Posts by ApagaLaLuz

7

'Osama' The Movie

by ApagaLaLuz in

hey i wanted to share this with you.

i saw this foreign film last night.

it's one of the first movies to come out of afghanistan since the fall of the taliban.

Hey I wanted to share this with you. I saw this foreign film last night. It's one of the first movies to come out of Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban. I thought it was brilliant, highlighting the role, rather oppresion of women. To make a long story short, it's about a little girl who disguises herself as a boy in order to be able to work and feed her Grandmother and widowed mother. It really put things in to perspective for me, regarding how fortunate I am to live where I do and be a woman. I think every woman should check this movie out. It also goes in to detail about soem of teh Taliban training of young boys. Also one thing I really appreciated about it, was that unlike some movies that show things in such graphic detail to try and make it point, and just end up making you feel uncomfortable in your seat, this one was pretty mild. Rated PG-13, thank goodness.

Afghan aftermath

Two of the films premiered at last year's Cannes film festival were made in Afghanistan during 2002, only months after the end of the war: Osama , by Afghan director Siddiq Barmak, and At Five in the Afternoon , by Iranian Samira Makhmalbaf. The presence of both at Cannes, and their subsequent journey around the world's film festivals (Osama won the Sutherland Trophy at the 2003 London festival), hinted that a new film culture might be emerging from the country's ruins. Indeed Osama was heavily promoted as the first Afghan film made since the rise to power of the Taliban. But how far do these two films represent signs of a permanent change in the fortunes of Afghanistan's cinema?

Afghan film-makers such as Barmak ? who headed the national film institute, Afghan Film, until the beginning of Taliban rule in 1996 ? have returned to the country to encourage a new generation of film-makers to pick up a camera and foreign film-makers to invest. In this respect Iran has played a crucial role, not least in the person of director and producer Mohsen Makhmalbaf (father of Samira), who has dedicated himself to the regeneration of Afghanistan and its cinema.

But even before the Taliban Afghanistan's film industry was slight: the country had only ever produced 40 or so long and short films, which compares miserably with its neighbours India and Iran. So when the Taliban took control of much of the country in 1996, the film-production infrastructure amounted to little more than a lab used for printing copies of foreign films, a few dilapidated editing tables and one camera in a serious state of disrepair.

The years of Taliban rule only made things worse: all cinemas were shut down or torched and in 2001 a senior official visited Afghan Film and ordered staff to burn their entire stock of 3,000 films. (They managed to save around 1,000 by hiding them in a back room.) Under the Taliban even to watch a film was a subversive act, and when Samira Makhmalbaf was shooting At Five in the Afternoon in Kabul (as documented by her sister Hana in Joy of Madness , 2003) she found few young people willing to work as extras. Many were scared of the camera and most believed that acting would entail dancing, a pursuit still frowned on in conservative quarters.

The situation today is starting to improve. There are now eight cinemas operating in Kabul, mostly showing Indian films. Afghan Film is slowly being re-equipped and some private companies are emerging from the dust of older firms such as Ariana Film and Kabul Film. New initiatives include a production company set up by Bollywood actor Hashmat Rahmini (known to audiences as Hashmat Khan), himself an Afghan.

Barmak, now a senior figure at the revived Afghan Film, won a scholarship to study film at Moscow University in 1981, during the Soviet occupation of his country. On his return to Afghanistan in 1987 he worked on short films and from 1992 headed Afghan Film. His work has mostly focused on Afghanistan's troubled political landscape. ?When I finished studying in Russia and returned to Afghanistan I joined one of the Mujahadeen groups fighting the Russians. I joined to set up a centre for documentary and feature films because I wanted to help create a cultural side to their organisation. Fighting and weapons do not make our future.?

In 1996 Barmak fled to the north and made documentaries for Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud before going into exile in Pakistan. After the end of Taliban rule he returned and worked on a series of short educational films on such subjects as health and unexploded mines, which were shown in mobile cinemas to audiences around the country. ?We took them to some very remote areas,? says Barmak. ?Most of the population is not educated, not able to read newspapers, so pictures are very useful and powerful.?

