-They first came for the Muslims and we said…fuck it, I am not a Moslem
And anyway, they all end up being Pakistanis
Then they came for the Dalits, and we said we are just about all Brahmins or
Roughly thereabouts... We’ve been shafted too long …
-Then they came for the Christians, and we said good for the nation,
Them Christians only convert….
-Then they came hard and fast on the women and the folks who were against the dams,
And we said we are for development, so screw ‘em
-Then they went for the Sikhs
And we said, send them all to UK, Canada and New Zealand
They’ve been gunning down the Nax for forty years or so and we said
The Nax are violent, we are not…we swear by DIR, POTA, MISA, UAPA, FALANA, DHIMKA
Then they came for Sankar Guha Neogy, they bled him to death
We said nothing.
Then they killed a hundred other Maoists, who also fought back and killed quite a few
We said tit for tat to anti-nationals
Now they come for Dr. Binayak Sen and we are mighty speechless
Because it is our speech they took with the British Act from 1870
Now they will come for me and the house will be empty
Except roaches, maggots, fleas and bugs to defend me.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Monday, December 27, 2010
Soli Sorabji about Dr. Binayak Sen's conviction: "We look like the laughing stock of the world"
Only those who occupy, colonize, stifle and displace need an act to define sedition
Only those who cannot deal with dissent need to define sedition.
Only those who create notions of “national interest” to deflect from their scamster plans need the power of sedition.
Only those who are in a major rush to sell off the nation’s resources need the powers of sedition.
Only those who need a national hysteria to counter a national shame need the instrument of sedition.
Only cowards, recluses, emperors, dynasty huggers and turbaned gnomes, without fig leaves to cover up their diseased crotches, need the power of sedition.
Only those who want to dispense justice hastily and do not have the intelligence to listen out, contend, understand and bear the burden of truth need the claws of sedition
Only, the nervous, the fearful and the spineless who project their insecurities by pretending to be nation-huggers, need sedition like they need a windup toy- to keep up the noise so that they can drown out the signals from the people.
Only the pusillanimous, spineless, lily-livered need the notion of sedition to salve their putrid mental sores-they have no unguent other than to cry sedition
Only the preservers of the status-quo, the myths, and the pursuers of self-promoted trophies about growth need the powers of sedition to preserve their enclaves
Only the .2 percent population who have seen 9 % growth need the powers of sedition.
The British needed the powers of sedition and they handed it down when they left after 200 years.
Only those who cannot deal with dissent need to define sedition.
Only those who create notions of “national interest” to deflect from their scamster plans need the power of sedition.
Only those who are in a major rush to sell off the nation’s resources need the powers of sedition.
Only those who need a national hysteria to counter a national shame need the instrument of sedition.
Only cowards, recluses, emperors, dynasty huggers and turbaned gnomes, without fig leaves to cover up their diseased crotches, need the power of sedition.
Only those who want to dispense justice hastily and do not have the intelligence to listen out, contend, understand and bear the burden of truth need the claws of sedition
Only, the nervous, the fearful and the spineless who project their insecurities by pretending to be nation-huggers, need sedition like they need a windup toy- to keep up the noise so that they can drown out the signals from the people.
Only the pusillanimous, spineless, lily-livered need the notion of sedition to salve their putrid mental sores-they have no unguent other than to cry sedition
Only the preservers of the status-quo, the myths, and the pursuers of self-promoted trophies about growth need the powers of sedition to preserve their enclaves
Only the .2 percent population who have seen 9 % growth need the powers of sedition.
The British needed the powers of sedition and they handed it down when they left after 200 years.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Making a film is like stepping into a battlefield where the wings of inspirational angels are napalmed
Here below is an interview with Montreal film-maker Julian Samuel, a painter and writer, as well, who is often seen passing by the well-known eatery Les Enfant Terribles on rue Bernard rambling in disgust, in a Punjabi dialect that only he comprehends. Julian, after all that is said and done, is a rejectionist with an expansive frame of mind. Too bad, this was not published--I think it should be read by those who are bored with Montreal as an art alley of some sorts..
Karolyne Marengo interviews Julian Samuel, August 2005
KM: Why are you - or were you - so interested by Imperialism?
