Mustapha Kemal Atatürk: The Birth of a Republicby Séverine Labat, Director All White in Barking by Marc Isaacs, Director Egypt: We Are Watching You by Leila Menjo and Sherief Elkatsha, Directors Iron Ladies of Liberia by Siatta Scott Johnson and Daniel Junge, Directors Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher mosher@svsu.edu You may not have heard, but the United States of America held a Presidential election in November 2008, and elected a new President named Barack Obama. As he prepares to take the reins of power in my nation, it’s a good season to examine some recently issued DVDs on contemporary and historic political struggles around the world. Supposedly Yul Brynner, Antonio Banderas, and Kevin Costner have all wanted to play Mustapha Kemal (1881-1938), founder of Turkey, and a nonfiction biography by Turkish director Can Dundar’s is controversial there for humanizing the nationally revered figure. In 2008 there were long articles in the London Review of Books by Perry Anderson on the Turkish nation’s founding, as the question of Turkey’s admittance to the European Union builds up steam. A few years ago Séverine Labat produced this documentary Mustapha Kemal Atatürk: The Birth of a Republic for television in France. It covers Kemal’s jockeying for influence in the “Young Turks” movement, his rival Enver, and Kemal’s steadfast determination to turn his land into a modern, Western state as quickly as possible. The “Young Turks’” quickly-constructed myth of a monocultural, monoracial nation resulted in the expulsion of Greeks, and difficulties for Christians and Jews. Because of their alliance with the losers, the end of the first World War resulted in the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire. The war concealed the Armenian genocide (of which Kemal’s hands were essentially clean), and Turkey’s founders never properly addressed the ongoing question of the Kurdish people’s desire for independence. Today there is concern in Turkey over public Islamicization, while the military remain staunch defenders of the secular regime. Filmmaker Labat gives us the talking heads of various academics, some Turkish, who all talk in French. The richness of their discourse means the English subtitles need to be read quickly, if English is the viewer’s language of choice. But the video’s historic footage is very satisfying, as Kemal marches, proceeds to Europe for the historic conference determining his nation’s borders, or gives public appearances. Another nation ruled by a strongman is Egypt, where Hosni Mubarak has held power for 29 years, following the assassination of Anwar Sadat, in what is essentially a one-party state. The disc Egypt: We Are Watching You is part of the Cinema Guild’s Why Democracy? project, and tells the story of a watchdog group initiated and led by three middle-aged female activists. The first of them was a television newscaster who grew sick of mouthing the government version of events she knew to be false. The second is a university professor, and the third a gruff harried activist quite willing to argue in the busy streets for what she knows is right. In 2005, Egypt held what were supposedly multi-party elections. But security forces blocked any polling places where it was suspected the populace would vote against Mubarak’s ruling party. That led to the formation by the three women of a movement called Shayfeen, or “we are watching you”. Their protests were held at gatherings of Egypt’s federal judges. But two judges who called for investigations of the voting stoppages were themselves arrested, and one was beaten severely enough to require hospitalization. The Shayfeen activists conduct man-on-the-street interviews, make plenty of phone calls to supporters, create DVDs and upload videos to YouTube and similar sites of police abuses of voters. There is ubiquitous cigarette smoking, barely interrupted by one needing throat surgery for a tumor on her vocal chords. Soon we see her back at work and lighting up. The climax of the film is when one flew to the United Nations headquarters in New York to address a meeting of world leaders, including George Bush, who tossed out encouraging but noncommittal words. The most exciting experience for the viewer is the camcorder footage from the heart of demonstrations, for it’s like joining in but without the risk of beating or imprisonment. Egypt: We Are Watching You was directed by Jehane Noujaim, who also made The Control Room, the well-received documentary about Al-Jazeera television network, and co-producer Sherief Elkatsha. Street-level politics in Egypt evidently continues, for an article in the November 2008 WIRED magazine told how activist Ahmed Maher has used Facebook as an organizing tool to assemble people for demonstrations. Also in the Cinema Guild’s Why Democracy? series is Iron Ladies of Liberia, Siatia Scott Johnson and Daniel Junge’s documentary of the first year of the presidency of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. Other females in her government include a burly colleague who flew back from Trenton, New Jersey USA to serve as top Police Chief, and a steely Minister of Finance, whom the President doesn’t hesitate to upbraid for incompetents working in her Ministry. We glimpse morning sweepers, beggars, kids playing ball, traffic (under newly-reinstalled streetlights), typical of West African big city streets. We hear her political opponents and disgruntled streetcorner opinions. We join Ms. Johnson-Sirleaf in meetings with Americans (including US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and a perpetually noncommittal President George Bush) regarding debt relief. We get a sense of her alternately gentle-and-firm style of business as we see her defuse a near-crisis of potential violence when decommissioned military veterans protest outside the Presidential office. Whereas male politicians are sometimes shown in the barber chair, Madame President is interviewed while a makeup artist applies cosmetics to her seasoned, friendly face. Back to that US Presidential election. I neglected to mention that Mr. Obama is the first African-American US President, an important fact considering the tortured relations for four hundred years between white and black races living in the nation. Race relations in the UK get examined on a small scale in All White in Barking, where Mark Isaacs turned the interrogating lens upon a single town, just east of London, in Essex, UK. A white couple who’ve lived in Barking all their lives finally accept a dinner invitation from a new arrived Nigerian family, admittedly queasy and fearing confrontation with “strange food”, like cow’s foot or unfamiliar root vegetables. Well-fed and relieved, they later host a barbecue with the Nigerians, plus nearby Albanians who’d rather have their son marry an African than a Serbian. An elderly haberdasher in Barking, originally from Poland, lives platonically with a Nigerian woman, and raises some eyebrows when he takes her to a dinner of fellow Nazi Holocaust survivors. Another old white gent is active in the anti-immigration British National Party (BNP), and finally moves out of Barking to the seaside. We see that his daughter has a son fathered by a black man, a beautiful, bright-eyed toddler who now inevitably reminds American viewers of a little Barack Obama. All of these four DVDs are of interest to the general public, which includes all intelligent, civic and globally minded artists. Those in academe might suggest that all of these discs be purchased by their universities’ libraries. |
Last Updated 1 February, 2009
Contact LDR: ldr@leonardo.org
Contact Leonardo:isast@leonardo.info
copyright © 2008 ISAST