Avuncular American

Mustang - Free and Untamed in Turkey

Bars on your home's windows are usually to keep the baddies on the outside, but in Mustang they come to signify the prison that Grandma's house becomes for the five spirited girls who are facing the special dangers of adolescence in a conservative village.

Deniz Gamze Ergüven's film - honored at Cannes - begins and ends with Lale, the youngest of the girls but the one you want on your team if ever you have to survive impossible odds.  Young Günes Sensoy, playing Lale, sees trouble brewing, and lays plans.  Her first film, and what an acting revelation.

Her older sisters, one by one, risk succumbing to the constant pressure to be married off, arranged by Grandma, who mostly just wants to avoid embarrassment in front of judgmental neighbors, and by uncle Erol, a supposed prude with a violent streak.

Director Ergüven (French director Alice Winocour co-wrote the screenplay), whose diplomatic childhood spanned life in Paris and in Ankara, has deftly inserted scenes which illustrate the lot of many a marriageable girl in Turkey: virginity tests, arranged pairings concluded by the families, frustration assuaged by eating too many Turkish delights or swigging the dregs of raki at big sister's wedding reception.

But this is not a documentary, credible and realistic as it is.  From the outset, you care deeply about these girls and are with them as they try to enjoy innocent childhood pursuits or the normal joys and challenges of growing up.  A beautiful, moving film.

Deniz Gamze Ergüven is interviewed here on France Culture (44 minutes, in French).

Wild Brussels

"Bruxelles Sauvage: Faune Capitale" is a documentary by Bernard Crutzen, who got the idea after a close encounter with a fox (the fox opens the film, curiously nuzzling the film maker's lens).

We have foxes in our apartment building's back yard, which is a lovely little patch of woods in the city.  There was a day a few weeks ago when all of a sudden, it was foxes running all over the place - obviously mating day.  Since then, not often enough, we've seen a fox sunning him or herself just under our window.

"Bruxelles Sauvage" does have a soft spot for these urban omnivores, though the film does point out that feeding them is a bad idea.  Not only might you lose a finger, but it also encourages over breeding.

Apparently the first (modern day) foxes came to Brussels when trains paved the way into the city in the 19th century.  The film also highlights other creatures, from frogs and toads in park fountains to high flying hawks in church steeples.

And that's part of the pleasure of living in Brussels.  With one of Europe's largest urban forests within the city limits - the Forêt de Soignes - we have endless hiking trails, some within easy reach of a tram or metro stop.  Some of the animals shown in the film, rehabilitated after an injury from a vehicle accident, etc., wind up being released back into the forest.

But you can't beat looking out the window and seeing a fox right at home.   

Cartoonists as the Footsoldiers of Democracy

If ever there was a time to watch this 2014 film, it's now.

If ever anyone doubted that political cartoonist is a high-risk occupation, yesterday's Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris is devastating proof.

"Les Caricaturistes: Fantassins de la Démocratie" is the definitive documentary on political cartoonists from every part of the world.  It's a chance to discover an NGO which helps defend their efforts on behalf of free speech, "Cartooning for Peace," begun in 2006 under the auspices of then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Le Monde's "Plantu" is the star of both film and NGO, never missing a chance to explain the art behind the message or to share the spotlight with his cherished colleagues throughout the world.  Last night he was on the TV news, with his same message of perseverance in the face of the terrorism perpetrated in Paris.

This short (1.5 hours) documentary sketches sympathetic portraits of this diverse group of heroes, who all face, in varying degrees, the threat of violence (or at a minimum, exclusion) in their countries.  A Syrian cartoonist whose hands are broken by Assad's thugs.  A Venezuelan journalist who's called a whore and a lesbian for daring to ridicule Chavez & Co.  Russia's premier political artist, who can't publish anything in Putin's Russia, and drives a night taxi to earn a living.

 

http://www.bedetheque.com/

In the early '90s in Algeria, I remember cartoonist "Slim" taking on the establishment and the reigning social (dis)order, even before he took on the rise of Islamism (which eventually led to his exile).  In a former one-party state, Slim's cartoons were of an amazing candor, and really funny: in a country where orphans of slain moujahid freedom fighters from the 1950s and 60s were provided great advantages (which led people to invent a heroic forebear), he had a 1990s baby in carriage saying, "some day, I'll be the son of a moujahid."  Today, in Algeria, Ali Dilem in Liberté continues to wield his pen, and is appropriately biting about the assassination of the Charlie Hebdo journalists.

