By Jason Apuzzo. I am very pleased to report that a movie we loved here at Libertas – Chris Morris’ Islamic terror satire Four Lions – has just picked up U.S. distribution. We’ve been covering the progress of this film for months, and we’re so happy that Alamo Drafthouse – a great cult movie distribution outfit (for DVDs) that will now be entering theatrical distribution under the banner of Drafthouse Films – has selected Four Lions as its first theatrical venture. Four Lions will apparently be kicking off a 10 city promotional screening tour with Chris Morris in mid-October, and the film is otherwise slated for release this fall in New York, Los Angeles and Austin – with other cities in following weeks. This is great news.
Total morons.
We got a chance to see Four Lions at the LA Film Festival a few months ago, and we thought it was fantastic. [Read my review of Four Lionshere.] We also had fun meeting actor Kayvan Novak, who plays the clueless ‘Waj’ in the film. After Four Lions’ big debut at Sundance, the film closed the South by Southwest Film Festival, won the Independent Camera Award at Karlovy Vary – and was voted Best Narrative Feature by audiences at the Los Angeles Film Festival.
Having been at one of those LA Film Fest screenings, I can tell you that the place rocked. Why? Because Four Lions breaks all the rules and says things that need to be said about contemporary Islamic terror … but are never allowed to be said in current Hollywood cinema.
As we’ve been reporting here for months, Four Lions is part of a recent wave of narrative films that are finally starting to look honestly at the phenomenon of Islamic terror … and doing so through the subversive medium of humor. Joining Four Lions in this new wave are Omid Djalili’s absolutely hilarious new film The Infidel (see our review of it here), the popular British web series “Living with the Infidels” (see our review of that here), and … am I allowed to mention this? … my own film Kalifornistan, which will be opening the Free Thinking Film Festival on November 12th.
The most obvious thing to say about this phenomenon is that all of these are indie projects. Studios still won’t touch this subject. Frankly, I don’t expect that to change. My sense is that Hollywood feels the War on Terror winding down, and is simply going to sit it out on the sidelines and let the indies take care of this stuff.
That’s fine by me. We don’t need the studio people ruining our fun.
[UPDATE: You can read a great interview with Drafthouse’s CEO Tim League here. His outfit will be distributing Four Lions here in the U.S.]
The Free Thinking Film Festival is designed by its founder Fred Litwin to celebrate “limited government, free market economics, and the dignity of the individual.” We’re very honored that Kalifornistan was chosen to open the festival for its Opening Night Gala, an event which will also serve as a fundraiser for the Military Family Resource Centre – which helps military families in Canada. Tickets for this event are available here.
Other films in the festival include: Cyrus Nowrasteh’s The Stoning of Soraya M (Closing Night Gala, with Cyrus attending), Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others, Andrzej Wajda’s Katyn, HBO’s documentary For Neda (which we showed in its entirety here at Libertas) and a multitude of interesting documentaries including: Crossing the Line, Outside the Great Wall, Decryptage, The Cartel, Generation Zero, Do As I Say, Mine Your Own Business and others.
We want to thank Fred Litwin and his team for choosing Kalifornistan to open the festival. We’re very honored to have Kalifornistan in the company of the many exceptional films and filmmakers being gathered together for this exciting event. I’ve put the trailer for Kalifornistan above, and you can visit Kalifornistan’s website here.
I also want to congratulate Fred for putting on this festival to begin with. Freedom of thought within the film world is something that needs to be promoted at every opportunity; it is, indeed, the very basis for our having started The Liberty Film Festival back in 2004 and Libertas back in 2005, and for bringing Libertas back in its current form earlier this year. It isn’t sufficient to simply complain about the state of free speech in the film world; action and activity are required to foster and encourage emerging voices. So we applaud Fred for putting this event on, and encourage everyone to attend. Having done the Liberty Film Festival ourselves, we know how challenging these events can be – and also how necessary they are, given the current state of our film culture.
