Laila Lalami

The V&A is not my favorite London museum (that would be the Tate) but I was there today because they’re having a special exhibit on Alberto Korda’s iconic image of Che Guevara. A thoroughly enjoyable and informative history of how two photographs, snapped quickly when Che appeared on the balcony during a speech by Castro, have become such emblems of revolution, social change, and guerilla chic, reproduced on everything from T-shirts to Russian dolls. Some of the pieces in the exhibit are well-known, like Patrick Thomas’s “American Investment in Cuba,” which uses U.S. brand names to create the image of Che. But others were new and unfamiliar (to me, anyway), and I do wish there had been more effort to document those. (I wanted to know, for instance, what the poster “Bangla Che” said, but no translation was provided.)

Photo: ‘Guerrillero Heroico,’ Alberto Korda.

I mentioned last week Rachid Bouchareb’s new film, Indigènes, which is about a little known chapter of history: That (Muslim) soldiers from the French colonies were sent to fight the Nazis. It’s a subject that’s near to my heart, because my grandfather was part of the Tirailleurs Marocains, so I am dying to see the movie. I just heard that the ensemble cast (Jamel Debbouze, Roschdy Zem, Sami Bouajila, and Samy Naceri) has won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival. The film doesn’t have a U.S. distributor yet, but one hopes that the attention at Cannes will help get it to theatres here.
I’d like to read Elaine Sciolino’s interview with Jamel Debbouze in the NYT, but it’s hidden behind a subscription wall. Can someone send it to me? Thanks, A. Here’s a snippet:

He achieved international recognition with the 2001 film “Amélie,” in which he played Lucien, a stammering grocer’s assistant. In “Astérix and Obélix: Mission Cleopatra” the next year, Mr. Debbouze played an incompetent Egyptian architect who never made his deadlines and put doors near ceilings, justifying them by saying, “In case you ever want to build a second floor.” That role earned him $2.7 million,
making him one of France’s top-grossing actors. Now only Gérard Depardieu commands a higher salary per film.

He credits his mother, who rose every morning at 4 and held down back-to-back jobs to help support him and his five siblings, for his success.

“In everything that’s black, she sees rose, yellow, green,” he said. His mother, a Muslim, wears a headscarf in public.

When he told his father, now a retired sweeper in the Métro, that he wanted to be a comedian, he said his father replied, “That’s for drug addicts and homosexuals.” After a pause, Mr. Debbouze smiled and added, “But he calmed down when I gave him his first Mercedes.”

Mr. Debbouze resents that he is given such labels as “the prince of the housing projects” or the “Arab with attitude.”

“They categorize us always as ‘actors of Moroccan origin,’” he said. “I am not an ‘actor of Moroccan origin.’ I am an actor.”

I’m not sure why we needed to hear about his mother’s headscarf, but oh wait, it is the NYT, after all.

At Cannes this week, all eyes are on the film adaptation of The Da Vinci Code, but I’m really intrigued by the new film from Rachid Bouchareb, called Indigènes, which will also premiere at the festival. It’s set in 1944, and it’s about four young soldiers from France’s colonies in Algeria and Morocco, who are sent to the mainland to fight the Nazis. It stars Jamel Debbouze, Samy Naceri, Roschdy Zem, and Sami Bouajila. You can view a trailer here. The official site also has photos and information about this forgotten moment of history. Notice, by the way, that there was no hand-wringing about “integration” and “assimilation” of North Africans when they were being sent to the front lines to fight for the freedom of their oppressor.

Lorraine Ali meets profile of Eddie Vedder and his bandmates for Newsweek:

After the success of their 1991 debut, “Ten,” which sold nearly 10 million copies, the Seattle group stopped making videos, shunned endorsements and shied away from almost all self-promotion. And each subsequent album proved less accessible than its predecessor. (Can you name the last two Pearl Jam records?)

Actually, no, I can’t, and I live with a card-carrying Ten Club member. But I am indeed looking forward to the new CD. I hope it’s good.

The Guardian’s Xan Brooks (What kind of a name is Xan? A cool name, that’s what) interviews several Palestinian filmmakers about their work, and their challenges.

Feted by the critics and public alike, Palestinian cinema remains a culture in exile, an industry without a home. “Let me tell you about the Palestinian film industry,” says actor-director Mohammed Bakri, who made the documentary Jenin, Jenin after the demolition of the refugee camp. “Very simply, we do not have one. We have some very talented film-makers, but that’s about it. We have no film schools and we have no studios. We have no infrastructure because we have no country.”

