SIFF: Seattle International Film Festival 2011- Two Movies

(Originally published on Yahoo! Voices on June 23, 2011. Links within this article were extracted then)

The SIFF, or Seattle International Film Festival, is the largest film festival in the United States and has the catchy and appropriate motto of "See Interesting Films First". The 2011 festival ran from May 19 - June 12 at venues, cinemas, and theatres across the entire Seattle area.

I arrived in Seattle towards the end of the SIFF and generally too late to enjoy premieres or celebrity appearences, or even meet and greets with directors, producers, and the like. So I'm sorry to have to tell you there will be none of that in this article. It will focus on venues and primarily on the films themselves. The original plan was to watch four films, but jetlag and other circumstances whittled it down to two. These two films were "The Hunter" and "The White Meadows". WARNING: This article contains spoilers!

"The Hunter" (2010) screened at the Egyptian Theatre on Capitol Hill on June 3, 2011 at 4:00 PM Pacific Daylight Time. Originally built in 1915, the Egyptian Theatre has a theatre stage with a cinema screen. The room is curtained on the sides with red curtains and boasts a slightly cheesy (or whimsical, if you prefer) Egyptian decor. In a corner to the left when seated in the theatre/cinema was a sign that read "Aladdin's Magic Lamp". As you can perceive from that fact, the aim in decorating the theatre was not accuracy, but a fanciful Westernized version of Egyptian decor. Still, the antique nature of the place favors that, and it was pleasant surroundings. The Egyptian has been home to the SIFF since the 1980s.

"The Hunter" was introduced by SIFF Programmer Justine Barnum who gathers films for presentation at the festival from mainly North Africa and the Middle East. This information was greeted with applause by some. We were told about the new SIFF Film Center that was opening soon and would provide similar films and services year round instead of just at the festival proper. There would be an opportunity following the screening to linger and mull over various meditations and opinions regarding this and other films at the SIFF Lounge at The Noodle. We were also informed that our ticket to that night's showing would gain us discounts on tickets to see other Iranian films, such as "The White Meadows" and "Circumstance".

"The Hunter" falls under the genre of thriller. It is an Iranian/German film by director Rafi Pitts who also plays the lead role. I was under the impression that the movie was in the Farsi language, but further research online reveals that it is Persian, with English subtitles. The soundtrack is sparse, but effective. It allows the everyday noises of Tehran to dominate the soundscape. In fact, for the first half, the viewer hears mostly traffic, and, for the second half, mostly rain. The story centers on a very quiet, meditative ex-con Ali Alavi. In the midst of the Iranian elections of 2009, he struggles to reintegrate into free society and shows every likelihood of becoming a reasonably obedient citizen. He earnestly tries to spend as much time as possible with his beloved wife Sara and six-year-old daughter Saba. But one day, Sara is killed in the crossfire during a clash between police and insurgents and Saba goes missing. We follow Ali in his desperate quest to find his daughter and get answers from the police. But, in the same way that he fails to receive any real information from the police, so he fails to locate his daughter. Eventually, she is found, having been beaten to death. This is where Ali's efforts to reintegrate end. His profound grief turns into resentment against the police that he believes murdered his family, so in a sniper-like fashion in broad daylight he shoots two policemen, leaving them dead on the road. It isn't long before he is chased down. Here begins the second half. Now in a forest nearby to Tehran where Ali used to take hunting excursions, he is arrested. But the two policemen who have him in custody are not familiar with the woods and all three are soon lost. The clear line between hunter and hunted then blurs as the policemen decide to take justice in their own hands and the viewer is confronted with outright corruption in the system. The startling last scene, in which Ali dies, leaves the question: who is right and who is wrong when everybody are criminals? The applause following was short and sparse. Perhaps the audience was still processing what they had just seen.

Trailer for "The Hunter".

The next day, June 4, 2011, "The White Meadows" (2009) enjoyed one of its final screenings for the SIFF at The Kirkland Performance Center at 6:00 PM Pacific Daylight Time. The Kirkland Performance Center also had a theatre stage with a somewhat larger cinema screen. The decor was more modern with stadium seating, blush colored seats (the bottom six rows nearest the stage were red), and a gray and black stage that clearly was meant to disappear and focus attention fully on whatever was happening on it rather than the stage itself.