JS: Imperialism is a continuum that deserves exposure in documentaries. Imperialism not only transforms world trade, but also transforms the very way in which one sees the world and relations within it. Historically, this force expropriated cotton grown by bonded labour in India, shipped it to shirt-making factories in Manchester which then sold finished shirts back to India for profits. Imperialism transforms oil from the middle-east into condoms; toothbrushes; DVDs or videotape which is used to archive our collective memories of the war in Vietnam; the Intifada; Britney Spears singing in an airplane powered by refined oil; Martin Luther King speaking in Washington, being killed in Montgomery; Space Shuttles blowing up; the World Trade Towers collapsing. The goal of Christian imperialism, internally, is the same as its foreign policy projections: to convince a chubby, television-addicted population to purchase meaningless glitter made by slaves who ‘earn’ two dollars a day.
KM: How would you define cinema?
JS: Cinema is defined by the direct threat it poses to a conservative understanding of the term “democracy”. Throughout its history, cinema has been subjected to and has tolerated censorship; its transformative potential is so great that the people who fund its production and those who distribute it are inexorably censorial and so controlling that many accusatory human-rights stories are ruthlessly suppressed. Only politically suitable and safe stories make it to the production and distribution stages.
Elia Suleiman’s ‘Divine Intervention,’ a film about Palestine, was subjected to hardcore American censorship: On 20 December 2002, ABC News reported, that: “Academy Executive Director Bruce Davis informed Balsan (producer – my note) that the film was ineligible for consideration in next year's Best Foreign Language Film category because Divine Intervention emerges from a country not formally recognized by the United Nations.
( http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=79485&page=1 ).
KM: What’s your defination of documentary cinema?
JS: Our national definer of the documentary, The National Film Board of Canada, produces meek, inconsequential works and ought not to get public funding. Writers and film-makers have learnt to use the tool of allegory to cut the noose of the censor. Progressive documentaries are defined by their fight against conservatism: We exist because conservatism exists.
Film-makers can now easily made fiction or documentaries with digital cameras and computers. Although small distribution networks for independent documentaries exist, there isn’t large scale distribution for these documentaries. Large-scale distribution or TV is controlled by the same mentally ill, wretched money hungry individuals who inflict cinema.
KM: What is the importance of documentary?
JS: Certain documentaries encourage sceptical thinking. Do you or do you not want deeply antagonistic questions posed in public?
KM: Why do you make documentaries rather fiction?
JS: Fiction requires big political money, therefore it is impossible for minorities living in Quebec to fully tell their stories in cinema. Bien sur, inoffensive, uncle tom works do get produced, but who gives a shit about these?
KM: What inspires you?
JS: Making a film is like stepping into a battlefield where the wings of inspirational angels are napalmed. Documentary film-makers don’t have a patron saint who comes down from St. Joseph’s Oratory to give them inspiration.
KM: What motivates you to make films?
JS: To expose injustice. Noble cause n’est pas?
KM: Which film-makers have inspired you and how?
JS: The works of Canadian film-makers do not, generally, contain any challenging expository international politics. I have not been influenced *whatsoever* by Canadian film-makers except one: Michael Snow. European and Third World cinema are more cogent than Canadian cinema. This is not a vain attempt at snobbery. Canadian cinema, especially Atom Egoyan’s is infinitely inane. Deny Arcand’s films are boring. Pierre Falardeau leftwingism 101 can be goofy and comic - he gets major funding - guess why? Pierre Perrault has made wide ranging kinds work which are well-researched and well-structured: “Un pays sans bon sens!” (1970) is very good.
I have studied and admire the works of Americans such as Emile de Antonio and Fredrick Wiseman. Joan Harvey has made sceptical films. Cuban Santiago Alvarez has made brilliant films with small budgets; Gillo Pontocorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1965) is as relevant today as when it was made. It wouldn’t surprise me if Tony Blair bans screenings of this work.
My early influences were James Joyce; American musicians such as Little Walter; Abstract Expressionists; Stan Brakhage; and, bien sur, the Russian classics. I studied the brilliant works of D.W. Griffiths whose films are immensely frightening because the North American racists shown in ‘The Birth of a Nation’ (1915) are still here in 2005.
Cinema is an international medium and so one’s influences can come from all over (call it a cinematic collectivity if you want to be a cultural studies type). In Quebec, one is punished for not caressing the local heros. Quebec’s ethnic nationalists, like the crackers in ‘The Birth of a Nation’ fear that the WOG WITHIN will make a better work than the whites who live off hereditary privilege. Quebec’s cultural elites thwart les autres.
KM: What is your style and what distinguishes it from the works of other directors?
