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Our Next Event:
We Take on China!
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Dear Free Thinking Film Society Supporter:
You won't want to miss our upcoming event on May 28th - "When China
Met Africa (Film) followed by a panel discussion on China in Canada.
When China Met
Africa (Film)
China in Canada
(Panel Discussion)
May 28, 7:00 PM
Library & Archives Canada
395 Wellington
Admission $15 ($10 for students).
Tickets
available at the door or at selected retailers (Compact Music, 190 Bank,
785 Bank; Collected Works, 1242 Wellington; Ottawa Festivals, 47 William)
"This documentary explores the
burgeoning economic relationship between China and Zambia. It's shot with
an acute eye for the discomfort of discordant cultures co-existing.
What's interesting here is that you feel this story is only just
beginning."
The Times of
London
"A dark, quiet, damning documentary
looking at China's determined expansion into Africa (here Zambia) through
the lives of a Chinese farmer, a road builder, and the Zambian trade
minister. When in 1999 China announced its "go global" policy
it had Africa very much in mind, and specifically the raw materials that
go into the construction of our electrical equipment. A creeping,
alarming account of exploitation as well as a study into the psychology
of colonialism."
Financial
Times
After the hour-long film, we will have a
panel discussion in the implications of Chinese investment in Canada with
Award-winning journalist Terry Glavin (who has written lately extensively
about China in the Ottawa Citizen), Human Rights campaigner and former
Member of Parliament David Kilgour, Terrorism and Security Specialist
David Harris, University of Ottawa Professor Scott Simon (a specialist in
Taiwan), and Jason Loftus, Deputy Publisher of the Epoch Times Canada.
Finally, we will then have a private
reception - so please join us for an evening of film, discussion, and
food & drink!
****************************************************
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I am very excited about our June event, when we will bring
in Irish filmmaker Nicky Larkin to present his film "Forty Shades of
Grey" about Israel.
Forty Shades of
Grey
An Evening with
Nicky Larkin
June 18, 2012. 7 PM
Library & Archives Canada
395 Wellington, Ottawa
Admission: $15 ($10 for students)
Tickets will
be available at the door or available NOW at selected retailers (Compact
Music. 785 Bank, 190 Bank; Collected Works, 1242 Wellington; and Ottawa
Festivals, 47 William).
Nicky Larkin: Israel is a
refuge, but a refuge under siege. Through making a film about the
Israeli-Arab conflict, artist Nicky Larkin found his allegiances swaying
From the Irish Independent Sunday March 11 2012
I used to hate Israel. I used to think the
Left was always right. Not any more. Now I loathe Palestinian terrorists.
Now I see why Israel has to be hard. Now I see the Left can be Right --
as in right-wing. So why did I change my mind so completely?
Strangely, it began with my anger at Israel's
incursion into Gaza in December 2008 which left over 1,200 Palestinians
dead, compared to only 13 Israelis. I was so angered by this massacre I
posed in the striped scarf of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation for
an art show catalogue.
Shortly after posing in that PLO scarf, I applied
for funding from the Irish Arts Council to make a film in Israel and
Palestine. I wanted to talk to these soldiers, to challenge their actions
-- and challenge the Israeli citizens who supported them.
I spent seven weeks in the area, dividing my
time evenly between Israel and the West Bank. I started in Israel. The
locals were suspicious. We were Irish -- from a country which is one of
Israel's chief critics -- and we were filmmakers. We were the enemy.
Then I crossed over into the West Bank.
Suddenly, being Irish wasn't a problem. Provo graffiti adorned The Wall.
Bethlehem was Las Vegas for Jesus-freaks -- neon crucifixes punctuated by
posters of martyrs.
These martyrs followed us throughout the West
Bank. They watched from lamp-posts and walls wherever we went. Like Jesus
in the old Sacred Heart pictures.
But the more I felt the martyrs watching me,
the more confused I became. After all, the Palestinian mantra was one of
"non-violent resistance". It was their motto, repeated over and
over like responses at a Catholic mass.
Yet when I interviewed Hind Khoury, a former
Palestinian government member, she sat forward angrily in her chair as
she refused to condemn the actions of the suicide bombers. She was all
aggression.
