Gorging On Films

Posted on July 13, 2008 by drsapna

Life is busy. Madaz busy. And the Auckland International Film Festival started on 10 July. This is my time for absolute self-indulgence in the name of audio-visual education. This is the time when I weave films into my life and work, rather weave my life and work around film sessions. It is a process I have mastered now after attending so many Auckland International Film Festivals.

Get a programme, mark all the films I want to see (about 50) and then eliminate them according to whether they will come back into theatrical release (French films, German films, Michel Gondry and assorted cult filmmakers etc always do), clash with my work or with other sessions. That brings the number down to about 30. One year I did 38 films and was completely filmed-out. So much so I could not bear to watch/update myself about Bollywood films. Its another thing that Bollywood films are quite unbearable after gorging on world class cinema and storytelling. I watch Bollywood cinema because it is what I grew up on and if fascinating in the way it includes so many ideas within a format. It is also fascinating in the way so many ‘other’ (‘non-Indian’) ideas are stolen from across the world and turned into Indian stories. I watch Bollywood cinema for cheap thrills, for the songs and to keep in touch with what is going on back in India. I still think of it as my own popular culture that goras would never understand. Oh and there is a gem or two in there that is really worth watching.

Anyway, back to the film festival…after 38 films one year I decided to be a good girl and limit myself to 25. So far I have managed. Some films I usher for, some films I buy the tickets for, some films I am invited to and some films I get tickets in lieu of ushering. All good I say. Just the way I like it aha-aha.

This year the festival opened with TAKE 3, Roseanne Liang’s very simple and very clever short. That Roseanne is talented is without any doubt and that she brings her Chinese-New Zealand sensibility to her filmmaking is amazing. The feature that followed APRON STRINGS is an indication of festival director Bill Gosden’s foresight about New Zealand filmmaking and the shape of this country. Multicultural. Another story by the immensely talented New Zealand director Sima Urale. I feel proud for the cast and crew involved with APRON STRINGS. These are my mates, my colleagues and my teacher, scriptwriter Shuchi Kothari, who has created space for the likes of me. I feel happy for Leela Patel, who brings so much depth to the role of Tara. (She plays Indian nurse Shanti’s mum on Shortland St.) A well made film with great acting. Nathan Whitaker reminded me of a young Shashi Kapoor from SHARMILEE etc. This dude would do well as the chocolate hero in Bollywood. 🙂

Of course watching these films at The Civic just adds to the experience of cinema.

I worked with Sima, Shuchi and some of the crew members on COFFEE AND ALLAH, playing in the HOMEGROWN section of the festival. I did the protagonist’s costume (the blue burkha) and played the nasty Mrs Indian for all of thirty seconds. The first time I saw myself on the big screen (cast and crew screening) I cringed. It was horribly embarrassing. The second time I saw myself on the screen (yesterday) I wanted to hide under my chair. Although I debuted as an actress in Venice dahlings I don’t think I want to be seen on a film screen. Gosh no! Not that I cannot act…just that I think I don’t look ‘good’ on screen. Prefer to be behind the camera. Absolutely!

Now it is three days into the festival and I have stopped counting how many films I am seeing/have seen. In my diary I have only marked the dates, times and theatres I have to go to. The countdown ends at the closing night film WALTZ WITH BASHIR. Until then, I shall gorge on cinema, work on auto-pilot, do some work, earn my living….and vomit at the end of it all.

Then have visions of my mother lecturing me on over-indulgence.

Transculturist, yeah.

Posted on June 8, 2008 by drsapna

A friend and I have endless discussions about what transculturalism means to us, to mainstream New Zealand, to wannabes and government bodies dedicated to multiculturalism.

He is a New Zealander of Chinese origin and I am the nowhere-belonging Indian. A bunch of us recently met for, what my friend terms, a Creative Cool yum char. Not just any Creative Cools but Crasians, Creative/Crazy Asian dudes and dudettes here in Auckland who want to change and rule the world of art/creative industries. The schmoozer/arts administrator, the hip hop singer, the filmmaker, writer, actors etc etc. Asians who were studying socialist governments in South America and Asians who studied acting the Lee Strasburg way in London, doctor turned wannabe creative Asians….