JS: Canadian documentaries such as The Corporation and Manufacturing Consent are sound-bite works that are comfortable enough for prostitutional TV producers who buy BMWs with our tax contributions. My documentaries are not as popular as these films. Save and Burn is a multi-thematic work which projects arguments without voice-of-god narration; my documentaries don’t spoon-feed the viewers. Noam Chomsky the star of Manufacturing Consent incessantly exposes Israel and its kissing cousin America. Peter Wintonic and Mark Acbar, the directors of Manufacturing Consent, do not include his commentary on Israel.
KM: What is the message you are trying to send with your trilogy: The Raft of the Medusa, Into the European Mirror, and City of the Dead?
JS: I offer hard evidence on the imperial game.
KM: And The Library In Crisis and Save and Burn?
JS: To show that democracy and the fight for it depends on access to books and libraries.
KM: The future of the book and learning pre-occupy you. You have made two films that look at knowledge and democracy. Why such a marked interest in these areas?
JS: Without democracy we will never have single malt scotch. Documentary film-makers offer the opposite of Prozac – that’s our job.
KM: Save and Burn produced a small controversy – what was all this about?
JS: In Save and Burn I’ve proven that Israelis are not only destroying the libraries of Palestinians, but are also stealing their books to enrich their own collections. I remind people that this pillage could not happen without the support of democratic America. Showing this connection is enough to hamper screenings at festivals and academic conferences. However, one ought to keep in mind that parts of religious America are progressive especially when compared to India, the largest caste-ridden democracy in the world.
In Montreal, the Bibliothetque National du Quebec will not show The Library in Crisis and Save and Burn. I do not think, in principal, that this is rejection is race-related. Lise Bissonnette, the head provincial librarian, is not a racist. I am confident that given her august and inflated stature as an local intellectual, she is nimble enough to connect the dots between D W Griffiths and Jacques Parizeau (George Wallace of Quebec) to George Bush’s war on the Arabs. The BNQ has commissioned a documentary on itself, and in the near future, this work will be broadcast. Mirror, mirror on the wall. It cruel and ruthless for Bissonnette to not tell me why The Library in Crisis and Save and Burn are unworthy of a screening at the BNQ. Furthermore, I published a translation of the following letter in La presse, 16 may 2005:
“Lise Bissonnette director of the Grande bibliothèque du Québec promotes her dedication to reflecting the racial diversity of Quebec within her library. However, she and her collegues, Ghislain Roussel, Secrétaire général et directeur des affaires juridiques, in particular are dead silent on following question: Do ‘visible minorities’ have jobs in key positions within the BNQ?
All the commissioned art works in the BNQ are made by white quebecois francophones. Is there an undeclared policy of favoritism? Julian Samuel”
KM: Is it necessary for documentaries to be polemical?
JS: Yes.
KM: What are your current struggles? And which do you consider important?
JS: The struggle for funding is continual. It would be nice to get the same level of funding as French-Canadian directors or white Anglo Canadian directors. I made my documentaries with a budget seven times *smaller* than the average film made at the ONF. And my income is *five times less* than the average professor of cinema at U de M. I live near the poverty line. Would a cradle-to-the-grave corporate welfare job at the CBC or the NFB have encouraged intellectual suicide?
KM: In varying degrees your works look at the Middle East – why this interest?
Does the fact that you are a Montrealer of Pakistani origin determine the themes you develop in your work?
JS: Pakistan does not determine the subjects of my documentaries. I am a Canadian citizen. I don’t normally revert to being a Pakistani national until I enter Pakistani airspace which is where my acquired nationalities - Canadian and British – are temporarily over ridden. Except in my novel Passage to Lahore (De Lahore a Montreal), my works are not connected with where I was born.
KM: Can you distinguish between a good documentary film-maker and a bad one?
JS: Good documentary film-makers find confrontation amusing. Bad documentary film-makers are craven and always find ways to please producers, audiences, journalists.
KM: What is your next documentary or book?
JS: My next documentary is about belief, unbelief and atheism; working title, ‘Against the incantations of false prophets.’ And a novel, working title, ‘Dark Interloper of the Eastern Trade’ – a comedy set in Charles De Gaulle airport. Also, I might make a documentary about mangoes - I an expert on Pakistani mangoes.
KM: What do you try to reveal in your 60 second clip Visible Minorities Hired by the Media ?
JS: This short clip laughs at the ‘visible minorities’ hired by the Canadian state. American Republican senator Jesse Helms must love our Governor General Michaëlle Jean’s documentary which trashes Fidel Castro and Cuba.
Karolyne Marengo interviews Julian Samuel, August 2005
KM: Why are you - or were you - so interested by Imperialism?