Here’s a description of Kalifornistan from the Free Thinking Film Festival website:
In the shadowy Port of Los Angeles, an insane terrorist stalks a beautiful dancer … while plotting the nuclear apocalypse he hopes will make him a celebrity. KALIFORNISTAN is a darkly comic satire on terrorism made by Canadian actress and filmmaker Govindini Murty and American filmmaker Jason Apuzzo. KALIFORNISTAN follows the deranged leader of a terror cell called ‘Glorious Jihad of Kalifornistan’ as he plots to destroy Los Angeles with a nuclear bomb – while being distracted by a sultry exotic dancer. KALIFORNISTAN fuses film, video, documentary and surveillance footage into a cutting-edge narrative on the violence, narcissism and delusional fantasies that fuel contemporary Islamic terrorism. KALIFORNISTAN takes viewers on a twisted journey of the post-9/11 world from Gitmo to Iran, from the dark corners of LA harbour into the mind of a terrorist too deranged even for Al Qaeda.
Human Events says of KALIFORNISTAN: “The film clicks as strong, effective satire … Kalifornistan … dares to see the average terrorist for what he truly is — a laughably warped soul with a world view shaped by Islamic radicalism — and too many extremist blogs … and once you meet the terrorist at the heart of the film you’ll wonder why more filmmakers haven’t taken this approach before.” LA’s Daily Breeze says that “Kalifornistan may be the South Bay’s 21st century cinematic equivalent of Gone in 60 Seconds, the 1974 cult classic.” Online journal Rational Review says that KALIFORNISTAN “is beautifully shot” and “it’s Fellini meets Kubrick.”
Govindini Murty of "Kalifornistan."
We had a lot of fun making Kalifornistan. And I’d like to think that Kalifornistan is imbued with the same kind of spirit that we bring here to Libertas every day: a spirit of fun, good humor, edginess, a completely uncompromising look at very controversial subjects … and really sexy women. 🙂 Kalifornistan is basically an art-house/cult film on a subject that most people in Hollywood are too afraid to touch: the sexual fantasies that fuel many young Islamic terrorists. You can check out an extensive interview I did about the film here.
Our ‘Libertas pin-up’ in Kalifornistan is Govindini, of course – although she provides a great deal more than just eye candy in this film … not that that isn’t important, by the way. But I’m also quite proud of her performance in the film – which required her to be believable not only as an exotic dancer, but as someone who can realistically confront a terrorist. [Of course, as anybody who knows Govindini will tell you, it’s not hard to imagine her doing that.]
Govindini was also the film’s executive producer, story editor, and was invaluable in the final shaping of the film’s retro-‘documentary realist’ style – a style which she and I are both quite passionate about. She was a vital force behind this film, and there’s quite simply no way I could’ve made it without her.
One other note: LFM Contributer Steve Greaves wrote and performed the cool, retro-60s music score in Kalifornistan, which you hear in the trailer above. Steve did a great job on Kalifornistan’s soundtrack, on a very tight deadline, and I’m looking forward to working with him again in the near future.
Even though Kalifornistan was shot on a modest budget, the film has a lot of personality – which, in my opinion, is what an indie film always needs to have. If you haven’t had the chance to see Kalifornistan, we encourage you to pick up a copy here.
Of course, if you think Kalifornistan has a lot of personality, wait till you see the next film we’re doing …
Again, our thanks to Fred Litwin and the Free Thinking Film Festival, and we encourage everyone to get their tickets for this great event today. We expect tickets for this event to go fast. The Free Thinking Film Festival will be taking place at the National Archives – adjacent to Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Canada. Incidentally, Govindini is a proud Ottawa native, and is delighted that free thinking films are coming to the fine citizens of Canada’s capitol.
[Editor’s Note: Recently I came across this striking video above, by New York-based filmmaker Richard Mosse. At first glance, I was shocked by what appeared to be a shahid-style terror video made by a Western filmmaker. Watching the video through, however, it occurred to me that this likely was not an actual terror video, so much as a kind of ‘genre’ piece or riff on terror videos. My thoughts then moved to the question of what an expert in this area might think of it. Fortunately I was able to turn to LFM Contributer ‘Max Garuda,’ who works in the field and has access to Arabic translation.]