All of us transcultural. Yeah I want to call myself that because I no longer feel weird for being alone with the idea. Neither here in Auckland or in Bombay, India. Transcultural; taking from one culture, many cultures, losing something, evolving something and then making your own new something. It does not have to be creative either. Just a way of life. And you don’t even realise it because it is such an unconscious part of your existence. Way beyond multiculturalism as defined by the Labour government here. Not a deliberate attempt to bring people together culturally. Y’know the usual food, clothes and dance…and then we all go home until next year. All controlled expression of how the ethnics should be. And subsequently subservient for ‘allowing’ us our space. Bless your kind heartedness 🙂

Not here, not in the streets of Auckland. Or amongst the Crasians. This is natural, smooth, complex. First self selecting and then a habit. Very trendy until it becomes common and everyone jumps on to the bandwagon dahlings!

At the bottom of Anzac Avenue in downtown Auckland is the Hulu Cat Tea House. Retro European decor-cream walls, plump cream leather couches to sink in, little cream stools…and pictures of cats all over the place. The crowd is young, mostly East Asian, playing cards, hanging out and obviously noisy. The pearl tea is served in tall beer glasses with hip hop music playing in the background. Transcultural?

The (East) Asian fashion shops all over downtown Auckland store cutting edge fashion including the Kiwi take on Japanese lollipop. Just bought a pair of red lace-up boots from one of the shops (yeah yeah, naughty:-D). Transcultural?

If clothing is media and arts then ISBIM is even more local than these shops. High end urban and street fashion owned, designed and made in Aotearoa by my Korean friend Joshua who is also a music producer and singer. His music sells mostly in Japan with Korean, English and Japanese lyrics and produced in Aotearoa. Transcultural? The dude would not bother with the word. He just knows this is his way.

It is happening all over the world. If Asian underground music is now mainstream then it took a long time to get there and was not pushed by political agendas of governments. That just made ghettos and made the patriarchs more powerful. MIA is a top notch rap artist of Sri Lankan origin. It was her politics that made her not any government agencies. Then she would probably be doing her Sri Lankan exotic thing at some festival for the ethnics. Anyway what she says is too radical for hush-hush, tread-on-eggshells but pat-us-on-our-backs-for-the-good-we-do suits on taxpayer money.

It is essential to create awareness and push for visibility and equality. Many times government legislation is needed. But when in a democracy ‘official multiculturalism’ begins to stagnate, does not evolve or perpetuates mediocrity and patriarchy within ghettos then one has to question whether such policies are the means to an end or the end product itself. Of course this argument might elicit the usual response of selling out from the PC liberals but it is not me alone or just my rant.

I am comfortable with my transculturalism. And I don’t have time for government types that just waste paper and taxpayer money on do-good festivals and play our-favourite-ethnics games. Just would love a lot more people to experience the same. Unafraid of losing their native culture. It is just evolution.

The industry, the victims and the ex (or me).

Posted on May 18, 2008 by drsapna

A couple of weeks ago, at a programme organised by a government department, a Pakeha woman explained the importance of retaining and maintaining one’s native tongue in New Zealand. ‘Your language is very valuable. It is your culture. You must not lose it in New Zealand. You must speak your own language’, she implored to a mostly, inherently (I would like to think) multicultural audience. She was earnest and meant well. Us three South Asians huddled after and had a bit of a laugh. That woman was telling us what we already knew and were doing. Somewhere in the hallowed corridors of PCdom it was time to tick the multicultural box and this was the bureaucratic exercise. We should to tell the migrants that they need to maintain their language, culture, etc, whatever. Tick. Job done. When’s the next festival 🙂

A posterchild for us ethnics here in Aotearoa once warned me about the state of (mental) ‘purity’ and stirring up s**t. ‘No one will take you seriously.’ So I call myself the ex-victim. I mean I continue to be a victim. Try being single and a brown woman. Or just a single woman in Indian society. Anyway. Weird, eccentric, irreverent, ex-victim, victim. PCdom says, you are either with us or with them. We are fighting for justice, for you! And you tell us we are wrong? We stand up, for you! This world order needs to be corrected. This is for you! We protest for you!

I don’t oppose the motive. Thanks for fighting for me. The world order does need to be corrected. Thanks for fighting. But should I not also decide how to fight this battle? What if I say I want justice but also to move on? You say justice first and foremost, forgiveness after. It is the method with which I disagree. The method and the power structure.