"The White Meadows" is a drama by director Mohammad Rasoulof, for which he and its producer Jafar Panahi were jailed. While Rasoulof has been released, as of the date of this screening, Panahi had not. The film itself has been banned in Iran. It was introduced by SIFF Programmer Clinton McClum who was eager to update the audience on the current status of the director and producer as it was known. Judging by the general conversation of fellow viewers, this movie was a real hit at the festival. The film is in the Persian language, with English subtitles.

"The White Meadows" follows the long tradition of allegory in Middle Eastern literature. In artfully beautiful shots, a world of fable is created using Lake Daryacheh (or Lake Urmia) in North Iran as the setting. It is a stark world of salt islands (called "salt marshes" in the film) in a lake as calm as glass where everything is a sparkling, maddening white. Rahmat, played by Hassan Pourshirazi, paddles through this dream-like world on a small boat and does not interfere in anything that he witnesses, except to collect the tears of the mourning, the oppressed, and the suffering. He patiently listens to complaints, sins, burdens, cares, grief, and woes. In this way, he gives comfort and a measure of relief to the people he searches out. He silently watches their various rituals, superstitions, customs, and punishments. For most of the movie, the audience is awe-struck as they follow his long and arduous journey. This film has the feel of both Homer's "The Odyssey" and the classic collection of tales "The Thousand and One Nights", commonly known as the Arabian Nights, for it has both the element of the epic journey by sea of Homer and the grandiose, mythical events of the Arabian Nights. It is not until the final scene that the viewer is shocked with the sight of green, the sound of birds, and an odd conclusion that plays upon several elements encountered in the journey in a symbolic, meaningful way. This movie is both powerful myth and a thoughtful meditation on human suffering and oppression. The overall effect is that one is transported into a fairy tale realm with anything but a happy-ever-after ending that holds a merciless mirror up to the human condition into which the viewers are not forced, but rather tricked into being willing, to gaze at and the serious questions asked cannot be denied. As the credits rolled, the Center was filled with a dead silence for all of two minutes as the audience stared- absolutely stunned by the heart-wrenching import of the film. When the applause finally broke out, it was heartfelt and prolonged. "The White Meadows" is a movie through which one feels changed a little- almost imperceptively- but permanently.

Trailer for "The White Meadows".

A Short Conversation with Poet Kit Fryatt

(Originally published on July 10, 2008 on Yahoo! Voices.)

I first met Kit Fryatt through Livejournal.com (I have since deleted my account there) when she wrote an entry regarding an event she attended at which Bono of U2 fame read and gave her thoughts on the whole affair. Being an avid U2 fan, I was highly entertained by that entry in which she was not at all pleased. Since we share a common love of poetry, we continue to correspond and I have learned much from her over the last few years. She is an unfailing support to me poetically. She is also a very good writer as well as teacher and has been published, among other numerous journals, in the Poetry Ireland Review. As a way to give back to her, I asked her for an email interview to be published here on AC (Associated Content, later Yahoo! Voices). Without further ado, here are the results of that interview:

S. R.: Where and when were you first exposed to poetry? How did you come to love it?

K. F.: I don't remember: the first poems I heard were nursery rhymes, probably. I remember laughing and laughing at a silly rhyme my father used to say: "Spring is sprung, the grass is riz / I wonder where the birdies is?" I never got tired of that. I have memories of writing poems on a paper napkin in a restaurant when I was 7. One began "A knight / In sight / On a horse / Of course", which I think has a certain modernist flair. I learnt poems by heart at an American school for military children in Izmir, Turkey. Rose Fyleman:

I think mice are rather nice,
Their tails are long, their faces small,
They haven't any chins at all.
Their ears are pink, their teeth are white,
They run about the house at night;
They nibble things they shouldn't touch,
and no one seems to like them much,
but I think mice are rather nice.

When we were still in Turkey, my mother brought home a copy of the New Golden Treasury, not Palgrave but a new selection chosen in the 70s by Edward Leeson. Books were a special event: even in Ankara, the capital, there were only a couple of bookshops that sold English-language books. There I found:

Sumer is icumen in
Lhude sing, cuccu!
Groweth sed and bloweth med
And springeth the wude nu,
Lhude sing, cuccu!

Awe bleteth after lomb
Lhouth after calve cu
Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth
Murie sing cuccu!

Cuccu, sing cuccu
Ne swik thu naver nu!
Sing cuccu, nu, sing cuccu,
Sing cuccu, sing cuccu, nu!

