Last week was the Warring Factions screening at University of Arizona. The screening was well attended and I was glad to see a lot of old friends come out of the woodwork to see the film.
Surprisingly the Q & A after the film was the most provocative to date. Respect is due to the audience that challenges the filmmaker.
Additionally, Warring Factions has 2 new download links for the high and low resolution versions of the film. Let us know what you think.
I recently returned home from Iowa where I was visiting Elijah, a friend I acquired through correspondence while he was serving time in a federal prison camp in South Dakota. We initially were introduced to each other by a Christian prison chaplain looking for answers to religious questions. The chaplain happened to find my email through the website of a Muslim student organization I was a part of in college. I started writing directly to Elijah for the next year and a half until he was released in July of 2008. I finally got to meet Elijah last week in his home state of Iowa. He currently works bending steel in a factory in Ames and visits his 3 young children in Des Moines on the weekends. Elijah is the first subject of research for my new project about Muslims in the prison system.
There is a difference between community engagement and wholesale absurdity as displayed in the video below.
Making children "Junior Special Agents" with an official badge and all may seem like a good idea until they start calling in for backup when they hear their parents whispering to each other in Arabic or threaten to ground them for spying. Some may see this program as harmless education of an American intelligence agency but the FBI has a fairly tainted reputation with the American Muslim community. (See link 1, link 2, link 3)
Engaging the Muslim community should be done at the organizational level first with groups like CAIR and MPAC before any type of trust or working relationship can exist.
Dourbin.net is looking for the best photos of the Iranian Year 1388. We can only imagine which images will make the cut. Send them your suggestions at Doorbin.net@gmail.com
After watching Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker I felt it was necessary to write about what I found to be a careless use of sacred sound design. The Hurt Locker is an Oscar nominated film about a US army bomb disposal unit in Baghdad during the early stages of the US occupation of Iraq in 2004. The film contains various intense scenes encountering IEDs, car bombs, and explosive vests disarmed by the film's protagonist, a young die hard bomb expert Sergeant First Class William James.
My greatest criticism with The Hurt Locker is its inconspicuously (conspicuous for Muslims) offensive use of the Muslim call to prayer and the Quran as a device to prelude a scene of violence. The sound of the "Adhan" (call to prayer) or verses from the Muslim holy book are heard before every scene discovering an explosive device.
However, the film's overall portrayal of Muslims and/or Iraqis is not completely homogeneous, unlike 95% of American films about the Middle East, but by no means is it a huge step forward. Iraqi characters range from militant Muslim gun men, pornography selling merchants, and innocent Iraqis living in a war torn Iraq.
The film as a whole I feel has no intention of painting Iraqis and/or Muslims as evil people. However, the use of Islamic symbols in the form of the Adhan and the Quran are used specifically to connote the presence of violence and danger. The use of these symbols as dark, exotic, and evil forces is not new to cinema (see The Exorcist), however, we should expect more from a film produced in 2008. Non-Muslim film producers somehow fail to see that these verses are sacred in Islam, a religion followed by over a billion people worldwide. Any use of these symbols to connote danger alienates the non-Muslim world from seeing Islam as a faith tradition rather than a doctrine of violence and hate.
I hope I'm not the first to tell say that this "critically acclaimed" work needs a lot more... work. I think it's time filmmakers stop pretending that they "understand" and start admitting that pretentious portrayals of the world only expose their ignorance.
Since people have been asking where the old varzesh bastani tracks are that I posted on imeem a while back are, I decided to repost them on Soundcloud.
I recently met up with Mark Williams-Washington at one of West LA's few 24 hour spots. We'll be collaborating on a few projects in the coming months... more later.
I commissioned this poem in 2004 for a video I did about children in Palestine. A friend of mine who I had been blessed to meet named Samer Tamimi is an amazing poet who is originally Palestinian. His poem is what remains from the project.
I had become a fan of the Wu-Tang Clan when I was fairly young, hearing "Protect Ya Neck" on the radio in the early/mid 90s after the release of their first album. A few Wu-Tang songs circulated on the homemade mix tapes my older brother made from the radio that I listened to, years before I even purchased a Wu Tang album. By 97 and the arrival of the second Wu-Tang album, "Forever" I was all ears. Since getting my dad to drive me to a Sam Goody after school was way out of the question, a friend of mine bought the CD for me the day it came out. I listened to the album in one session and it left me rapping the lyrics for years to come in addition to asking a lot of questions about the world.
When I heard the opening verse from "Impossible" it left me searching for more..
Fusion of the five elements, to search for the higher intelligence Women walk around celibate, livin irrelevant The most benevolent king, communicatin through your dreams Mental pictures been painted, Allah's heard and seen everywhere, throughout your surroundin atmosphere Troposphere, thermosphere, stratosphere Can you imagine from one single idea, everything appeared here Understanding makes my truth, crystal clear...
The RZA's lyrical career is by no means one that is squeeky clean nor void of hypocrisies and contradictions. In fact, RZA's use 5 Percenter teachings generally tunes me out of his philosophy. However, his verses have generally served as encouragement for his community and his listeners to seek knowledge, read, expand their vocabulary and to calculate actions, seeing life as a chessboard.
RZA's new book looks like an interesting read but more importantly, books authored within the hip hop community, though rare, reach an audience that may have never picked up a book. The desire for knowledge is shared by all people, but without credibility in the culture of the audience, words will fail to stick.