“A short terror video made in Gaza. Possibly the only such video ever made by non-Palestinian producers. As a result, the representation breaks with the conventions of the Palestinian suicide video genre. In Arabic, ‘shahid’ means martyr, or witness.” – Filmmaker/photographer Richard Mosse, describing his video Shahid.
By ‘Max Garuda‘. The artist’s commentary above alerts the viewer to the existence of a ‘terrorist video genre,’ and that Mosse’s creation breaks with that category. This assertion raises two questions: what is the ‘terrorist video genre’ and what conventions does Mosse’s video contest? (An argument can be made that any film belongs in any genre if anyone can make a compelling argument for inclusion. Or, said differently, film/video genres are not fixed sets of criteria by which categorizations are easily made. Rather, they are fluid, evolving bodies of work, responding to artistic practice, distribution/marketing strategies and audience expectations.)
That being said, why does Mosse desire to characterize his video within the ‘terrorist video genre’ or by comparison to it – especially when the differences that do exist are so significant enough to make a strong argument that his video doesn’t break from the genre, but rather has nothing to do with the genre. But first, a little background on the ‘terrorist video genre.’
The 'theater of terror.'
As the title might suggest, the most obvious distinguishing characteristic of the genre was originally the provenence of the video followed by content. Generally speaking, only terrorists made ‘terrorist videos,’ which were used to showcase the terrorizing act or transmit a message requiring some expression of authenticity. The terrorist act depends on shock and a visceral reaction by the ‘public’ of the terrorized. A beheading that occurs in the forest is just a beheading; a beheading captured on video and spread globally by broadcast news or the Internet is an act of terror. Videos showing murders, explosions and other deadly acts were created to broaden the impact of the terrorist act. The ‘theater of terror’ is a common framework for understanding terrorism, in which the terrorist’s act must have the paralyzing effect of fear – because the scope of the actual violence is quite limited. Even the 9/11 attacks, with their relatively high death toll, depend on the ‘theater of terror’ effect for their power–changing how Americans (and other countries and their citizens) conduct their daily lives, from intrusive security measures to a simple constant state of fear. Many early terrorist videos operated in this domain.
The other common example of early terrorist videos were simply video-based messages. Whether VHS tapes smuggled out of remote bivouacs to eager news outlets or digital videos posted to websites, the form of the terrorist video was targeted primarily at followers of the movement, to ensure them that the leadership was still alive and in control. Hence, the periodic release of a video of Osama bin Laden exhorting his followers or Ayman al-Zawahiri expounding on a facet of Islamic exegesis that fits his extremist goals. The target of these videos was generally the faithful, and secondly the ‘contested populations’ or those that don’t openly support the extremists but aren’t too convinced of the piety, competence and forthrightness of local government.
Strategic messaging.
More recently, though, we see a fusion of these two goals (theater of terror and strategic messaging) into the genre of the ‘terrorist video’ that Mosse and his collaborators purport to produce. In this newer class of terrorist videos, we usually see direct address of the camera by the producing group, images of their heroes (Bin Laden, Al-Zarqawi, etc.), and sometimes images of their terrorist acts or types of acts the video implies are imminent. Because these newer videos are not as gruesome as the beheading type video, and because they are frequently hagiographic in their treatment of extremist heroes and martyrs, their access to the ‘theater of terror’ is less about instilling fear in a subject population, but rather in making a spectacle of the process of terrorism and thus improve recruitment within the contested population (particularly disaffected youth). Continue reading EXCLUSIVE: Libertas Reviews a ‘Terror Video’
By Jason Apuzzo. I’m curious as to what people think of this preview (above) for NBC’s forthcoming series, The Event. Here are the main elements I’m getting from this trailer:
• Heroic, charismatic young black President.
• CIA conspiracy involving illegal detainees.
• A secret detention facility in Alaska?
• Some sort of 9/11-type event.
