Winds of Change: Cinema from Muslim societies
Published: Sep 28, 2011 00:17 Updated: Sep 28, 2011 17:29
Panel discussions and Islamic films at the ICA explore the link between Islam and current politics
London’s Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), in collaboration with the academic publication “Third Text,” is presenting “Winds of Change: Cinema from Muslim Societies,” a series of talks and Islamic films.
The program took place between Sept. 21 - 25 at the ICA in London. It included two panel discussions and eight films pertaining to Islam in the context of social, national and regional politics. The event did not uphold any inherently Islamic themes, but rather connected the current political situation in the Arab world to questions regarding media definitions, colonial histories, post-colonial theory, gender and Islam’s own politics.
There was a lot of skepticism about the suggested program prior to the event. Reading the blurbs on the ICA website, there were questions regarding what appeared to be a misperceived link between Islam and the so-called “Arab Spring.” The program was taken to be yet another London event trying to grapple the hype of the current political situation in the Arab world. Refreshingly, however, these links made in the blurbs were not forced or stated, but posed as questions.
The discussions that took place explored the link between Islam and current politics by breaking away from the “Arab Spring,” using it as a “springboard” to look beyond the “Arab” as an expected ethnicity. The program gave context to current socio-political situations by going back to historic views of struggles in various Muslim societies while critiquing the media’s selective focus on this, more popularly received, story: what about the Turkish fight against Kurdish Iraq, the terrorist backlash in Niger and the ongoing brutality in Iran?
In this context, going even further than the Islamic society, it linked more economics, such as the bankruptcy in Greece, Spain’s failing economy, the government spending cuts in the UK, world questions about the fate of the European Central Bank, the World Bank and capitalism as a whole. The program was certainly ambitious in linking big and heavy topics of religion, namely Islam, and politics, but more precisely, protest and resistance. However, for discursive and theoretical purposes, what this demonstrated was the fact that all things are connected.
Whether or not there is a Muslim world was the opening debate. The panel included journalists, academics and writers of various spectrums of ethnicities and Muslim persuasions. The simple consensus to the question was “yes” and “no” across the board with more of the debate weighing in on the “no” aspect of the discussion. With the advent of globalization, it was agreed that the Ummah has indeed dispersed.
What does this say, then, about Muslim cinema? Muslim cinema, as opposed to Jewish or Buddhist cinema, has a different gaze. Islamic belief holds a different respect toward the representation of the human form, and the Islamic aesthetic has details that, if referenced, are particular. Would these elements come into play?
As mentioned by Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian Studies and Contemporary Literature at Columbia University and prolific writer on Iranian and Palestinian cinema, a Muslim film festival could be broken down by themes pertaining to geography, spirituality, gender issues, language and so on. Yet, besides facts such as those presented during this panel by Ziauddin Sardar, author of “Skeptical Muslim” and “Balti Britain,” that Arabs only make up 25 percent of world Muslims, it was Merryl Wyn Davies, director of the Muslim Institute in London (herself a converted Muslim) who brought the links back to the element of cinema.
Davies made a strong argument about the representation of Muslims in film, particularly Hollywood movies which constitute 80 percent of the world’s movie production. The blatant and continuous representation of Muslims as violent noble savages has affected peoples image of Islam and thus, she argues, Muslims’ image of themselves.
Moving from the historical cinematic representation to the framework of today’s media focus, the discussion questioned the name of the “Arab Spring.” While an “Arab” might empower a region that has finally risen, it also gives specific label and ethnic and regional reference to a phenomenon that is, once again, not bound by either.
The film program offered a beautiful and varied look at struggles in Muslim societies, though again, not necessarily with Islam at their core, but as a backdrop. It can be argued, that the program was created within a geographic proximity to the Arab Spring: Senegal’s closeness to the North African region; Iran with their role in narratives of threat to the Gulf are not without their own struggle; and Turkey has had a strong voice of reconciliation over Middle Eastern matters. Yet, what about issues of Muslim Diasporas or exile cinema, the Indian subcontinent and the Far East? These were not visible in the attempt to open binding ideas of Islam through cinema.
Despite that, the film program gave a strong underlay to the discussions through variant narratives. They explored struggle alongside issues of dogma, feminism and censorship. The explorative element was highlighted in the variety of images of Islam that were presented. From Senegal, Sembene Ousman’s 1977 film, “Ceddo,” which was set in the 19th century, linked the ideas of politics in the form of resistance to colonialism of Islam and Christianity. The 2006 Turkish film, “Takva,” besides presenting powerful scenes of Dervish prayer and using innovative cinematic techniques of rhythm and repetition usually associated with Islamic arts, looked at one devout man’s personal struggle against temptation for bodily desires, money and power in his new world of commercial success. Moufida Tlatli’s “Silences of the Palace” from Tunisia, is a beautiful, multilayered film focusing on repression of women and the changes in a country at the end of French colonial rule. “Microphone,” the most prophetic of all the films (released in Egypt on Jan. 25), introduced the perseverance and disappointments of Alexandria’s underground artists in Egypt’s bureaucratic system of censorship. In this mix of the program, religion was used as an unobtrusive lens to thoughtfully explore issues of revolution, change and resistance.
The program was enjoyable and successful at opening up questions to ideas beyond the labels we have witnessed as stringent references used by news media. Rather than claiming anything from the “Arab Spring,” “Winds of Change” went beyond it, breaking the perception that the events unfolding are contained or even new. It was humanistic and explorative without claiming to have any answers. It allowed a daring and experimental approach to a situation that is currently in progress, opening it up rather than attempting to define it — exactly what thought-provoking programs should aim to do.
“The Green Wave” by Ali Samadi Ahadi, will be showing at the ICA London between Sept. 30 and Oct. 13.
For more information, visit www.ica.org.uk.