This aggression continued in Hebron, where I
witnessed swastikas on a wall. As I set up my camera, an Israeli soldier
shouted down from his rooftop position. A few months previously I might
have ignored him as my political enemy. But now I stopped to talk. He
only talked about Taybeh, the local Palestinian beer.
Back in Tel Aviv in the summer of 2011, I
began to listen more closely to the Israeli side. I remember one
conversation in Shenkin Street -- Tel Aviv's most fashionable quarter, a
street where everybody looks as if they went to art college. I was
outside a cafe interviewing a former soldier.
He talked slowly about his time in Gaza. He
spoke about 20 Arab teenagers filled with ecstasy tablets and sent
running towards the base he'd patrolled. Each strapped with a bomb and
carrying a hand-held detonator.
The pills in their bloodstream meant they
felt no pain. Only a headshot would take them down.
Conversations like this are normal in Tel
Aviv. I began to experience the sense of isolation Israelis feel. An
isolation that began in the ghettos of Europe and ended in Auschwitz.
Israel is a refuge -- but a refuge under
siege, a refuge where rockets rain death from the skies. And as I made
the effort to empathise, to look at the world through their eyes. I began
a new intellectual journey. One that would not be welcome back home.
The problem began when I resolved to come
back with a film that showed both sides of the coin. Actually there are
many more than two. Which is why my film is called Forty Shades of Grey.
But only one side was wanted back in Dublin. My peers expected me to come
back with an attack on Israel. No grey areas were acceptable.
An Irish artist is supposed to sign boycotts,
wear a PLO scarf, and remonstrate loudly about The Occupation. But it's
not just artists who are supposed to hate Israel. Being anti-Israel is
supposed to be part of our Irish identity, the same way we are supposed
to resent the English.
But hating Israel is not part of my personal
national identity. Neither is hating the English. I hold an Irish
passport, but nowhere upon this document does it say I am a republican,
or a Palestinian.
My Irish passport says I was born in 1983 in
Offaly. The Northern Troubles were something Anne Doyle talked to my
parents about on the nine o'clock News. I just wanted to watch Father
Ted.
So I was frustrated to see Provo graffiti on
the wall in the West Bank. I felt the same frustration emerge when I
noticed the missing 'E' in a "Free Palestin" graffiti on a wall
in Cork. I am also frustrated by the anti-Israel activists' attitude to
freedom of speech.
Free speech must work both ways. But back in
Dublin, whenever I speak up for Israel, the Fiachras and Fionas look at
me aghast, as if I'd pissed on their paninis.
This one-way freedom of speech spurs false
information. The Boycott Israel brigade is a prime example. They
pressurised Irish supermarkets to remove all Israeli produce from their
shelves -- a move that directly affected the Palestinian farmers who
produce most of their fruit and vegetables under the Israeli brand.
But worst of all, this boycott mentality is
affecting artists. In August 2010, the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity
Campaign got 216 Irish artists to sign a pledge undertaking to boycott
the Israeli state. As an artist I have friends on this list -- or at
least I had.
I would like to challenge my friends about
their support for this boycott. What do these armchair sermonisers know
about Israel? Could they name three Israeli cities, or the main Israeli
industries?
But I have more important questions for Irish
artists. What happened to the notion of the artist as a free thinking
individual? Why have Irish artists surrendered to group-think on Israel?
Could it be due to something as crude as career-advancement?
Artistic leadership comes from the top.
Aosdana, Ireland's State-sponsored affiliation of creative artists, has
also signed the boycott. Aosdana is a big player. Its members populate
Arts Council funding panels.
Some artists could assume that if their name
is on the same boycott sheet as the people assessing their applications,
it can hardly hurt their chances. No doubt Aosdana would dispute this
assumption. But the perception of a preconceived position on Israel is
hard to avoid.
Looking back now over all I have learnt, I
wonder if the problem is a lot simpler.
Perhaps our problem is not with Israel, but
with our own over-stretched sense of importance -- a sense of moral
superiority disproportional to the importance of our little country?
Any artist worth his or her salt should be
ready to change their mind on receipt of fresh information. So I would
urge every one of those 216 Irish artists who pledged to boycott the
Israeli state to spend some time in Israel and Palestine. Maybe when you
come home you will bin your scarf. I did.
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Frederick Litwin
Free Thinking
Film Society
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