Premier in Adana - Radical Empathy

From Suppliants of Syria

Lucy and I went back to Turkey last week, for the premier of the film version of Suppliants of Syria.  The film is feeling like an ever more important part of this project, not least because of the huge challenges of raising the funds to perform the play in the region where it's set. I'm determined that we will get it to Adana, where we can share it with the Syrian women who took part, but that goal is still a long way off, and in the meantime we owed it to them to impart some sense of how we've been responding to their offer and their work.

It had been some time since I'd looked at the film, so I was able to be more objective about it than is usual when my work first goes in front of audiences.  I'm pleased to say that I was very moved by it - the women's sharing of personal stories, intercut with the Choruses from the Greek play Suppliants, is really searing in its honesty. Their acting, the cinematography and the music feel so rooted in that experience that it's impossible to resist its emotional force. And it's very exciting to have that put into dialogue with more political and structural considerations - there's a very theatrical, I guess Brechtian, interplay between the emotional truths and the objective frames around them.

Which said, my own emotional response pales into insignificance beside the reaction of the women themselves. In the Q&A that followed the screening, one of them, Iman, said that the film was "an incredible achievement - but I have been crying all the way through." I had thought that this was rhetorical, but Lucy, who was sitting amongst them, told me that all of them had been in tears from very early in the film. I suppose there was a lot being re-visited for them all; and there were also new stories they probably did not know, about the personal journeys of their friends who were sitting beside them. There's a moment in the film where some of them share with me that they had never told the stories before. The frame of the creative project was essential to draw out these incredibly important truths.

Another audience member was a Turkish NGO worker, who said that the film would bring out empathy in its audiences, and this was really important for the ongoing refugee work of her organisation.  I found myself responding that what is needed everywhere - not just in Turkey but also in Europe, America and global - is a new radical empathy as the way past the politics of prejudice.  It's very hard to hate somebody when you have heard them tell stories like these.  

MORE THAN WORDS - Making the Film

MORE THAN WORDS - Raffaele Messina

“Every film is a foreign film”, write Atom Egoyan and Ian Balfour, “foreign to some audience somewhere - and not simply in terms of language”.  Their book Subtitles: On the Foreignness of Film addresses the paradoxical nature of this international art form in the age of digital communication and global distribution.  In spite of its apparently global reach, most film remains firmly rooted in, and so constrained by, language.  As B. Ruby Rich argues in the same volume, audiences tend to resist subtitles because reading them makes the experience of film-going into “work”, when they prefer to think of it as “relaxation” and “entertainment”.  “My guess”, argues Rich, “is that foreign films function as a rebuke for some viewers…  evidence that the world is not made in ‘our’ image, and that neither our society or our language is universal.”

The undermining of universalism, with all its postcolonial, neoliberal overtones, is a key element in the MORE THAN WORDS project.  Charged with creating a film that could function as one of the project’s Intellectual Outputs, we gradually realised that, in order to be true to the spirit of this European partnership, we had to find a way of communicating through film that was not solely, or even largely reliant on spoken or written language.  The original application form had stated that the film would be “subtitled in all project languages”.  Since there are at least seven of these (one of which, Arabic, is written in a non-Western script), conventional subtitling would have the effect of turning each shot into a calligraphic page.  Given that all the other Intellectual Outputs are written texts, this seemed to be a bit of a wasted opportunity.  As a result, there are titles in all the project languages, but they happen as an independent element in the film; highlighting the challenge posed by language, rather than using language as an artificial means towards a spurious accessibility.

Anyone who has experienced the immigration systems of European countries can tell you that language is often far from being a means of accessibility.  Language can just as readily be a tool of power.  It can be used to obscure, to obfuscate and to exclude.  Our film includes a number of sequences in which various languages are employed without subtitles, so that only a portion of the audience will have a literal understanding of what is being said.  The emotional power of these sequences should be in the way they reflect the experience of people who enter European spaces without European language skills.  The audience is made foreign by the film.

The great advantage of film to a project like MORE THAN WORDS is that it is primarily a visual medium.  Through the composition and juxtaposition of shots, the rhythmic energy of editing and the nuances of facial and bodily expression in performers, film allows for an emotional narrative that speaks across languages and moves beyond the purely intellectual.  If the film was to complement the other project outputs, and to offer something distinct from them, then it had to become more purely filmic, a visual and musical construct that could convey the project’s work in a mode that moved beyond language, that was “more than words”.  This was how music, rather than the spoken word, became the dominant element in the film’s soundtrack - to the extent that much of the language involved becomes itself a musical and emotional rather than a rational element.

