Toronto Film Festival, Queer Israel, Palestinian Rights and Disordered Thinking
First an excerpt from an article by Hannah Brown in the Jerusalem Post about the controversy in Toronto with film maker John Greyson boycotting the festival there:
"...there has been a ridiculous
flap over the Toronto festival's decision to feature a cinematic
tribute to Tel Aviv in honor of that city's centennial, including films
such as Assi Dayan's Life According to Agfa. Canadian director
John Greyson chose to boycott the festival, withdrawing his 15-minute
documentary about a festival for gays in Sarajevo. Greyson and others
who support the boycott gave all the usual reasons, accusing Israel of
apartheid and citing the war in Gaza and the occupation of the West
Bank. If I had a hundred pages, I wouldn't have space to exhaust the
ironies of anyone choosing to boycott a festival because he feels that
showing such films as Assi Dayan's almost indescribably negative and
bleak portrayal of Israel provides sparkling public relations for the
country. This movie depicts Israelis as so deeply racist and
irreparably corrupt, if Theodore Herzl could have seen into the future
and caught a screening of it, he would have converted to Buddhism and retired
to the Himalayas. Abused wives, exploited prostitutes, noble
Palestinian mechanics and their lazy-slob Jewish bosses, and a selfish
womanizer who trashes the lives of everyone around him are just a few
of the characters featured in the other films planned for the tribute,
including Danny Lerner's Kirot, Keren Yedaya's Jaffa, and Uri Zohar's Big Eyes. Eytan Fox's The Bubble
is a thoughtful and, I think, generally underrated film about the
culture clash that takes place when a gay Palestinian comes to live in
one of Tel Aviv's chic, bohemian neighborhoods. However, anyone who
would call The Bubble pro-Israeli propaganda, when it focuses
on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and has a hero who falls in love
with a Palestinian, is so absurd as to defy any logic. It's quite
possible that there is no other city in the world where mainstream (and
often government-supported) filmmakers have been so staunchly and
relentlessly critical of their government.
Now I am a big fan of Greyson's film Lilies, one of most interesting queer films ever made. But I find his thinking on this issue to be disordered. I am no apologist for the injustices in Israel. There are those who will point to the real danger to their lives that queer people face in the Islamic societies that surround Israel, and while this is true, you can't make grey while by comparing it to black. And Israeli society is grey to say the least. But it ain't black. As I've said before, I urge Mr. Greyson to show Lilies anywhere in the Palestinian territory. Or Egypt. Or Syria.
Meanwhile, the homoeroticism that seethes under the relationships between men in the orthodox world break through to the surface in a film that premiered in Cannes last spring, Eyes Wide Open. Will it make it to NYC? Has it found a distributor? Inquiring minds want to know. Here's a clip:
Yes, a film like this, despite the historically accurate cultural acceptance of homoerotic relations (though with an age difference that would not be accepted in the West) is something else I don't think we'll see coming out of Syria, Iran, Iraq or Saudi Arabia anytime soon, must less the Palestinian territory.
The injustices suffered by Palestinians are real. The inequity in Israeli society, the growing religious intolerance and the rifts between the Jews of different cultures who've settled there make for a pressure cooker I can't imagine. I don't see how Mr. Greyson has added any light to the situation. Only heat. And that's the last thing anyone in the Middle East needs. Just my opinion.
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