RZA's humility in the above video is commendable for a rap artist and he has definitely sparked my attention as he did before in 97. I look forward to reading The Tao of Wu.
Indie filmmakers who choose to distribute their work on their own (like myself) are at a serious disadvantage relative to films with high end distribution. On the other hand, audience opportunity to interact with filmmakers and artists as well as hold screenings of indie movies are much better than films distributed by a third party.
OpenIndie.com is an opportunity for indie film audiences to find movies they want to see and/or screen, and be informed about showings in their area, all while the filmmaker has a chance to benefit financially from each viewer.
As much as the internet has democratized cinema, image makers are still searching for ways to monetize their content in a way that stays accessible to the internet audience. Open Indie may be part of the answer... we'll see.
If you want to support an independent film like Warring Factions you can do a few things.
1. Spread the word. Write a blog, make a phone call, send an email, tweet, text message, and/or carrier pigeon to your friends about the movie. Additionally, I have started a Facebook event publicizing the release here [Link]
2. Buy the DVD. Downloading the film is great but having the DVD is much better for sharing and holding screenings for communities and friends. The DVD also includes features which are not included when you download the film. When you buy the DVD be sure to donate at least another $10 to help with future projects.
3. Donate. Films are expensive to produce but documentaries that have a message should be made to inspire change and not to make profits.. To make future films I rely on the people to support my efforts financially. Just as mainstream movies are financed by large conglomerated companies, my films are made with the support of many people who want to do their part in voicing for change.
So on my way leaving the polling place for the Iranian presidential elections I saw this fun little bunch protesting outside. This particular lady cursed at me and called me an "akhoond" (another word for a mullah) so I took a picture of her. I guess my beard was longer that day : /
Funny thing is, I still see these people standing on the corner Veteran and Wilshire wasting their time holding "Where is my vote?" signs. Irony.
Dear crazy people on both sides, Please stay at home watching Persian satellite, the rest of us are going to try to move forward from this election and learn from what happened. In the meantime let's stop locking up and getting locked up, it will be good for everyone.
As you may have noticed the frequency of my posts diminishing, I should explain for myself... I am still alive but have been working on a variety of different projects that sometimes my own wife can't keep up with...
A few upcoming things you should look out for...
My coverage of Freestyle Session 12 on Dipdive... sure to be the hotness so keep checking for it.
The release of Warring Factions on DVD... I'm not giving a concrete date but I'm aiming for Eid time (end of Ramadhan). ........................................................................................
In the meantime, here's a message to take home:
Act like you know better, because you do. Tell the truth and shame the devil. Don't be afraid of the truth but be aware of the consequences.
I recently received an message on my personal email address reading...
"I am an Engineer and Scientist with the Mujahideen Forces in Afghanistan.
I have a financial proposition that will benefit both of us greatly and if interested do indicate by replying for more directives.
Eng.Mohammad Fadhil."
FYI to the Feds... If you want to email prospective jihadis you may at least want to Salaam a brother.
Maybe not so coincidentally, this email was received one day before I was stopped (again) by the homies at Homeland Security in Seattle doing a "follow up" interview regarding my 2008 stay in Iran and the subsequent detention in Atlanta.
Since I visited Canada for less than 5 hours on an Alaskan cruise my name had to be processed by DHS. Due to my federal celebrity status I was flagged for an "examination" and a detailed search of my and my wife's belongings.
I would rate this last run in with Homeland a 7 whereas my last experience in Atlanta was closer to a 2. This time we were able to request a female agent to search my wife's luggage and were free to use the bathroom. We were even offered a small continental breakfast which was really the typical cop doughnut breakfast. The whole ordeal lasted a little longer than 2 hours from the time I was woken up in our stateroom to be interviewed till the officer hailing us a cab outside the port.
I hope this last run-in with DHS proves to them that they are wasting time and resources by interviewing me every time I re-enter the US.
I found this video via Views From The Occident. The video is a type of eulogy for Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi, a militant Salafi terrorist who was killed by a US airstrike in 2006 and demonstrates the fact that Salafi terrorists are still around and have added tacky video editing as a part of their training.Iraq's recent resurgence of violence has been alarming as well as disheartening to see that Iraq's sovereignty looks lengths away from the foreseeable future.
The militant Salafist movements of Iraq are still strong despite a reduction in violence from 2006 and 2007. Reasons for this include the vast numbers of Sunni Iraqi's disenfranchised by the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the unlimited supply of radical Sunni extremists living everywhere from Kashhmir to London. This not so efficient network of radical Salifis provides moral and/or financial support to similar groups in conflict zones (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc).
The US military's current strategy is building alliances with Sunni tribes to combat Salafi terrorist groups from the community level and cutting off their recruitment base. However effective these efforts may be in the short run, a long term solution can only be provided by the global Muslim community itself. Salafi strategies of financing Islamic mosques and dawa with the condition that it be headed with Salafi ideology creates an incredible base of Muslims who are complacent to Salafi violence around the world. Not until the dangers of militant Salafism/Wahabism becomes a major discourse in the global Muslim community will there be a significant reduction in the global networks of Islamist terrorists.
photo: Jevon Tyrone
There is a difference between community engagement and wholesale absurdity as displayed in the video below.
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photo by David Gilkey/NPR
