Planet Extra - column details

Vicarious Travellers

16.04.10
Two of the things I most enjoy are films and travel. One of the best things about the Wales One World film festival is that it takes me to places that I otherwise would not be able to go.

This is especially true of The Wind Journeys. Ciro Guerra’s Colombian picture tells the story of Ignacio (Marciano Martinez), an accordion maestro journeying across the wilderness, pampas and mountains of his varied country before he retires, to return an instrument to his former teacher. He is challenged to come out of retirement on more than one occasion but hints that having been widowed he has lost heart to play. There is no way of knowing if this is true or not. It is an unanswerable question that draws us into the heart of Ignacio’s mystery. Part Don Quixote, part 8 Mile, this is a road movie featuring rap style accordion duels, a wandering boy, a donkey drifting along on a canoe plus some stunning visual shots of the more remote areas of Colombia.

Another of the most eagerly anticipated features at the WOW festival was The Headless Woman, the third film created by Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel. The headless woman of the title is a successful European city-dwelling dentist who runs over and kills an indigenous agricultural labourer. Surrounded by an influential and articulate coterie of metropolitan professionals she has no difficulty in concealing the incident and expunging all record of its ever having occurred. The film portrays not just a family but an entire country utterly divided along lines of class, wealth and power, seeming to suggest that the whole fabric of society has been cut off at the head and needs to be healed.

Again and again the films presented during WOW showed societies under military occupation, or divided from themselves by barriers of class and race. At their best, they were rooted in the political realities of societies under siege, while also just managing to hint at how the divisions and injustices of a global economic order might begin to be addressed.

Pomegranates and Myrrh directed by Najwa Najjar explores the effects of Israeli occupation on a Palestinian community. Shortly after marrying a dancer, olive farmer Zaid (Ashraf Farah) has his lands confiscated and is held in “administrative detention” – a euphemism for unlawful confinement. As his family try to secure his release and the return of their ancestral land, the additional spectre of losing his wife to the advances of a newly-arrived choreographer throws Zaid’s whole world into sharp question. There are scenes of brutality as the Israeli army occupies village after village sending women and children scattering. There are also scenes of real tenderness as when the dancer Kamar (Yasmine Al Massri) sits down in the shower and weeps for her imprisoned husband. Upon Zaid’s eventual release Kamar achieves an uneasy reconciliation with him when he goes to watch her dance. Much like Eran Kolirin’s 2008 film The Band’s Visit, Pomegranates and Myrrh uses the device of a cultural performance to suggest a unity that develops beyond conflict. The film is a testament to resilience, bravery and love in the face of division and exclusion, providing a window into a community that is not easily accessed from the outside.

In a different context the same is true of Warwick Thornton’s Samson & Delilah, a film exploring the attempts made by a teenage Aboriginal boy and girl to overcome social exclusion, lack of education, abuse and addiction in a severely neglected community in the Australian outback. Against a backdrop of rich and expansive natural beauty there is loss and suffering before an uneasy reconciliation and a final grain of hope.

It is also true of Kim Longinotto’s documentary Rough Aunties, an examination of the brave and powerful women who care for the abused and neglected children of Durban, South Africa. Alongside extreme horrors there is also tenderness and strength – a timely reminder ahead of the football World Cup due to take place in South Africa later this year that for all the warnings about crime and lawlessness, visitors to that country can also expect to find a warm, generous and welcoming people.

One of the gems of the 2010 festival touched on the effects of international sporting competitions on the global cultural economy from a new and fresh perspective. Uberto Pasolini’s Machan portrays a group of unskilled Sri Lankan labourers who dream of a better life in Europe. In order to gain the necessary visas for a tournament in Germany, they form the so-called National Handball Federation of Sri Lanka although no one in Sri Lanka knows what the game is. With its themes of economic migration and divided families, the film has a serious underbelly belied by the playful atmosphere and never-say- die attitude of the players. It is all the more remarkable for being based on a true story.

When I think of a film set at a major international sports tournament in Germany with a political theme, I am inclined to think of Steven Spielberg’s 2005 hit Munich – a serious exploration of the kidnapping of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics, and the psychopathologies of the kidnappers and their victims. Machan on the other hand shies away from the intricacies of international diplomacy, converting the dreams of its characters into a series of games from which they ultimately emerge victorious.

As a caption at the film’s conclusion tells us, following three heavy defeats in the 2004 World Championships, all 23 members of the National Handball Federation of Sri Lanka disappeared into the German countryside intent on starting new lives across Europe. They have not been seen since. In this cinematic affirmation of the possibility of the small guy winning against the odds, there is much that will make audiences look forward to next year’s Wales One World Film Festival and the opportunity to travel vicariously again.

Hywel Dix