From the daily archives:

Friday, September 10, 2004

The Real Underground Cinema

by James McNally on September 10, 2004

in Uncategorized

Police in Paris have dis­covered a fully-equipped cinema in the cav­erns under­neath the city. It appears to be the work of the “Perforating Mexicans”, one of the city’s secret soci­eties of “cata­ph­iles”, people who enjoy exploring the hidden net­work of cata­combs and tun­nels that stretch for over 170 miles. This reminds me of the Troglodistes in Caro and Jeunet’s film Delicatessen. (via kottke)

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Letters to Ali

by James McNally on September 10, 2004

in Documentaries, Film Festivals, TIFF

Letters to Ali (Australia, dir­ector Clara Law): No, this isn’t about Muhammad Ali. It’s the story of a 15-year old Afghan boy who’s seeking asylum in Australia, and about the Australian family who befriend him. Australia is the only “Western” country that incar­cer­ates all refugee claimants in remote camps, for­bid­ding them to work or go to school until their cases are decided, which often takes years. The film­maker befriended a remark­able family who had been writing to “Ali” (a pseud­onym) for more than 18 months. They had even driven 12,000 km round-trip to visit him. When they decide to visit him a second time, the film­maker and her cameraman/husband tag along, and this film is the result.

Although she draws atten­tion to a par­tic­u­larly shameful policy, the film is weakened in my opinion by a few things. Since it was filmed on digital video, some of the hand­held camera work left me naus­eated. There were far too many shots of the admittedly-gorgeous Australian land­scape shot from the boun­cing vehicle on the unpaved road. Related to this, the film was simply too long and felt too slow-paced. Another issue was that the first ten minutes promise a much more per­sonal film than is ulti­mately delivered. We hear about the filmmaker’s own exper­i­ence as a recent immig­rant from Hong Kong, but then she kind of fades into the back­ground for much of the rest of the film. “Ali” is described throughout the film and some of his words are used on the innov­ative cap­tions the film uses instead of voi­ceover nar­ra­tion, but since filming inside the deten­tion centre wasn’t per­mitted, there is pre­cious little footage of the boy him­self. When, near the end of the film, “Ali” is allowed some degree of freedom out­side the camp, we do see him enjoying him­self with his new adoptive family, but due to con­cerns about jeop­ard­izing his refugee case, he’s entirely blurred out, which was at first odd and then just annoying. Not only can’t we see his face, but we don’t know his real name, nor have we heard his voice. We know just enough about him to sym­pathize, but no more. The fear that has motiv­ated Australia’s repressive policy has also infected the film­makers and the law­yers rep­res­enting “Ali,” leaving him almost as face­less as the Australian gov­ern­ment would like him to be. As of this screening, his case is still unre­solved. He may be sent back to troubled Afghanistan at any time. Let’s hope this film can make a dif­fer­ence, not just for “Ali”, but for the thou­sands of refugee claimants still imprisoned in Australia.

Film’s Web Site: www.letterstoali.com

7/10(7/10)

Tagged as: afghanistan, australia

{ Comments on this entry are closed }