Caricaturistes of course can't include every political cartoonist; Steve Bell, the often outrageous and sometimes unfathomable (he was very clear on the Paris killings) Guardian veteran, isn't featured, nor is our own Brussels favorite, Pierre Kroll of Le Soir (here's Kroll on yesterday's murders, Morts de Rire).

Belgian-Israeli cartoonist Michel Kichka believes that political correctness, even more than censorship by authorities, is the greatest threat to the freedom of expression practiced by his profession.  For his part, Plantu paraphrases Franklin Roosevelt's admonition to Americans after Pearl Harbor: "we have nothing to fear but fear itself."  Plantu, like his slain counterparts at Charlie Hebdo, fears nothing, except this: "I am afraid of the fear of others."

That's the wonderful thing about the wave of solidarity shown in the face of this assault on the freedom of expression, and it's the uplifting message of Caricaturistes: those in power (and those who would like to wield power at the point of a gun) fear ridicule, and the Cartoonists are there to show that the (fill in the blank) has no clothes.

My Sweet Pepper Land

Hiner Saleem made My Sweet Pepper Land, set in his native Iraqi Kurdistan, a year or so before the world awakened to the barbarity of "the Islamic State" roaring into northern Iraq.  But you can't watch this superlative film without thinking of the IS threat to the Kurds and their imperfect but hopeful society in one of the world's most dangerous neighborhoods.

Pepper Land has been compared to a Western, and when the village bridge gets blown up by Turkish jet fighters in their guerrilla war with the Kurdish rebels who sometimes cross over into Iraq, horseback is the best mode of transport for Baran, the local police commander.

And he has to do battle, not with evil cattle barons, but with an evil traditional chieftan, who seems to have the whole town in his pocket.

If you think you've read the plot before, that's where the Western analogy ends.  Be prepared for serious treatment of the place of women in a traditional Muslim society (other than Baran's mother, who appears only briefly, the women are most definitely not headscarfed).  Govend, the local one-room school teacher, is set on bringing a bit of light to an otherwise benighted village, but she has an uphill battle as a single woman, already over the hill as an unmarried 28 year old.

And don't mess with those Kurdish women fighters, who operate in the hills between Turkey and Iraq (the film appears to be set in the years just after the fall of Saddam Hussein, when war-weary Iraqi Kurds fear Turkish wrath for sheltering PKK guerrillas).  Again, you can't help but thinking of the thin line dividing Iraq from the medieval decapitators, with Peshmerga Kurds (often including female fighters) the only force standing in their way.

Inevitably, Govend and Baran, the two outsiders who challenge local ways, are brought together.  The role of Govend the school teacher who dares to make her own way in the world is one that perfectly suits Iranian-born actress Golshifteh Farahani, who has so challenged her own country's conservative leadership that she doubts that she can ever return there (read this extensive profile in Spiegel Online International).

Hiner Saleem doesn't sugarcoat the situation in Kurdistan: there are numerous references to corruption and "bizness" by public servants, and Baran's frustration with post-Peshmerga life is encapsulated at the outset by a semi-comic botched execution of a criminal, where a smug Imam is the film's only reference to religion.

My Sweet Pepper Land is one of the best recent films out of the Middle East; it was featured ("Un Certain Regard") at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.

Angels, Monsters, and Bastards

It's not too difficult to spot the bastards in Deborah Perkin's documentary of that title.  And they certainly aren't the little angels who didn't ask to be born out of wedlock.

"Bastards" played to a capacity audience at the Legation last Friday, its premiere in Morocco, prior to its official presentation tonight at FIDADOC - the Agadir International Documentary Festival - where Perkin's film opens the festival. On May 4 at 9:30 PM, Moroccan TV network 2M will air an edited version.

Perkin's 2014 documentary shouldn't be confused with the 2013 Claire Denis film "Les Salauds," whose international title "Bastards" accurately conveys the sense of "despicable person."  We flinch at the word - our post-film interpreter used "monsters," a good substitute for the reference to these extreme deadbeat dads - and I even hesitated to use it in this blog post title line, for fear of censorious filtering in internet browsers.

If you think that the idea of stigmatizing "illegitimate" children is a phenomenon limited to Morocco or other Muslim countries, think again; activist group "Bastard Nation" in the US fights for the rights of millions of adoptees.  And an Englishman in our audience recalled the opprobrium that was the lot of single mothers in the England of his youth, where concerns of "what will the neighbors think?" outweighed considerations of humanity toward the women and their innocent children.

