, together with Otto Hill-Fletcher, into an 85 minute movie. A narration to the documentary was added and voiced by Kate Winslet.

 ” … the audience witnesses mere moments of lifetime pains.

Siblings, some so young that they will soon lose vivid memories of their killed brothers or sisters, shuffle nervously as they speak about their bereavement. Mothers and fathers put on brave faces in front of their surviving children, but break into tears when filmed alone. Keepsakes are carefully laid out in front of the camera – a Star Wars hoodie, a school certificate, the kind of necklace that costs a pittance but means the world to a little girl.

And we see mobile phone photos and videos, complete with cartoon-like Snapchat filters, showing the children full of life and happy before images of them which attest to the grimmest realities of war – small bodies, bloodied, and torn into pieces.”

Wikipedia has a brief page on the title which includes links to some reviewers. Apart from praise these tend to point up the bleakness of the stories. However, the participants, family members, neighbours and friends, generally speak with restraint and dignity; though their grief does break forth.

I could not find information regarding the international distribution. In Britain the British Board of Film Classification inflicted an 18 certificate on the documentary. The justification for this was that it included ‘real dead bodies and blood’. The BBFC has always involved political censorship; these days it is wrapped up in euphemisms. The certificate would have greater justification if mainstream titles full of blood, bodies and gore did not generally get lower certificates. A recent example would be Lady Macbeth (2016) which I have viewed at the cinema and on terrestrial television. It received a 15 certificate, despite dead bodies, human and animal: blood and gore: and to boot fairly explicit sex. The bodies may be dummies but they look real enough.

In Britain Revolution Films seem to have distributed the title through the Picture House network. However, I could not find any information online or at Picture House. It looks likely that there were some screenings in 2022 in London. The documentary was also screened as part of the 2022 Bristol Palestine Film Festival. The Leeds Palestine Film Festival is later in 2023; hopefully the title will screen in that programme.

There is a shortened version screening on the Al Jazeera English Language station; I assume the title is also screening on other Al Jazeera channels. Unfortunately the 85 minutes running time has been reduced to 47 minutes; a cut of over half-an-hour. This is one of the failings of television and streaming where titles are often cut to fit into the schedules. It may be that the BBFC certification has had an impact here. This version is also available on the Al Jazeera English-language web pages; one advantage here is that the strap line of news is missing. This version has been effectively edited but I did feel that some of the later stories were shorter than the earlier ones and there was a sense near the end of winding up the documentary. Nether less it remains a compelling if distressing presentation; all the more so at a time when the Israeli military are once again waging increased war on Palestinians in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank. There is also an interview with both Mohammed Sawwaf and Michael Winterbottom on the Al Jazeera web pages.

Predictably the Zionist fellow travellers have tried to rubbish the documentary and its authors. The Jewish Chronicle had false claims regarding Mohammed Sawwaf’s affiliations. Michael Winterbottom has joined the ranks of those supposedly afflicted with ‘antisemitism’; according to the Israeli Ambassador this now includes The General Assembly of the United Nations. A post of this title on another blog also generated the similar accusation. There is an oddly evidenced claim on the online Jewish News that Kate Winslett was ‘misled’ into voicing the narration.

It is worth looking at some of the other documentaries and programmes also on the Al Jazeera web pages. There are several presenting the voices of Palestinians in  their Documentaries and in The Witness series. This includes Al-Nakba which has been commemorated in May.