JS: Imperialism is a continuum that deserves exposure in documentaries. Imperialism not only transforms world trade, but also transforms the very way in which one sees the world and relations within it. Historically, this force expropriated cotton grown by bonded labour in India, shipped it to shirt-making factories in Manchester which then sold finished shirts back to India for profits. Imperialism transforms oil from the middle-east into condoms; toothbrushes; DVDs or videotape which is used to archive our collective memories of the war in Vietnam; the Intifada; Britney Spears singing in an airplane powered by refined oil; Martin Luther King speaking in Washington, being killed in Montgomery; Space Shuttles blowing up; the World Trade Towers collapsing. The goal of Christian imperialism, internally, is the same as its foreign policy projections: to convince a chubby, television-addicted population to purchase meaningless glitter made by slaves who ‘earn’ two dollars a day.
KM: How would you define cinema?
JS: Cinema is defined by the direct threat it poses to a conservative understanding of the term “democracy”. Throughout its history, cinema has been subjected to and has tolerated censorship; its transformative potential is so great that the people who fund its production and those who distribute it are inexorably censorial and so controlling that many accusatory human-rights stories are ruthlessly suppressed. Only politically suitable and safe stories make it to the production and distribution stages.
Elia Suleiman’s ‘Divine Intervention,’ a film about Palestine, was subjected to hardcore American censorship: On 20 December 2002, ABC News reported, that: “Academy Executive Director Bruce Davis informed Balsan (producer – my note) that the film was ineligible for consideration in next year's Best Foreign Language Film category because Divine Intervention emerges from a country not formally recognized by the United Nations.
( http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=79485&page=1 ).
KM: What’s your defination of documentary cinema?
JS: Our national definer of the documentary, The National Film Board of Canada, produces meek, inconsequential works and ought not to get public funding. Writers and film-makers have learnt to use the tool of allegory to cut the noose of the censor. Progressive documentaries are defined by their fight against conservatism: We exist because conservatism exists.
Film-makers can now easily made fiction or documentaries with digital cameras and computers. Although small distribution networks for independent documentaries exist, there isn’t large scale distribution for these documentaries. Large-scale distribution or TV is controlled by the same mentally ill, wretched money hungry individuals who inflict cinema.
KM: What is the importance of documentary?
JS: Certain documentaries encourage sceptical thinking. Do you or do you not want deeply antagonistic questions posed in public?
KM: Why do you make documentaries rather fiction?
JS: Fiction requires big political money, therefore it is impossible for minorities living in Quebec to fully tell their stories in cinema. Bien sur, inoffensive, uncle tom works do get produced, but who gives a shit about these?
KM: What inspires you?
JS: Making a film is like stepping into a battlefield where the wings of inspirational angels are napalmed. Documentary film-makers don’t have a patron saint who comes down from St. Joseph’s Oratory to give them inspiration.
KM: What motivates you to make films?
JS: To expose injustice. Noble cause n’est pas?
KM: Which film-makers have inspired you and how?
JS: The works of Canadian film-makers do not, generally, contain any challenging expository international politics. I have not been influenced *whatsoever* by Canadian film-makers except one: Michael Snow. European and Third World cinema are more cogent than Canadian cinema. This is not a vain attempt at snobbery. Canadian cinema, especially Atom Egoyan’s is infinitely inane. Deny Arcand’s films are boring. Pierre Falardeau leftwingism 101 can be goofy and comic - he gets major funding - guess why? Pierre Perrault has made wide ranging kinds work which are well-researched and well-structured: “Un pays sans bon sens!” (1970) is very good.
I have studied and admire the works of Americans such as Emile de Antonio and Fredrick Wiseman. Joan Harvey has made sceptical films. Cuban Santiago Alvarez has made brilliant films with small budgets; Gillo Pontocorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1965) is as relevant today as when it was made. It wouldn’t surprise me if Tony Blair bans screenings of this work.
My early influences were James Joyce; American musicians such as Little Walter; Abstract Expressionists; Stan Brakhage; and, bien sur, the Russian classics. I studied the brilliant works of D.W. Griffiths whose films are immensely frightening because the North American racists shown in ‘The Birth of a Nation’ (1915) are still here in 2005.
Cinema is an international medium and so one’s influences can come from all over (call it a cinematic collectivity if you want to be a cultural studies type). In Quebec, one is punished for not caressing the local heros. Quebec’s ethnic nationalists, like the crackers in ‘The Birth of a Nation’ fear that the WOG WITHIN will make a better work than the whites who live off hereditary privilege. Quebec’s cultural elites thwart les autres.
KM: What is your style and what distinguishes it from the works of other directors?