The original brief was for a film that charted the linear narrative of the project’s development: I freely admit that this is not what we have done.  However, our film absolutely does what the more detailed description specifies:

“It will follow the work of the partners, the discussions and debates, it will show the problems, doubts and solutions found.… The film will also focus on how the different forms of expression - theatre, story telling, dance and humour - can be merged.… It will end up with a common performance prepared by the partners together.”

Our common performance is the film itself, which draws off the skills of the partners in Clowning, dance, theatre and the digital to tell a story inspired by our journey together.  It tries to be honest about the challenges we face, both as practitioners engaged in work that attempts to embrace linguistic minorities, and as educators whose methodologies are not always practically or ideologically compatible.  As a result, it seeks neither fusion nor resolution, but rather engages in an emerging and ongoing dialogue between different art forms, educational approaches, cultures and languages - a dialogue which is dynamic, vital and profoundly democratic.

European societies rest on a creation myth that emphasises the primacy of language: “In the Beginning was the Word.”  That is not how creation is understood elsewhere.  Hindu myth portrays the beginnings of the universe through the figure of Shiva, the cosmic dancer, while many African cultures speak of a primal music from which emerged the physical world and the spoken word.  These cultures, which today interact so potently with our changing continent, are closer to scientific truth than our own traditions.  It is now commonly accepted amongst evolutionary psychologists that music preceded language and is actually a more fundamental aspect of human communication.  If we are to generate a contemporary European polity that embraces its global reach, then we need to find ways of relating to one another that are musical just as much as linguistic.  We need to be brave enough to move beyond the merely rational.

I hope you enjoy the film.  Click here to watch it!

MORE THAN WORDS was made with the support of the Erasmus + programme of the European Union.  
The European Commission's support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

NATIVE at the Berlinale

VAI

The Berlinale is extraordinary.  A documentary about a Maori woman who herself made documentaries, directed by her son as his first film, might just about squeeze into the London Film Festival in a small venue for what is perceived to be a “niche” audience.  At ORIGINS, we would put it into an intimate cinema and focus on the debate it provokes.  At the Berlinale, MERATA: HOW MUM DECOLONISED THE SCREEN was shown on a Saturday night on a gigantic IMAX screen to a packed cinema, and was followed by a long and effusive Q&A.  The indigenous film-makers continually expressed their thanks to the festival for giving them such an empowering platform, and the audiences for coming in such numbers.

But then, Berlin is a genuinely international city.  I don’t mean that it’s intercultural - it’s less diverse than London or Birmingham - I mean that it sees itself as a space engaged in the global exchange of culture, people and ideas.  Pretty much everyone speaks fluent English, which is the main language of the Festival.  Nobody resents the “Other”.  People are eager to learn and to engage with ways of living very different from their own.  As we prepare to fall off the cliff of Brexit, we should look to Berlin as an example of how we can improve ourselves as a necessarily cosmopolitan society in an intimate global space.  I hope that ORIGINS can contribute to this: the need has never felt more urgent or more extreme.

MERATA was one of two films made by emerging directors about their inspirational mothers.  The other was SHE WHO MUST BE LOVED, by indigenous Australian director Erica Glynn, about her mother Freda, who was a pioneer of indigenous media.  About half way through the film, Freda mentioned her youngest son, Warwick.  A bit later on, she mentioned that she had been briefly married to a certain Bob Thornton….   It was only at the end of the film that Warwick Thornton himself appeared, collecting an award at the Sydney Festival and saying that he owed his film-making success to his mother.  Both the films made it very clear how the close family ties in indigenous families can generate an immense cultural energy.

I was also struck by how little of the ego that characterises Western directors was present in the NATIVE presentations.  VAI, the opening feature, was directed by nine indigenous women, each presenting a ten-minute vignette, portraying a woman called Vai (meaning “water”) at different stages of her life.  They weren’t actually the same woman - she could be many ages in the same era, and moved around the islands of the Pacific - but they were like the same woman, with other people in her family always having the same name, even if their personalities were very different.  Vai, water, flows between Polynesian people and binds them together across the vast Ocean.  And, like this story of common cultures and continues regeneration, the very process of film-making suggested a community approach that puts aggressive individualism in the shade.

