Film Festival film #1 and #2

[bcholmes]

I can't believe that I went to a film at 9:00am on a Saturday morning. Last night, I saw Slingshot, a Philippines film -- a sort of snapshot of a neighbourhood, and the various characters in it. To be honest, the film didn't work for me -- characters entered, had a simple story, and then weren't seen again. And I hadn't really chosen that film, to tell the truth. I really got a ticket to see Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, a seven minute documentary that preceded Slingshot. I like The Shock Doctrine, but there's only so much you can say in seven minutes.

Today, though, I saw a double-feature: Dinner with the President, in which a filmmaker shares meals with several groups in Pakistan, asking about democracy. They're complicated questions: can a democracy exist in the wake of President Musharraf's coup? Would democracy have existed if former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had remained? What do the people who advocate that the Koran become the law of Pakistan think about democracy?

She asks good questions of a lot of different groups (including the president and his family), and gets a variety of amazing responses. One point Sabiha Sumar mentioned during the Q & A was that even those who argued most vehemently with her about things like whether or not women should be equal to men were open to engaging in debate. Even when she hit moments where whole rooms of people walked out on her, she still felt that there was a sliver of openness to hear. Odder, still, were conversations with well-to-do urban folk who would say (I'm paraphrasing): "maybe Musharraf is a dictator, but he's doing the right things, and maybe he should just press on and advance the program even faster."

An amazing film. It was followed by Please Vote for Me, a film in which a Grade 3 class in China decides to vote for a Class Monitor. Three nominees are appointed, and they each campaign to be elected to this position. And the dirty tricks start almost immediately. It's amazing to see how people with no experience with democracy immediately glom on to the idea of the campaign as a popularity contest. It's funny and oh-so-poignant.