Deborah Perkin is at pains to show the strides that Morocco has taken - in particular with the reforms of the mudawana or personal status law - to regularize and modernize the institution of marriage.  But it's hard to overcome centuries of tradition, where in the past, a sense of honor and a simple recounting of the "fatiha" or opening sura of the Koran sufficed to create a marriage bond.  And in many remote parts of Morocco, the practice continues.

The strength of Deborah Perkin's film is its simplicity, in subtitled Moroccan Arabic with no narration and a few explicative captions.  The film's main subject is a courageous young woman, Rabha El Haimer, whose arranged marriage at age 14 is at the root of her problem.  The traditional or "fatiha" marriage with a cousin has no legal standing, and her pregnancy coincides with her eviction from her husband's home.  The code of honor no longer suffices; now it's "no papers, no recognition."  Her baby is born a "bastard."  Other cases are followed, but the core of the film is Rabha's quest for legitimacy - for her marriage, and therefore for her daughter.

And that's the magic of the film; daughter Selma (who is pictured in the poster), is a little angel, and gives lie to the archaic notion of illegitimacy and "bastardy."  Deborah Perkin reminds us that the dictionary definition of bastard does more to describe the people who got girls like Rabha into their plight and then abandon them to their fate.

Rabha El Haimer (without headscarf) and admirers (photo: Rachid El Mziryahi, ALC Tangier;

More photos here)

The emotion generated by Bastards, in the presence of filmmaker Perkin and especially heroine Rabha El Haimer, was palpable among the Legation audience.  Composed largely of the women from our Arabic literacy program and members of "100% Maman," a Tangier NGO for single mothers, our audience could identify with the ordeal of Rabha and women like her.

A particularly moving comment during our post-film discussion, in halting English by a young woman whose pregnancy led her to leave Marrakesh for Tangier - "we are your daughters, your sisters... we are good women" - led our event partner Mark Holbrook of the American Language Center to offer her a scholarship on the spot to follow courses to improve her English.  He went on to offer the same to the women of "100% Maman."

Were it not for associations like 100% Maman and Darna in Tangier, and Casablanca's Association Solidarité Féminine (ASF), the lot of these single mothers and their children would be even more dire.  For many children, it can be a death sentence: babies abandoned in the elements, or street children prey to disease, drugs, and a short, brutal existence.  "It is a long, slow road," says ASF founder Aicha Ech-Channa, of changing the mentality that leads to exclusion.

This validation of her film by scores of Moroccan women was especially gratifying to Deborah Perkin.  She knows that her film isn't going to rake in the big royalties, but if it can help change minds, then it will be all the compensation she needs.

US readers: "Bastards" will feature at the Lincoln Center's New York African Film Festival on May 9 and May 12.

Gerald Loftus

Ibn Battuta Returns to Tangier

Yesterday's screening of the film epic Journey to Mecca: In the Footsteps of Ibn Battuta was a first for Tangier, the city where "IB" was born and from which he set off in 1325 on the first of what would be three decades of world travel.

Ibn Battuta has the city's airport named after him, and intrepid urban explorers can seek out his tomb in the medina, but there is precious little else here devoted to this Arab Marco Polo.

So it was time to bring IB back to his birthplace.

Yesterday's crowd at our Cinémathèque show was appreciative, and the film showcases the kind of spectacular Moroccan scenery that can depict a medieval pilgrimage from Tangier to Mecca, with every type of setting in between.  The film's producers have put together a great Educator's Guide (Download JTM_Educators Guide), and we were pleased to see a good number of Moroccan students in the audience.

Four years after I originally saw the film and reviewed it for IMDb, we "repatriated" IB to Tangier.

Gerald Loftus

Keep On Walkin' - Walk Morocco

In 1982, Louis Michael Figueroa, aged 16, ran from New Jersey to San Francisco for the American Cancer Society, unknowingly inspiring a line for Forrest Gump's famous run on the silver screen. "I just put one foot in front of the other," it goes. "When I get tired I sleep. When I get hungry I eat. When I have to go to the bathroom, I go."

IMDb, "Forrest Gump"

Danny Garcia, Mohamed Taleb, Khalid Jebbar

On Tuesday, Danny Garcia and Khalid Jebbar departed from the Legation on their epic Walk Morocco hike, destination Dakhla in the extreme south.  They should be getting to Oujda tonight, all the way over on the Algerian border.  Even though Danny told me they plan on trekking some 50 miles per day, I still am a bit fuzzy how they can do this in three days, given the distance.