Hidden Histories - the first screening

Hidden Histories

Wednesday night saw the first screening of our film - Hidden Histories, Discovering Indigenous London.  There's a lot more to come on this - but I thought I'd just share a few audience reactions to whet the appetite.

“I think it was brave and extremely thought provoking. Asking us to acknowledge and play with difference in our work rather than ignore it and hold the "other" far away - masterful. I think the film says more about where we are not rather than where we are in our relations with Indigenous peoples. A lot of charity and not enough justice as one of the panel members so aptly said.” (Email from audience member)

“Excellent film… moving, cogent and necessary.” (Audience Feedback form)

“Incredibly thoughtful well put together and insightful programme. I learned a lot and think this will influence my perspective for a long time to come. Thank you!” (Audience Feedback form)

“It moved me as a person with indigenous heritage.  I would like to be even more involved.  Fantastic film.  I would love to show the film.” (Audience feedback form)

“Well shot, beautifully edited, strong interviews, and with a great narrative (the Rylance voice was just perfect).”  (Email from audience member)

More screenings soon....

Eve Sussman

The other fascinating experience in Montréal was a visit to the Modern Art Museum, to see Eve Sussman's piece, made with the Rufus Corporation, White on White. 

This piece looks like a film.  You go into a room, you sit down, and you watch it.  You are in an audience.  There are images, characters and dialogue.  The actors are clearly located in a recognisable world - it's Eastern Europe.  At times the settings are very specific - as in the image above, which is a careful reproduction of Yuri Gagarin's office.  But actually this is not a film in a conventional way, because the scenes are not ordered.  Rather, the editing is generated by a computer using algorithms, so that there is some sort of association between the scenes (the result of hash-tags), but it isn't any sort of narrative sequence planned by the artist.  The apparent logic by which the plot unfolds is in fact totally random.

And yet, the strange thing is that you can't help treating it as if it were a normal film - because all the signals are telling you that's what it is.  And so you start to create narrative out of the juxtapositions of scenes, and to generate plot-lines which may be unfurling.  The fact that none of them lead anywhere, and that the film refuses to end or to loop makes this deeply dis-orienting.  It is also very close to lived experience - nothing ties up neatly.

In many ways this is a response to the collapse of the grand narrative - both in terms of the end of Communist ideology in the East and the failure of late capitalism in the West.  It also suggests a kind of post-traumatic numbness - I was reminded of it as I watched the Guatemalan film Polvo that evening.  This is a "real" film, but again the narrative is fragmented and difficult for the viewer to re-construct.  As if the experience of genocide no longer allows the characters to live in a way that "makes sense" - either to them or to their implicated spectators. 

The Tree of Life

I went to see The Tree of Life last night. It was, I admit, with a degree of trepidation. For one thing, some aspects of the film (which I'm sure must be at least partly autobiographical by Terrence Malick) seemed a little close to my own life (actually, as things turned out, that wasn't disturbing at all). For another thing, the film had been met with derision, laughter and catcalls at Cannes, and with silent awe in other less jaded spaces. Neither boded too well, but - the film just sounded interesting.... and that matters. Arouse and hold intelligent interest. That's our business.

Much of the controversy concerns the film's Christian content. And it is Christian, no doubt about it. Christianity has had a bit of a bad press recently, thanks to the lunatics on the American Evangelical right and the bigots who've been elected at the last two Papal elections - but there is actually still a profound and important theologically capable and intellectually credible element in Christianity, of which the current Archbishop of Canterbury is a part. It's the faith in which I grew up, and to which I remain attracted, even loyal. So to see it explored in a film which doesn't reduce morality to simple binaries is a great pleasure.

What's more, Malick's film brings a spiritual awareness to contemporary living in surprising, unsettling ways. The central character, looking back from a middle-aged perspective on his childhood, does not overcome the past through time and contemplation, but rather becomes all the more acutely aware of its immediacy, the weight it places upon him, as he contrasts his own insignificance with the scale of the cosmos and the workings of history. Context on the grandest scale meets psychological realism. It's very easy for us to avoid the spiritual in our contemporary lives, but if we do so in art then we are actually denying what validates it. That's why I like to work with non-western traditions, where the spiritual is still explicit in performance, and with music, which simply wouldn't exist without the spiritual dimension. And bravo to Terrence Malick for attempting such a challenge in the most westernised and realism-bound medium of them all.