For Barmak, cinema, education and social regeneration are closely interlinked. In Osama he used the story of a single family to reflect on the experience of Afghans living under the Taliban. A young girl (played by 13-year-old Marina Golbahari, whom Barmak found on the street) lives with her mother and grandmother, both forbidden to work under Taliban rules. With her father and grandfather dead, the girl cuts her hair and pretends to be a boy so she can take a job in a local bakery; she is then pressurised by a Talib to attend a religious school for boys. When her duplicity is discovered she is prosecuted by a religious court and forced to marry an elderly Mullah.

Osama explores various characteristics of Taliban rule ? the oppression of women, religious fundamentalism, protest and its suppression ? in an accessible, even thrilling, way. Barmak was determined to appeal to as broad a range of Afghans as possible, to make a film that reflected their experiences and could be watched in local cinemas. But Afghan audiences have yet to see Osama , and there's some doubt as to when it might be screened in a country where conservative tendencies remain strong.

Foreign finance was crucial to Osama 's production, with a significant proportion of the initial funds and most of the technical support coming from Iran (alongside Japanese and Irish co-producers). Key to raising this was Mohsen Makhmalbaf, whose concern for the Afghan people has spread far beyond film-making. Soon after shooting Kandahar on the borders of Afghanistan in 2000 Makhmalbaf turned his attention to the plight of uneducated Afghan refugees in Iran and directed the documentary The Afghan Alphabet on the subject. He also founded the Afghan Children Education Movement (ACEM), originally dedicated to addressing the lack of education available to the 1.5 million Afghan refugees banned from attending Iranian schools. In an open letter to Iran's President Khatami in mid 2001 Makhmalbaf offered to use ACEM to attract money from foreign sources to improve Iran's schools if Khatami would allow Afghan refugees into the classrooms. Khatami agreed and Makhmalbaf secured initial financial support from UNESCO and lobbied for donations through television and newspaper appeals.

To date ACEM has set up over 80 projects, from buying books to building new schools, and has supported health and medical initiatives. After the fall of the Taliban the organisation moved into Afghanistan itself, reconstructing the Kabul orphanage and building three new schools in Herat. ACEM has also paid for ten short films by Afghan film-makers, funded 20 Afghan film-makers to attend courses and directed money from the Iranian government ($25,000) and the Makhmalbaf Film House ($21,000) towards the production of Osama . In late 2002 Barmak took over from Makhmalbaf as the head of ACEM.

Both Barmak and Makhmalbaf recognise the limitations of cinema as an instrument of regeneration and education. But Makhmalbaf does believe that cinema can help the Afghan people to discover more about themselves and the rest of the world. ?The cinema audience is mainly children and youths rather than the conservative elderly. Cinema acts like a mirror for society to look at its spirit and correct its faults, and Afghanistan has lived so much without the mirror of cinema we can almost say this nation does not recognise its own image.?

Meanwhile Barmak's aim is to develop a specifically Afghan cinema for an Afghan audience. ?My target is to make films for my people, who don't completely understand different dramatic styles or too much poetry, so mine is a very simple, direct way of telling a story. I use technical staff from the Makhmalbaf Film House, but there is more Barmak than Makhmalbaf in Osama .?

A few weeks after showing Osama during Directors' Fortnight at Cannes and a few days after receiving UNESCO's Fellini Silver Medal in Paris in June, Barmak announced several new film projects that were realised in Afghanistan in the second half of 2003. Japanese director Yutaka Osawa shot part of his feature I Love Peace , the story of a deaf Japanese woman who befriends a young Afghan girl injured in a landmine explosion, in Afghanistan last summer. Hashmat Rahmini shot two short films using local actors and addressing local concerns: Hope of Spring , about a love triangle between a Pashtun, a Tajik and a Hazara, and Screams Not Heard , which depicts daily Afghan life. In December Marzieh Meshkini ? Mohsen Makhmalbaf's wife and the director of The Day I Became a Woman (2000) ? began production on Stray Dogs , a feature film to be shot entirely in Afghanistan. And while security fears have so far prevented Indian film crews from working here again, Barmak is sure this will soon change.