JS: Canadian documentaries such as The Corporation and Manufacturing Consent are sound-bite works that are comfortable enough for prostitutional TV producers who buy BMWs with our tax contributions. My documentaries are not as popular as these films. Save and Burn is a multi-thematic work which projects arguments without voice-of-god narration; my documentaries don’t spoon-feed the viewers. Noam Chomsky the star of Manufacturing Consent incessantly exposes Israel and its kissing cousin America. Peter Wintonic and Mark Acbar, the directors of Manufacturing Consent, do not include his commentary on Israel.
KM: What is the message you are trying to send with your trilogy: The Raft of the Medusa, Into the European Mirror, and City of the Dead?
JS: I offer hard evidence on the imperial game.
KM: And The Library In Crisis and Save and Burn?
JS: To show that democracy and the fight for it depends on access to books and libraries.
KM: The future of the book and learning pre-occupy you. You have made two films that look at knowledge and democracy. Why such a marked interest in these areas?
JS: Without democracy we will never have single malt scotch. Documentary film-makers offer the opposite of Prozac – that’s our job.
KM: Save and Burn produced a small controversy – what was all this about?
JS: In Save and Burn I’ve proven that Israelis are not only destroying the libraries of Palestinians, but are also stealing their books to enrich their own collections. I remind people that this pillage could not happen without the support of democratic America. Showing this connection is enough to hamper screenings at festivals and academic conferences. However, one ought to keep in mind that parts of religious America are progressive especially when compared to India, the largest caste-ridden democracy in the world.
In Montreal, the Bibliothetque National du Quebec will not show The Library in Crisis and Save and Burn. I do not think, in principal, that this is rejection is race-related. Lise Bissonnette, the head provincial librarian, is not a racist. I am confident that given her august and inflated stature as an local intellectual, she is nimble enough to connect the dots between D W Griffiths and Jacques Parizeau (George Wallace of Quebec) to George Bush’s war on the Arabs. The BNQ has commissioned a documentary on itself, and in the near future, this work will be broadcast. Mirror, mirror on the wall. It cruel and ruthless for Bissonnette to not tell me why The Library in Crisis and Save and Burn are unworthy of a screening at the BNQ. Furthermore, I published a translation of the following letter in La presse, 16 may 2005:
“Lise Bissonnette director of the Grande bibliothèque du Québec promotes her dedication to reflecting the racial diversity of Quebec within her library. However, she and her collegues, Ghislain Roussel, Secrétaire général et directeur des affaires juridiques, in particular are dead silent on following question: Do ‘visible minorities’ have jobs in key positions within the BNQ?
All the commissioned art works in the BNQ are made by white quebecois francophones. Is there an undeclared policy of favoritism? Julian Samuel”
KM: Is it necessary for documentaries to be polemical?
JS: Yes.
KM: What are your current struggles? And which do you consider important?
JS: The struggle for funding is continual. It would be nice to get the same level of funding as French-Canadian directors or white Anglo Canadian directors. I made my documentaries with a budget seven times *smaller* than the average film made at the ONF. And my income is *five times less* than the average professor of cinema at U de M. I live near the poverty line. Would a cradle-to-the-grave corporate welfare job at the CBC or the NFB have encouraged intellectual suicide?
KM: In varying degrees your works look at the Middle East – why this interest?
Does the fact that you are a Montrealer of Pakistani origin determine the themes you develop in your work?
JS: Pakistan does not determine the subjects of my documentaries. I am a Canadian citizen. I don’t normally revert to being a Pakistani national until I enter Pakistani airspace which is where my acquired nationalities - Canadian and British – are temporarily over ridden. Except in my novel Passage to Lahore (De Lahore a Montreal), my works are not connected with where I was born.
KM: Can you distinguish between a good documentary film-maker and a bad one?
JS: Good documentary film-makers find confrontation amusing. Bad documentary film-makers are craven and always find ways to please producers, audiences, journalists.
KM: What is your next documentary or book?
JS: My next documentary is about belief, unbelief and atheism; working title, ‘Against the incantations of false prophets.’ And a novel, working title, ‘Dark Interloper of the Eastern Trade’ – a comedy set in Charles De Gaulle airport. Also, I might make a documentary about mangoes - I an expert on Pakistani mangoes.
KM: What do you try to reveal in your 60 second clip Visible Minorities Hired by the Media ?
JS: This short clip laughs at the ‘visible minorities’ hired by the Canadian state. American Republican senator Jesse Helms must love our Governor General Michaëlle Jean’s documentary which trashes Fidel Castro and Cuba.
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