I believe this is what is referred to as ‘on the nose’-style filmmaking. And we apparently now have the Obama Administration’s own version of The West Wing.
Somehow you knew this was coming, didn’t you?
[Special thanks to LFM’s Patricia Ducey for tipping me off about this.]
[Special thanks to Hot Air for linking to this post.]
By Jason Apuzzo. As many of you are aware, we’ve been highly critical of late of Sylvester Stallone’s new film The Expendables, which features an extremely nasty caricature of a CIA agent, as played by Eric Roberts. [See our thoughts on the film here and here.] Our criticism of the film in fact recently made The LA Times.
All of this is of note because in a recent interview Stallone did on Fox News with Bill O’Reilly on Thursday, August 19th, Stallone responds to unnamed critics who have taken him to task on his depiction of the CIA and of ostensible ‘imperialist’ American overreach overseas.
Since I’m not aware of any other film site that’s taken Stallone to task on these issues as we have, I will proceed under the assumption that he’s responding to Libertas – or has otherwise been made aware of our criticisms.
Watch the segment of the interview between 3:05 – 3:30 for Stallone’s remarks on this subject. His denials of our criticism are, unfortunately, difficult to square with what is actually depicted in his film – in which a druglord/ex-CIA operative collaborates with the brutal regime of a South American country in order to exploit that country’s cheap labor and resources.
One final note here: we like and respect Bill O’Reilly here at LFM. In fact, LFM’s own Govindini Murty has appeared as a guest on Mr. O’Reilly’s show twice. Unfortunately, however, Bill did not bother to actually see The Expendables before conducting this interview – something he admits at the outset. Had he actually seen the film, it’s unlikely he would have agreed with the characterization of the film by Stallone and others as being benignly ‘patriotic.’ It isn’t. The only flag Stallone waves in this film is his own.
Aaron Eckart combats aliens in "Battle: Los Angeles."
The sheer number of major films following this trend is striking. On the alien invasion front, we’ve got Jon Favreau’s forthcoming Cowboys & Aliens with Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig; Battle: Los Angeles with Aaron Eckhart and Michelle Rodriguez; J.J. Abrams’/Steven Spielberg’s Super 8 (coming soon on the heels of Abrams’ Cloverfield); Oren Peli’s Area 51; the feature film remakes of The Thing and The Outer Limits; Robert Evans’ feature film remake of Gerry Anderson’s influential British TV series UFO; Spielberg’s forthcoming TV series Falling Skies; the ongoing alien invasion series V; Ridley Scott’s forthcoming reboot of the Alien franchise; the untitled Bobby Glicker-Michael Bay alien invasion flick that just got picked up by Paramount … and in the indie scene, there’s Skyline (to be released this fall by Universal), Gareth Edwards’ Monsters, Iron Sky (still in production) and The Mercury Men (the hotly anticipated web series that was just at Comic-Con) and a few others I know about in the pipeline. And really we shouldn’t forget the obvious recent examples of Avatar, the Transformers series and Predators, all of which involve intense warfare between humans and aliens.
Angelina Jolie fighting communist infiltrators in "Salt."
What’s interesting is how this trend toward alien invasion is being matched by a new trend toward communist invasion and/or infiltration scenarios. We just had the Angelina Jolie thriller about retro-communist sleeper agents in our midst, Salt (we loved it here at LFM); at some point in the fall or early next year we’re presumably going to get MGM’s Chinese communist invasion thriller Red Dawn; there’s the ambitious indie web series Red Storm; not to mention the recent Soviet espionage thriller Farewell (read our glowing review); and I even detect certain Cold War themes evident in things like the recent Karate Kid remake (set in communist China) and the forthcoming Mao’s Last Dancer. [In this context I should also mention Chris Gorak’s forthcoming alien invasion thriller The Darkest Hour, which is actually set in Moscow.]
I locate the beginning of this recent trend with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (a movie I loved, by the way) – which managed to feature both aliens and Soviet communist infiltrators, who are intent on using alien technology for mind-control purposes against the West.