That's from the 13th century, and it's really just a slightly -- ever so slightly: note that farting buck -- more sophisticated version of my dad's rhyme. I had a cult of Old England going on at the time, despite or because of being surrounded by the remains of much more ancient cultures in Asia Minor, and I was hooked. I think rhyme and repetition hooks children into poetry, but it's a sense of the strangeness of language that keeps them reading.

S.R.: Which poets are the greatest influence on your work and why?

K.F.: Not for me to say, I think. Influence is a slippery thing. You might think a poet is heavily inflected by Auden or Yeats and I mightn't hear it at all. I've never tried consciously to imitate anyone, except in parodies, but I find I'm always unconsciously imitating. Sometimes imitating very bad stuff.

S.R.: Are there non-poetic influences, such as environment, other interests, etc.?

K.F. : Of course: anything and everything can be material. That said, the Irish bardic schools allegedly encouraged their pupils to compose indoors, in darkness. There's something to be said for sensory deprivation, too.

S.R.: As an academic, do you feel that is beneficial to poetry or not, and why?

K.F.: I'm lucky: I get a lot of pleasure out of close analysis. Sometimes a poem won't really ravish me until I've done the forensics on it. That's not true for many people I think, even some who end up studying English at university. Students often complain that they dislike "dissecting" a poem; a revealing metaphor, because they see the poem as a corpse to start with. I tell them it's not dissection; it's vivisection, except you can't hurt a poem by torturing it, luckily. As for poets making their living in the academy: poets need their patrons; always have.

S.R.: Give a brief anecdote of an experience in your life or at a literary function that has impacted you as a poet.

K.F.: I think all the experiences that have made an impact on me poetically are experiences of reading poems, which isn't very interesting to talk about. Literary events are usually the reverse of inspiring, though sometimes there is free wine. The poets I know personally -- I think I should like them as well if they weren't poets.

S.R. What is it that you most hope readers will take away from your work?

K.F.: Words. In their particular order.

S.R.: Are there any projects you are working on or ideas for future projects? What makes these appealing to you as a poet?

K.F.: I'm sending myself to poetic boot-camp for the summer. Formal exercises, that sort of thing. Starting over is always bracing.

S.R.: If you could could give an aspiring poet advice in only one sentence, what would it be?

K.F.: I *am* an aspiring poet! I saw this on a medieval mazard bowl in the Cloisters in New York: "Reason bade that I should write, think much and speak little".

S.R.: You are originally from Britain, I believe, but have also lived in
Ireland and Scotland. Would you consider yourself a British poet or an
Irish or Scottish one? How do you think that experiencing these
different perspectives has shaped you as a poet?

K.F.: That's a big and dangerous question. I'm bound to offend someone. I was born in Iran, to British parents. I left when I was ten months old though -- no memories. I spent some time in the south of England, and then my parents travelled with me to Singapore and Turkey. Then I was at boarding school for a year before they finally came back when I was ten. I spent my teens in the south of England and moved to Ireland when I was 21. I've been spending a bit of time in Scotland over the last few months too. National identity -- whatever some critics may say -- I think is rarely to the forefront of a poet's mind when he or she is writing, and yet poetry turns out marked by the regional -- perhaps, rather than the national -- in all sorts of ways. Politically, I'm not a Unionist: I think the United Kingdom has come to a point now where it is no longer really sustainable. I would be happy to see an independent Scotland -- making the island of Ireland a single country has particular political and social difficulties which I think would have to be negotiated very carefully, but given that it's done equitably I think it would be desirable in the end. England and Wales will probably remain as a unit: an independent Wales isn't viable economically. The cultures of the British Isles have their distinct differences but they also share a lot. England is often (especially in Ireland) seen as a monolithic imperial nation, but it's actually very various. I see myself as English within a wider british culture. The small b is deliberate. I think the imperialist conception of Britain, along with English domination of the United Kingdom, should and will come to an end. English people often don't think about this stuff. Their relative power insulates them from it. Well, white English people. There's a very different usage of "British" by English people of colour, because they often feel that "English" is a racial as well as a national marker, whereas "British" is inclusive. I'd like to make my small-b britishness somehow cognate with that. Living in Ireland and Scotland has made me think about these things, which I mightn't have done otherwise -- they make their way into poems sometimes. Quite a lot of Hiberno-English gets into them too, and the odd Scots word which makes its way in via the Scottish ballads, which I love.


Wurm Im Apfel, a small press that Fryatt runs herself.
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