The Malaysian Insider :: Showbiz
The Malaysian Insider :: Showbiz |
| Israeli Arab wrestles with grief, guilt in suicide bomb film Posted: 20 Dec 2012 06:26 AM PST  Doueiri poses with Golden Star award for film "The Attack" during the 12th International Marrakech Film Festival in Marrakech. — Reuters pic Six years later "The Attack" is garnering interest on the festival circuit, winning praise in Toronto, an award in Marrakech, and wowing audiences at the Dubai international film festival in the United Arab Emirates this week. "When they got the script they rejected it, and they not only rejected it, they pulled the project and kept the script. We had a three-year legal battle to try and get it back," Doueiri, whose 1998 debut "West Beirut" drew praise at Cannes, said after a screening. "I understand the sensitivity of the film and I knew at the start it had a lot of landmines along the way. We knew we were going to have people who oppose it on the Arab side and the Jewish side." Now he has distribution in 40 countries including the United States for a dark love story where an Arab Israeli surgeon, Amin Jaafari, who is a model of successful integration in Jewish society is on a mission to find out if his wife Siham was the suicide bomber who killed 17 children at a birthday party. In the opening scene he is honoured at a ceremony for his work, offering platitudes in a speech about Arab and Jewish coexistence, the next day he is thrown into brutal detention as the suspect husband of a terrorist. Eventually released after police realise he knew nothing about the attack, the surgeon, played with gripping understatement by Ali Suliman, begins to see that perhaps his wife of 15 years had done it after all. He follows clues that lead to Nablus in the Palestinian territories where he finds Siham's posters plastered on walls as a martyr and locals treating him as a turncoat. Towards the end he takes a trip to Jenin - site of an Israeli operation in 2002 that left dozens of Palestinians dead - in a scene that Doueiri said was meant to signify that Amin understood what drove his wife though he didn't condone it. Doueiri said graffiti on the ruins of homes in Jenin reading "Ground Zero" - a reference to the site of New York towers destroyed in the 9/11 attacks in 2001 - was one scene that particularly riled his original US collaborators. Amin also realises that while he was a part of Israeli society, his wife had felt like an outsider. "It's about this man who is absolutely attached to his wife, who believed at the beginning of the film that he could be very well-integrated into Israeli society," Doueiri said. "Only, at the end there's that truth that comes up that the bottom line is there's us and there's them." The film has already drawn sharp reactions in the Arab world, with some Algerian media accusing Doueiri of defiling the novel that inspired it, by Algerian writer Yasmina Khadra, and Moroccan Islamists accusing it of being pro-Israel. Much of the film's dialogue is in Hebrew. Doueiri and fellow scriptwriter Joelle Touma altered a number of elements in Khadra's ending, in which Amin dies in an Israeli drone strike as he confronts the sheikh who mentored his wife. The film has the surgeon return to Tel Aviv, living with his guilt but shunned by friends for not revealing what he knows to the authorities - a shift reflecting Doueiri's ambitious intersection of the personal and the political. "We wanted to show that Amin has an incredible moral problem by his wife killing innocents. If she had blown herself up at a military checkpoint, Amin would not have had such a big problem," Doueiri said. "I challenge anyone to tell me I took the side of the Israelis. I just wanted to make a film where I did not shout slogans and soundbites. We had that for years." The Attack has echoes of "Paradise Now", another suicide bomb film - also starring Nazareth-born Ali Suliman - which won international acclaim. "It was shown in Toronto and when American producers saw it they wanted to distribute it again," Doueiri said. "I thought we really nailed the script, so we didn't give up the fight." — Reuters |
| ‘Dirty Harry,’ ‘The Matrix’ added to US film archive Posted: 20 Dec 2012 05:02 AM PST  WASHINGTON, Dec 20 — Clint Eastwood cop drama "Dirty Harry," sci-fi epic "The Matrix" and timeless romantic comedy "Breakfast at Tiffany's" are among 25 films being added to the US National Film Registry. "The Times of Harvey Milk," a 1984 documentary about the life and assassination of San Francisco's first openly gay lawmaker, will also join classics like "Citizen Kane" and "Casablanca" in America's official film archive, the registry announced Wednesday. Librarian of Congress James Billington said the National Film Registry, established in 1989, "spotlights the importance of preserving America's unparalleled film heritage. "These films are not selected as the 'best' American films of all time, but rather as works of enduring importance to American culture. They reflect who we are as a people and as a nation," he added. To qualify for possible inclusion films have to be at least 10 years old and "culturally, historically or esthetically" significant, said the registry, part of the Library of Congress. "The Matrix" from 1999 is the most recent of the new additions, while 1971's "Dirty Harry" is probably the most popular and classic in the mainstream sense of the word. "Breakfast at Tiffany's," starring Audrey Hepburn as New York society girl Holly Golightly and with a screenplay co-written by Truman Capote from his own novella, dates from 1961. Others chosen to join are less well known: they include "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1914), which features the first black actor to star in a feature-length US film, and "One Survivor Remembers," a 1995 short about a Holocaust survivor. "A Christmas Story" (1983) is based on humorist Jean Shepherd's "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash," while "Anatomy of a Murder" (1959) broke barriers due to its blunt language and willingness to openly discuss adult themes. More well known perhaps are 1957 western "3:10 to Yuma" and "Born Yesterday" (1950), featuring an Oscar-winning turn from Judy Holliday," while 1991's "Slacker" marked the blossoming of American independent cinema in the 1990s. The National Film Registry was created in 1989 and now has some 600 movies dating from 1897 to 1999, with 25 new ones chosen each year. Well-known movies already in it include everything from 1930's "All Quiet on the Western Front" through "Easy Rider" (1969) and Woody Allen's "Manhattan" (1979) to 1977 blockbuster "Star Wars" and 1989's "Sex, Lies and Videotape." — AFP-Relaxnews |
| You are subscribed to email updates from The Malaysian Insider :: Showbiz To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 ulasan:
Catat Ulasan