Documenting muslim struggles
Muhsin Hendricks is an unlikely imam. The South African Muslim is a divorced father of three - and he's openly gay.
ASMAA MALIK
The Gazette
Saturday, November 17, 2007
The outspoken cleric makes no apologies for his sexual orientation. He's even gone on the radio to debate angry religious conservatives who don't just want to talk about whether he should be punished, but how he should be killed.
But despite his admirable courage and steadfast faith in Islam, Hendricks, who runs a support group for Muslims trying to reconcile their faith with their sexuality, was reluctant to invite filmmaker Parvez Sharma to meet his children, out of fear for their safety.
It took some serious back-and-forth over the course of the six years, but in the end, Sharma appealed to Hendricks as a fellow gay Muslim who shared his conviction, and was able to persuade the reluctant imam to let him film his regular visits with his son and daughters.
What resulted is a poignant scene in the Indian-born director's documentary, A Jihad for Love, in which Hendricks's children, faces blurred to protect their identities, laugh and joke with their father, telling him, because he asks, that they wouldn't be sad if he was stoned to death for being gay. Seeing his hurt reaction, they quickly take back their mocking words, and one of the girls climbs over the driver's seat and kisses Hendricks on the cheek.
Sharma's film, which premieres in Montreal on Nov. 25 as part of the image+nation Film Festival, tells the stories of gay and lesbian Muslims who define themselves not only by their sexuality, but also by their spirituality. His devout subjects were not easy to find, especially since many were in hiding after escaping persecution in such countries as Egypt and Iran.
Sharma credits his insider status for his intimate access to the film's characters. "It was a jihad to make this film," he said, using the Arabic word for struggle. "It was difficult to get people to confess to my camera something so deeply personal: who they pray to and who they sleep with."
He said he relied on what he called "an underground network of contacts" to tell the stories of people like Maryam and Maha, Arab lesbians who meet online and then meet in secret in the teeming streets of Cairo, and four gay Iranians, one of whom received 100 lashes for his homosexuality, who seek refuge in Canada.
At a time when many directors are turning their lenses on modern Islam and the Middle East, the question arises among viewers, subjects and filmmakers alike: What is the best way to tell a person's story - from the inside out, or from the outside looking in?
"It was certainly easier for me to make my film being gay and Muslim," Sharma said. "It was important to take all of the stuff that is good about Islam and present it in the context of a film that could easily be assumed as being very critical of orthodox Islam.
"I was a brown Muslim guy filming in these countries. In terms of the filmmaking, it was easier because I was invisible."
Speaking at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival, where his film had its European premiere last week, Sharma said Western filmmakers should think twice about making films on Islamic subjects, because they don't understand the subtleties of the religion as well as their Muslim counterparts.
"For many documentary filmmakers, there's very little understanding of the complexities," Sharma, a first-time director and former journalist, told the British newspaper The Independent. "Everyone has been jumping on the Islamic bandwagon. Very few of these films do justice (to Islam).
"There's a need to cash in on the Islamic theme."
While Sharma's perceived motive for many Western directors is up for debate, it was clear from the Sheffield festival's line-up and from discussions with documentary filmmakers looking at the complexities of our post-Sept. 11 world that the question of perspective is never far from their minds.
Award-winning British filmmaker Ruhi Hamid, who has produced documentaries about topics as diverse as a Pakistani pop band's quest for spirituality and Nigeria's interpretation of Sharia law, said she thinks that while Muslims might have easier access to subjects in stories related to their religion, they have a greater responsibility.
Muslim filmmakers, she said, have more freedom to dig deeper than "perhaps a Western filmmaker, who might think, 'Hmmm, better not go there.' I think we can push that boundary a little bit more.
"I do have that passport to be critical (about Islamic issues)," Hamid said. "But how do I still make a good film and still be critical?"
Films about Muslims have been made for a long time, she said. "The difference is now there are more films being made by people with Muslim backgrounds, and that's why it's becoming more apparent now."
The documentary Baghdad High, which premiered at the Sheffield festival, is an attempt to tell the stories of four boys coming of age in the Iraqi capital through their own words and images. Under the guidance of two local producers and British filmmakers Ivan O'Mahoney and Linda Winter, the students, camera in hand, documented their entire senior year within the walls of their schools and their homes.