Seven young Afghan film-makers have completed short digital films with funding from ACEM and there are plans for several more to go into production. ?I believe that after a 100-year delay Afghan cinema has finally been born,? says Mohsen Makhmalbaf. ?But this is not due to new film facilities. Afghan cinema has been born because a young generation has entered the domain of movie production.?

Barmak and Makhmalbaf are fully aware that any new Afghan film faces limited exhibition opportunities and an audience unused to movies that diverge from the music and melodrama of _Bollywood. One ACEM project, initiated last year by Makhmalbaf, called on five Iranian film houses (including his own) to provide free copies of their films to be shown in cinemas in Kabul. As Makhmalbaf says: ?Even the worst Iranian films have a social message, which is quite different from Indian films.? Samira Makhmalbaf's At Five in the Afternoon is the kind of film both Barmak and Mohsen Makhmalbaf would like Afghan film-makers to create themselves: through the character of Noqreh (Agheleh Rezaïe), a headstrong Afghan schoolgirl who dreams of becoming her country's first female president, the film reflects on the changing role of women in Afghan society, the twin draws of liberalism and fundamentalism and the realities of unemployment, homelessness and poverty.

Afghan cinema is still very much in its infancy and there are huge hurdles to jump in terms of the competition for audience attention with Indian and other foreign films and the scarcity of resources. But the seeds are being sown for the production of new films that could result in the founding of a national cinema that will hold up a mirror to Afghanistan, for its people and by its people.

?Osama' opens on 13 February

96

First gay couples wed in US state

by ignored_one in

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3719905.stm

first gay couples wed in us state

two lesbians were among the first same-sex couples to wed under a new law in the us state of massachusetts.

ApagaLaLuz

My Grandfather married THREE sisters, not at the same time mind you, but at least when he died he could say "I once married 3 sisters"

chevy of the "wondering why all my kin-folk look funny' class

32

Mouthy - Our Favourite Grandma

by Uzzah in

jw
friends

mouthy: .

these past couple of days you have been alluding to passing on and a few 'if i die soon' type comments.

i know death is natural but you can't go anywhere yet!

ApagaLaLuz

Hey Mouthy!! I never had a Grandma, but if I did I sure wish we was as cool as you.Maybe she would have whipped me in to line as a youngin and I wouldnt have all these problems now :)

Love Ya! I always Love your posts.

p.s. I wanted to post on your picture thread, but I wasted all my posts on nonsense, just wanted to say that you have just about the cutest grand babies EVER

78

Faced with loss of tax breaks, Danish WTS drops "Bible-Based" stance

by Nathan Natas in

from an awake!

correspondent in cyber-space:

with the threat of removal of tax breaks hanging over their heads, watchtower has changed from ther bible-based position.

ApagaLaLuz

Oh yah..... I'm still confused as to how this subject got brought up in a thread with this title

78

Faced with loss of tax breaks, Danish WTS drops "Bible-Based" stance

by Nathan Natas in

from an awake!

correspondent in cyber-space:

with the threat of removal of tax breaks hanging over their heads, watchtower has changed from ther bible-based position.

ApagaLaLuz

just like eating poo pedophilia is a fetish

Hey Thai, I love ya man I gotta say this: Both are sick and disgusting. If someone says "Hi my name is Tom (hope i'm not offending anyone by picking this name) I like to eat poo," he would usually get a sickened and disgusted reaction from people. Same as if "Hi my name is Tom, I enjoy pedophilia". In my opinion pedophila simply fans the flames of a sickened and disgusting craving, one that is unnatural. Also, killing people is a fetish too done for sexual gratification.

p.s. I'm sure my point has already been expressed too, I just havent gotten a chance to finish reading the whole thread yet, I just saw "eating poo" and HAD to respond.

Also I wanted to add that Britney Spears' more racier videos were done after she turned 18. And granted children are looking older than their age nowdays. Personally I think there's a difference between a grown man who is attracted to a mature looking 16 year old, than a grown man who is attracted to an obvious 11 year old.