From the sound of it, they have no distribution network either. “There is one cinema in Ramallah, and nothing anywhere else,” Bakri says. “And this is probably the biggest problem. We are not reaching the people we are talking about. For me it’s very painful, because obviously I want my people to see my films.” The irony is clear: visitors to the Palestine film festival in London will have had greater access to Palestinian films than the vast majority of Palestinians.

And yet, Palestinians directors still manage to release films, somehow. Read the full article here.

Thanks to David for the link.

Another day, another case of foolish racial profiling. This time, it’s John Sinno, the director of Seattle’s Arab and Iranian Film Festival, who was stopped and questioned for nine hours in Vancouver because he had a box of DVDs in the trunk of his car.

“I felt like I was in a military zone,” Sinno says. “They followed me to the bathroom and stood right behind me when I was at the urinal. It was unbelievably harsh for having a small box of DVDs.” That the box included titles such as Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Hidden Wars of Desert Storm was the least of his problems, says Sinno, who was travelling with a white American colleague. The colleague was waved on his way, while Sinno was held for nine hours. “They asked me where I got the DVDs from, and when I told them they didn’t believe me,” he says. “It was pretty scary. I said to them, look, I’m being racially profiled. Let’s admit it and move on.” He hesitates. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea to talk about it. We live in touchy times.”

More at the Guardian.

The Seattle Arab and Iranian Film Festival opens this weekend. It will shows feature films and documentaries from and about Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen, with co-productions from Canada, France, Mexico, and the U.S. Yousry Nasrallah’s film adaptation of Elias Khoury’s novel Gate of the Sun will be shown, as well as the critically acclaimed Moroccan film The Grand Voyage. Check out the rest of the schedule.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the ‘Without Boundary‘ show currently on view at MoMA. Now in a New York Observer piece, Tyler Green reports that some of the artists connected with the show are unhappy about it, including Shirin Neshat, who says:

“My immediate reaction was, how could anyone today discuss art made by contemporary Muslim artists and not speak about the role the subjects of religion and contemporary politics play in the artists’ minds?” Ms. Neshat said. “For some of us, our art is interconnected to the development of our personal lives, which have been controlled and defined by politics and governments. Some artists, including Marjane Satrapi and myself, are ‘exiled’ from our country because of the problematic and controversial nature of our work.”

Green points out that it’s “highly unusual” for artists included in a MoMA show to criticize “the most powerful art museum in the world.” You can read more about the artists’ frustrations and MoMA’s stance on the merging of art and politics here.

Over at the New York Times, Holland Cotter reviews “Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography,” which is currently showing at the International Center of Photography. Of the curator, the Nigerian Okwui Enwezor, Cotter writes:

If Martians tuned in to our television news broadcasts, they’d have a miserable impression of life on Earth. War, disease, poverty, heartbreak and nothing else. That’s exactly how most of the world sees Africa: filtered through images of calamity. “Afro-pessimism” is the diagnostic term that Okwui Enwezor, the Nigerian-born art historian and curator, uses for the syndrome. And he has offered bracing antidotes to it in two major photography exhibitions.

The first, “In/Sight: African Photographers, 1940 to the Present,” appeared at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1996. It was fantastic, a revelation. Now, a decade later, the second one has arrived, “Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography” at the International Center of Photography. It, too, is fantastic — stimulating, astringent, brimming with life — and different from its predecessor.

You can read the rest of the rave review here.

The online gallery for “Snap Judgments” is worth a visit. I was happy to see a strong showing by Moroccan artists in this exhibit, with artwork by Yto Berrada, Ali Chraibi, and Lamia Naji.

The Museum of Modern Art is currently running an exhibition called “Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking.” Curated by Fereshteh Daftari, the pieces in the collection explore the false notion of “Islamic art,” which is generally taken to mean any art produced in Muslim lands, regardless of ethnicity or culture.

The artists come from various countries (with a strong showing by Iranian artists, including photographer Sherin Neshat and comic artist Marjane Satrapi) and various religious backgrounds, showcasing the diversity of thinking about art from (or about) “over there.” Michael Wise, writing in the Los Angeles Times, finds the exhibit “subversive.” I think we can all use a bit of subversion. You can view the online page for Without Boundary here. (Click on “Full Program” for a guided tour.)