But that's not the point.  I'm just glad that I randomly returned from errands in town in time to meet them as they left the Legation, down the American Steps, where a friendly plainclothes policeman accompanying Danny and Khalid stopped to introduce us.  Otherwise I might have missed this unique event.

Danny - a former US Marine - was overjoyed at seeing our exhibit on the first Marine Security Guards, and we were thrilled that he and Khalid (head of MAYD, Moroccan American Youth for Democracy) had chosen the Legation as their point of departure.  They know a thing or two about symbolism.

Speaking of symbolism - and maybe metabolism - Danny Garcia, "the Walking Man," also celebrated his 69th birthday on March 18, starting on this trek for "faith, children, and world peace."  Happy birthday, Danny, and you and Khalid keep on walkin' to Dakhla.

Gerald Loftus

 

Tangier to Tinseltown: Sanaa Hamri

Tipped off by proud Mom (Blanca Hamri), I watched her daughter Sanaa on CNN, and then sent the following flash message ("Must-See: Tanjawia-American on CNN") last Sunday morning to the more than 400 people on the TALIM mailing list:

 

I'll be brief: Moroccan - American film director Sanaa Hamri, daughter of Blanca Hamri (formerly of the American School of Tangier) and artist Mohammed Hamri, has made a successful career in New York and Hollywood as a director of music videos, TV programs, and films.

She's profiled on CNN's weekly "African Voices," which is shown at the following times.  If you miss seeing it today Sunday or tomorrow Monday, you can probably watch the episode on the program's website.  The program is shown at the following times (deleted, as it's now online).

 

Check this out, no kidding.  It's a full 30 minutes of Tangier & a great Moroccan-American.  Sanaa is highly intelligent, successful-but-not-a-braggart, an example of what this rich multicultural city and a pair of spunky and talented parents can produce.

I then sent the announcement with this addendum to the members of the American School of Tangier (AST) board of trustees (of which I am a member):

 

"African Voices" appears to be only be broadcast on CNN International, therefore only outside the US.  But if you wait a couple of days, you will be able to see it on the CNN website at this link; look for "Watch Previous Shows."

 

Sanaa (and Blanca) provide some great lines, including "AST was the ticket... education was a great gift..."

What's most impressive is Hamri's evolution.  Starting out as a receptionist at a NY studio, she not only "answers the phones well," as she puts it, but also teaches herself how to use the editing equipment.  Music videos (her clients include the biggest names in pop) come next, which evolve into TV sitcom episodes, which then morph into film directing.

 

But not just any old MTV spot or film.  Sanaa Hamri says that she turns down proposals "if they lack meaning," or sometimes because of their lyrical content: "They're saying nothing."  This woman knows where she's heading.

 

Okay, "local girl does well in Hollywood" - the Tinseltown story has been told before in places like Peoria, and maybe in Tallahassee, but not in Tangier.  Sanaa is a Big Deal, and is obviously a young woman who thinks big, too.  With a map of Morocco and Tangier spotlighted on the TV screen, she tells us that she hopes to establish a film studio in her home town, to rival the majors in Hollywood.

 

With someone of her level of determination - mother Blanca recalls that Sanaa's favorite cartoon character as a little girl was "Mighty Mouse" - who can doubt that she'll give it a shot?

 

Photo: cover story of Urbain Magazine (Tangier, Morocco)

 

Gerald Loftus 

Happy Birthday, IB!

Tim Mackintosh-Smith, author of the erudite and entertaining Travels With a Tangerine, knew Ibn Battuta so well that he took to calling him "IB" throughout his 2000 update of the 14th century traveler's work.

Today, 25 February, is the birthday of Ibn Battuta, Tangier's most famous son, but one who most 21st century Tangerines would be hard-put to define.  He was born here, that much is for sure.  Whether his tomb, hidden away in a particularly difficult-to-find corner of Tangier's medina, is really his burial place - that is less certain.

But no matter.  Tangier's airport is named after him, he's graced postage stamps, and he continues to give that other late medieval traveler, Marco Polo of Venice, a run for his money.  In fact, IB's travels far outstripped those of his Venetian counterpart, who was mostly content with getting to, and safely back from, China.

