'Stolen' Imbroglio Continues

The Q&A On Audio

Here's the link as provided by artrlight. Thank you.

I'm shocked at the degree of rhetoric coming from both sides. This is not a Q&A that was ever going to yield any answers.

Just as I had anticipated, Tom's interpreter was brought in to rubberstamp the films claims, in absentia of context. They showed him/her the fiLm over a few nights with some extra shots before and after. After which the said interpreter gave his/her seal of approval and then said, they anted to remain anonymous. That's hardly an objective assessment that would stand. Talk about garbage-in-garbage-out.

I'm appalled at how inarticulate Ms Ayala is in this interview. I understand English is not her first language, but she comes over as a petulant child insisting on having things her way. Maybe it works for her to force things through with the force of her pushy persona, but her answers weren't really enlightening of what they were thinking. It struck me that whatever it was they were thinking, it didn't have much to do with responsible reportage.

The questioners also line up their rhetorical ducks in line and Dan refuses to answer the questions. Violeta kind of raves with inarticulate "you knows" punctuating what is essentially a stream of self-justification. The AWSA reps are asking pretty forensic questions about tapes and who asked what questions when which don't really go to the heart of the matter.

I'm aghast at the sense of what Dan thinks is polite, where he's willing to break trust to get the shot, but that's all okay in film making; and what Violeta thinks is human rights being more important than politics. It's as if they've decided they just won't see the problem as a probelm, and therefore it's not a problem. They're like non-contenders in the basic ethics stakes.

Which naturally begs the question, how come these other people are so upset? Dan replies he dosn't want to comment to a pointed question. I'm sure Dan wouldn't because there's not an answer he could give that would make him look good. It's a really ghastly Q&A. Nobody sounds good or decent. None of it is in the least bit edifying. It just makes us confront the obtuseness of Tom, Dan and Violeta and Kemal and Fetim and the privileged-to-be-black dude and the Australian dude.

A Lot Of Fuss For A 1/4Million Bucks

The other thread where we discussed the issue of releases and translations got a little long so I started to add an entry here for the continued joy of gratuitous argument.

To put things into a little perspective, 'Stolen' got less than $250k from Screen Australia which, on one hand is a lot of money but on movie-making stakes, is peanuts. All this arguing over a measly $250k film. I don't think James Cameron would get out of bed in the mornings for a $250k film. Nonetheless we have this incredibly stupid controversy which cannot be resolved because nobody seem to have enough clout or financial wherewithal to sort it all out.

ScreenHub Goes To Bat For Tom

Anyway, here's David Tiley from ScreenHub's account of the Melbourne Film Festival screening, abridged:

The screening itself passed off quietly, to a fascinated audience. The q&a was moderated by Andrew Dodd, and recorded for Radio National, who asked questioners to identify themselves, and their affiliations with Polisario or the filmmakers.

That didn't work for long. A variety of people attempted to cast doubt on the plausibility of the story, with a series of mannered micro-speeches; the film's attackers in Melbourne were clearly disciplined, well-rehearsed and courteous. At least one person supporting the film seemed to share the same passion for planning.

Producer Zubrycki, never relaxed in public, was clearly tense. Fallshaw and Ayala were defensive and hectoring, reflecting their behavior in the second half of the film.

Afterwards, the cinema was abuzz with excited discussion. As I said to one viewer, "I haven't seen something like this for a long time. It feels like the Seventies."

"No", she replied. "The Seventies were much worse."

The extraordinary thing about this film remains its honesty, which has clearly evolved to anticipate and respond to criticism - an evolution which is only possible with easy digital recuts.

Audience members I talked to generally disliked Fallshaw and Ayala, who admit they dealt with the Moroccans, who seem self important and grandiose, who bully interviewees late in the film.

But it remains convincing - there is slavery in the camps, it takes a certain cultural form, it is named as such, and the film provides a fascinating picture of the experience of enslavement in action.

It is also obsessed with its own story, which shifts from slavery to Polisario's attempts to deal with a public relations problem. It doesn't enter the politics of the struggle - we don't even get a map for around an hour, even though the film is crossing borders. While it defines slavery as present across the region, it never provides a wider context.

And so it went. The most telling 2 paragraphs of David Tiley's article is here:

Polisario is clearly attacking details of a film which most of our readers have not seen, in order to question the whole, attacking the motivations of filmmakers, and painting itself as staggeringly benign.

It is possible to smell a number of rats in this situation, but the biggest rodent is being dragged around by Polisario. And the inadequacies of the filmmakers are clearly visible in the film.

So here we are with all this controversy about the film and whether it's accurate or ethically compromised or even down right dodgy. Tiley's being disingenuous himself when he argues that:

• if Polisario is attacking the details in order to question the whole,


• Then this imperfect procedure brings doubt on the Polisario's main point


• and therefore the Polisario cannot be itself staggeringly beign.

EXCEPT the third line also runs the same trope of questioning the detail in order to cast aspersion on the whole. You can't condemn a method and then use it yourself to condemn a party.

It is logically self-defeating. But I guess it looks good on the page - until you put it to proper scrutiny. Not that I give a shit about the Polsiario and their politics. I'm sorry to disappoint some people, but this blog just isn't about that part of the issue.

David Tiley also writes at the end:

Given the pressure that Polisario and its friends in Australia, particularly inside the ALP, have brought to bear on this matter, the statement is unsurprising.

But it does not represent either a shift in policy or a rejection - Screen Australia would never claim that a production it funded reflected any official point of view.

That's a little slippery there. A non-endorsement does not mean a policy shift, true enough. However, a non-endorsement might easily mean it's a rejection under the guise of plausible deniability, which is something you wouldn't put past politicians and bureaucrats. i.e, we ARE rejecting it, but not in a way that says so.

Which happens to be exactly what they're doing, as I've been told by people inside Screen Australia. So David Tiley's assertion is flat out wrong.

The fact that Screen Australia would never claim that a production it funded reflect any official point of view, is not what is being questioned. What is being asked is why would Screen Australia make a point of its non-endorsement if not but to avoid legal ramifications? - Like, the absence of signed releases and that sort of thing, perhaps?

One thing I have noticed with the side of the film makers to date is that logic doesn't seem to be their strong suit and truth claims seem to be too difficult for them to address. Instead, it's the insidious machinations of the Polisario and its long reach across the globe that gets trotted out. Which it might well be, but even then the defenders of the film don't seem to be on top of their philosophical position.

Maybe it's a Post-Modern problem after all, where there is no fixed 'Meaning', only the small-m meaning we draw from the text and the very modality of the various modes of truth claims coalesce into a socially formed *meaning* kind of hyper-real relativist mind space. (Oh, get me my vomit bag!)

I have to confess I'm getting really tired of wrestling with this topic. It's not much fun. And to that extent, I don't take too kindly to the film makers.

For a start, the Gen Y film makers of 'Stolen' probably are generationally (and I do grossly generalise here but...) the sort of people who think nothing of illegally downloading pirate songs onto their iPods and iPhones and not bat an eye-lid at the copyright infraction. Run cracked versions of software on the computers, run pirated videos on their DVDs. Why on earth would they care about truth claims and verification and release forms and legalities? Why bother? Nobody ever knew nothing, right? Make up the meaning as you go along. Shout out long enough that there are slaves in the camps, maybe then the meaning of slavery will warp enough into the image they want? Nothing unethical in that is there? How could there be, when ethics itself can't get established in the motile sea of flexible, ambiguous meaning?

Cue my Vomit bag, please.