So what’s going on here? Here’s what the LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein thinks:
This sudden obsession with alien invaders has me wondering: Why now? Trends usually happen for a reason, even if it isn’t always clear at the time what that reason might be. There were a host of similar alien invader films in the early-mid 1950s (my personal favorite being “The Thing”), which film historians theorize were inspired by fears of the U.S. being invaded, either physically or ideologically, by communism. If you get two film professors together and let ’em watch the original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” they’ll argue over the hidden meanings of the film for weeks on end.
But what’s up with all these new films? What new hidden fear do we have that is being sublimated into our movies? Glenn Beck, for one, seems almost grotesquely overwhelmed by fears of all sorts of hidden conspiracies, but I doubt that whatever is bugging him is the same thing that’s bugging this generation of filmmakers. Could the collapse of the economy have spooked so many Americans that it’s created an intense level of fear and unrest that is being channeled into film projects? And, of course, there’s always the possibility (WOO-HOO) that there really are a few aliens poking around, looking to abduct a few of us. I guess anything’s possible.
My own opinion, more or less along the lines Patrick describes, is that we are seeing a revival of the 1950’s anti-communist sensibility (Crystal Skull was even set in the 1950s) that’s getting sublimated into fantastical fears of domestic alien invasion. And I think all of this was more or less predictable, as our society gets increasingly re-engineered along progressive-liberal/pseudo-futuristic lines, and as we face an increasingly hostile and dangerous threat from nuclear-armed terrorists and/or their client states. What’s more, this trend is being super-charged by James Cameron’s recent revival of that old, stand-by technology that emerged directly from 1950s science fiction: 3D. One thinks here in this context of such 1950s 3D classics as It Came From Outer Space and Creature from the Black Lagoon.
In "Crystal Skull," Soviet agent Cate Blanchett hunts alien technology.
[I should mention, incidentally, that the best analysis of this 1950s anti-communist/alien invasion mentality certainly comes in Peter Biskind’s marvelous book, Seeing is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties. Biskind goes into this stuff in great detail in close-readings of Them!, The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, etc. I can’t recommend Biskind’s book highly enough if you want to understand the mentality depicted in these films.]
And so ultimately this is a trend that I lustily endorse … with one proviso: pace this return to the 1950s sensibility, does this mean we can now go back to those optimistic bosoms and/or brassieres of that era? Because the problem with most of these films – Salt very much excluded – is that they just don’t have the 3D feminine firepower, so to speak, that they should. And even in Salt we never see Angelina in a dress! Which is really a crime.
Kathleen Hughes, from 1953's "It Came From Outer Space" in 3D.
But there’s more to be said about this revival of the 1950s/Cold War mentality, actually. I think the filmmaking world is gradually coming around to the side of freedom. It’s happening in fits and starts, and sometimes awkwardly – but it is happening. There’s no way that movies like Salt or Red Dawn or Four Lions or Mao’s Last Dancer or The Infidel would be getting made, otherwise. It’s something that we’re talking about all the time here at Libertas, and I think this is a trend very much to be celebrated. [We even just posted today about Frank Miller’s new project Holy Terror, which pits a superhero called ‘The Fixer’ against Al Qaeda baddies; this follows directly on the heels of Frank’s quasi-metaphorical look at the current War on Terror in the forthcoming Xerxes.]
So for every occasion nowadays when a Captain America or Wonder Woman get their patriotism downgraded by Hollywood censors (and, yes, censorship is what’s happening there), there are now counter-examples where freedom – and America’s role in promoting it – is being championed. And that’s a very positive sign.
Some of you, for example, may be wondering why we haven’t been harping on the latest scandals involving Oliver Stone or Roman Polanski here. The reason, in part, is because these guys are old and irrelevant and very much out-of-step with what’s going on in the filmmaking world right now. These trends that we’re talking about here toward invasion and/or infiltration scenarios are major trends that are affecting what projects get funding at the moment – particularly among the younger, more active crowd of filmmakers.
And so on with the invasion! Just don’t forget the brassieres.