IB did that, and much more, and wrote about it in his Rihla, or Journey.  You can get a sense of his writing and the amazing extent of his travels from this Saudi Aramco World article, or in this Fordham University "Medieval Sourcebook."

We want to, in a sense, "bring IB back" to Tangier, and hope to do so by showing Journey to Mecca, a sterling docudrama, shot in Morocco and using dialogue from the Rihla.  Subtitled In the Footsteps of Ibn Battuta, the screenplay was written by veteran travel writer Tahir Shah, who knows the Legation.

We've been working on this since I saw the film when it first was released in IMAX in 2010, and we're getting close.  Stay tuned.

Gerald Loftus 

Monument Man

Over the past almost four years, one historic building has been an obsession: the Tangier American Legation.  My wife and I live there, and spend our working days and weekends there. Even during trips away from Morocco, like now, I find myself writing about it.

Its story is one that I never tire of telling: America's first diplomatic property, which happens to be on the African continent, at the Western edge of the Arab world, and in a country which practices a tolerant interpretation of Islam.  It's a big story, and it began in 1777.  And it's why the Tangier American Legation is the only US National Historic Landmark located in a foreign country.

Yesterday I received a message in my email inbox from the Washington-based private American heritage group, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, about another endangered edifice:

Last week, we shared the great news that the Astrodome was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The designation speaks volumes about the Dome’s significance — but it does not protect it from demolition.

We need your help to keep the iconic stadium standing. So, we’re asking [readers to contact local authorities in Houston].  It’s one click, one minute, one action that can make a world of difference for this striking part of America’s cultural history.

I have nothing against football, and I don't begrudge adding to the National Register of Historic Places a 1965 building that gave the world Astroturf® and other icons of commercial culture.

But in the struggle to keep historic buildings not only standing but thriving, we need perhaps a bit of prioritization.  I have no dog in the fight over the Astrodome.  But I do know this: the Legation, with its door open to showcase more than two centuries of American engagement with Morocco, is a powerful symbol at a time when American diplomacy is increasingly required to wall itself behind security barriers.

The Tangier American Legation deserves preservation, yes.  Public money for a government-owned building, yes, and private philanthropy too.

But it also deserves publicity, getting coverage for a story that begins with an 18th century Sultan reaching out to a new country fighting its Revolution.  And a Sultan who gives the US a building in the twisting streets of Tangier's medina, when American diplomacy was still exclusively in temporary rental quarters everywhere else.

And now, permit me a brief digression into the world of film review.

In Washington for meetings (and my ceaseless lobbying-for-the-Legation), we took a break to see George Clooney's directorial effort, The Monuments Men.  Having read Robert Edsel's excellent book about Allied soldiers and civilians who risked their lives to save and retrieve European art stolen on a massive scale by the Nazis, I looked forward to seeing the film treatment.  Luckily, I hadn't read Philip Kennicott's Washington Post review, or I might have stayed home.  The film does have some redeeming qualities, and the rough outlines of the historical story are there.  Roughly.

Unfortunately, I have to report that the film is to World War II art rescue what The Wind and the Lion is to the 1904 Perdicaris kidnapping in Tangier that triggered Teddy Roosevelt's gunboat diplomacy.  In other words: history, mangled.  Both cases involve Hollywood casting a beautiful blond actress where none existed in the historical incident: Cate Blanchett's "Claire Simone," despite the little wire-rim glasses, is still a glamorous Parisienne.  The real-life Rose Valland, who didn't look much like Cate Blanchett but whose efforts to save the masterpieces led her to join the French army and made her France's most decorated woman, is reduced to trying to vamp the Matt Damon character...

Back to our endangered monument, the Tangier American Legation.  Endangered?  Just check out the structural cracks in the above photo.  We're resting on rickety foundations, and though help appears to be on the way to shore up the structure, we will need resources to restore the Maghrebi artisanry that has suffered from years of exposure to shifting foundations, leaking roofs, and extreme humidity.

Want to help?  Contributions are always welcome (Download TALIM Fundraiser sheet), and our US-based 501(c)(3) charitable foundation will provide an IRS tax-deduction letter.

Speaking of letters, writing to your Congressional representatives or even to the National Trust would be helpful.  We need the recognition in historic preservation circles.

And those of you who are writers and perhaps already know the Legation and its unique place in American history might try your hand at getting our story in the media.  No American visitor to Morocco (or for that matter, to southern Spain) should miss seeing the Legation.

We can all be Monuments Men - and women. 

Gerald Loftus