21

Somebody---PLease Party with ME

by codeblue in

jw
friends

.

ok....i am all alone....nodenial is working out of town...darn it.. how about a cyber party with me...please!!!.

i have just mixed a 7 and 7..... codeblue

ApagaLaLuz

<-------pops in for a body shot!!!!

I'll be back when I build my post back up

<--------- covers Code's eyes, spins her around 14 3/4 times, and disappears

92

One Soldier's Viewpoint of Iraq

by ThiChi in

one soldier?s viewpoint of iraq.

greetings (names withheld).

as i head off to baghdad for the final weeks of my stay in iraq, i wanted to say thanks to all of you who did not believe the media.

ApagaLaLuz

Hi Thi Chi! Thanks for sharing. It's no secret my feelings on war, especially this war, but I do have friends who have been called up to service, and I am sympathetic to their situations. I wanted to share with you a letter from my friend serving in Afghanistan. We here in teh comforts of our homes can speculate all we want, but it's great to hear first hand from those over there.

Hey Girl!

thought I'd drop you a line and wish you a happy thanksgiving.

Thought I'd share some of the things I am thankful for and what I would say if I was back in the states about to carve a turkey;

I am thankful for being American

For being born in the greatest country in the world

To have the right to make decisions for my self

To be able, to work to be rich or poor, the only question is how hard

All-tho there has been hard times in my life, none have left me mal-nourished, or to sleep in the cold under the stars

I am very thankful for my many good friends and a job to work for

A central government, with military, and police that for the most part don't work for the highest bidder, and that are actually concerned with the safety of the nation.

Let me tell you, these things are oftenly over looked, and it's not until your in a nation where you can't trust the police even as a citizen of the community. The cops here work for the war lords and there is no such thing as a government.

We were in a southern city last week and it was unbelievable to see. The public transit passed by filled to the brim, so overloaded people were sitting on top of the bus in the freezing cold. Or as a donkey passes with a father and son, the son on his way to a school the Americans just set up, a large white tent with no heat, and the father on his way to work on the street selling this months crop, full of vehicles that bellow black exhaust. We pass by tents all the time that sit on the edge of that same road with a trench that runs behind it that acts as a gutter and a sewer, very commonly with human feces floating by, this is a family's home. There is no such thing as a bathroom here I've seen many times in many different villages a person walking down the street just pop a squat and leave a pile for one of the street vendors to later wash into that ditch running on the side of the road. There is no such thing as middle class, ether your filthy rich or your dirt poor.

This is not a pity story, just some things we, I, had never thought about on thanksgiving. I was to busy thanking god for the new t.v. I just saved up for or the new stereo. Never once had I thought about the sewers and the public transit, the police, and least of all the government. But all of these things put together is what makes home so great. Never before was I so proud to say "THANK GOD FOR THE U.S.A."

HAPPY THANKSGIVING MISS YOU TONS!

SGT J****** J********

96

First gay couples wed in US state

by ignored_one in

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3719905.stm

first gay couples wed in us state

two lesbians were among the first same-sex couples to wed under a new law in the us state of massachusetts.

ApagaLaLuz

<--------- hands Ignored a spoon for the stirring :)

109

Hacienda del Corona

by simplesally in

jw
friends

ok............who wants to come party at our corona hangout?.

the hacienda is open and serving drinks.

i think i need something stronger tonight.........i need that bartender to mix me up a vodka 7......who else?

ApagaLaLuz

LOL!!! AAAHHHHHH Sassy...... this is brilliant. Man I wish I had some computer skills so I could add to the fun! Except, if I had to be a "Friends" character, I've always wanted to be Joey, he gets the most action, and teh most sandwiches

109

Hacienda del Corona

by simplesally in

jw
friends

ok............who wants to come party at our corona hangout?.

the hacienda is open and serving drinks.

i think i need something stronger tonight.........i need that bartender to mix me up a vodka 7......who else?

ApagaLaLuz

Wait! Me, Sassy, Simplesally, Dan-O, Putternut, and FMZ, all smooshed together in to one train bathroom stall.

I've had this dream before!!!!