One boy is Kurdish, one Christian, one Shiite and the last, half-Sunni, half-Shiite. While their families are making life-and-death decisions of survival in the besieged capital, the boys want to indulge in usual teenage distractions: playing video games, text-messaging girls and learning the words to hip-hop songs.
Seeing the film through their eyes creates an intimacy that an outside camera would not be able to capture. The violence that takes place outside the relative safety of their schools and homes still finds its way inside. Two of their classmates die during their senior year, one of whom perishes in a roadside bomb attack.
"Every day, millions of kids go to school, but these kids have to go through checkpoints, deal with roadside bombs, Americans driving by in Humvees with their machine guns," Winter said in a recent interview with Variety.
"We were looking for a way to tell this story in a fresh way and the only people who haven't had a voice with all the reporting out of Iraq are kids. They're like kids anywhere in the world who dream of being rock stars and like girls, except they live in this bad, insane place called Baghdad."
In the difficult and absorbing film Operation Filmmaker, U.S. director Nina Davenport blurs the line between perspectives. She follows the story of Muthana Mohmed, a Baghdad film student who is invited by actor-director Liev Schreiber to work on the Prague set of his movie Everything is Illuminated.
"Baghdad needs artists," says Schreiber, who hand-picked Mohmed after watching the young Iraqi sharing his dreams of going to Hollywood with an MTV camera crew. "Baghdad needs filmmakers."
But rather than finding a grateful, hardworking student who is excited about production-assistant duties like preparing trail mix for the filmmakers and handing them "discreet" cups of coffee, the film crew is increasingly disappointed with Mohmed, who can't seem to focus on the tasks he is given.
Worst of all, as he tells a reporter from Entertainment Weekly, he loves U.S. President George W. Bush. This revelation causes great consternation for the filmmakers who brought him to Prague.
"I have to confront the idea that you weren't opposed to the war," Everything is Illuminated's weary left-wing producer says.
As Mohmed's actions (or lack thereof) start alienating the film's crew, Davenport becomes more involved in the narrative.
"My own guilt about the war made it impossible to remain an objective witness," the director said. Mohmed repeatedly asks her for money and favours as he scrambles desperately to avoid going back to a deteriorating Iraq, a place where his family and friends beg him not to return.
While she was shooting in Prague, Davenport sent Mohmed's fellow film students camcorders to document their lives in the Iraqi capital. The footage they captured is heartbreaking - not only because it shows the city in ruins, but because it shows the increasing isolation creeping into these young men's lives.
Under curfew, during a particularly violent bombing, one young man says he has nothing to do in his home so he will start rearranging his bedroom furniture and spend time with his friends. He points to his wall, which is covered with magazine images. "These are my friends," he says. "Charlie Chaplin, Jean-Luc Godard ..."
The heartfelt videos from Mohmed's home are a sharp contrast to the state of affairs captured with Davenport's camera in Prague.
Over the course of the film, her relationship with Muthana becomes increasingly fractious, and after several nasty confrontations Davenport decides to cut off all contact with her subject. But not before Mohmed mockingly asks her: "What's your next film going to be about? A guy from Afghanistan?"
Operation Filmmaker "is a portrait of what led us into the war," Davenport said. "Westerners were projecting their own feelings on to Muthana.
"It's about people believing what they want to believe. People were expecting him to be like them."
She emphasized that as an observer, and as a reluctant subject in the film, she was not making any claims about what all Iraqis are like.
"It's a film with a moral ambiguities. It's a film that lets you think."
A Jihad for Love is playing at 5 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 25, at Concordia's J.A. de Sève Cinema as part of the image+nation film festival. Visit ajihadforlove.com for details.
Baghdad High, which had its world premiere at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival, will air on the BBC and HBO in January.
Operation Filmmaker, which has been featured at festivals in Amsterdam, Toronto, Sydney and Sheffield, is expected to be released in Canada at a later date. Visit operationfilmmaker.com for details.
amalik@thegazette.canwest.com
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2007
No comments:
Post a Comment