That standing up for your rights, demanding justice, moving on/reconciliation/forgiveness and introspection go together, hand in hand has been amply demonstrated by Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. That is also stimulates dissent rather than silence it is well documented in history. (Bastion Point commemorations this week are about reconciliation. Not like all tangata whenua, Maori, the people of the land, have got all the justice they seek yet. Bastion Point photo; Bastion Point)

I don’t want to be a victim, sure. And it is not my fault, of course. Don’t blame the victim! But I stand up and say that if you, my friend, my benefactor who fights for me keep calling me a victim, poor thing; keep telling me how I can survive in the big capitalist world, make me dependent; keep telling me that I am a sweet innocent thing, incapable…then it just makes me that.

The colonisers told me I was useless, a savage, less civilised than them. My colour, my language, culture, customs all inferior. You beckon me once a year during my festival to prove how wonderfully multicultural Aotearoa is. My colour, my language, culture, customs all lovely, coo-worthy and…exotic. Still stereotyping; reducing my complexity to singular-easy-to-consume-multicultural-byte. Giving me space (thanks); not letting me create and own it because you want to decide how ethnics/migrants should be, poor things.

Equity within the power structure?

And then the blind eye to the cultural baggage within the ethnics. Oh of course we are not supposed to have capitalists, fundamentalists, racists etc amongst us. That does not fit into the the scheme of victim things. Gee and if there is then the ethnics/migrants can sort it out themselves. It is too complex…we just save their souls. Actually ours.

I am going to hell, got my ticket, it’s laminated, on my wall. I’d rather not be a victim all my life, even when I face injustices.

The ‘vicitim’ industry.

Posted on May 10, 2008 by drsapna

Last week I put up a notice for ‘unpaid’ Indian extras on our local Aotearoa Ethnic Network (www.aen.org.nz) . This is a network of ‘ethnic’ types and those not-not coloured or refugees or migrants…basically politically correct gora government and academic types (lovely people some of them, really). It is a useful forum. Quiet for days with only notices for events, research and ethnic activities and then a burst of drama, arguments, controversies and opinions. I have ranted often on AEN and usually got away with it although it has pissed off a few mostly government babus. (Oh and the Hindutva forces in New Zealand-but that’s another post.) The reality of work and putting my energies into other stimulating activities (such as this blog yeah) means that I don’t say much on AEN these days. But without meaning to be immodest 😉 controversy is like my shadow.
So I put up this notice calling for ‘unpaid’ Indian extras for an episode of our local soap Shortland Street yeah. I am associated with Shorty for some time now. I did not think anyone would take this seriously. I mean this is telly, the movies, glamour and what not right? 15 seconds of fame etc? This is not a perfect world and I made a mistake.
I did not reckon with the ‘victim’ mentality. Or the victim industry.

New Zealand is a beautiful, fascinating country. For a former British colony it has different attitudes towards many issues, unlike Australia. It is stubbornly non-nuclear (so far), did not directly participate in the invasion of Iraq and it has the Treaty Of Waitangi (www.treatyofwaitangi.govt.nz) . An amazing document that sets out an equitable relationship between the Crown (government/colonisers) and the Maori, the indigenous people of Aotearoa. That the Brits did not stay true to it is another story. Te Tiriti O Waitangi lays the framework for a bicultural nation. And now New Zealand is a multicultural nation with a bicultural basis. Not complicated at all. Because the rulers/government/goras are still superior to the rest of us (Maori, ethnic, coloured, whatever).

Politically correct liberal types always amuse me. These are the people who feel guilty about colonialism, colonisation, greenhouse gas emissions…just about everything that ‘bad’ Western nations indulge in where African, Asian, indigenous and all other types of non-whites suffer. It is a worthy occupation. Of course reparations for past injustices must be made, apologies must be given for wrongdoings, there must be awareness of human rights, gender equality, religions freedom, democracy and all people must be sensitised towards another’s culture etc etc. That is why New Zealand is multicultural-because all immigrants (coloured/non-English speaking) are given space and sometimes funding towards celebrating and maintaining their culture-because we would otherwise feel intimidated and left out and would not assimilate. Not a bad idea and indeed an appropriate one. So it happens all the time, this celebration. All the festivals, the clothes, the food, culture…exoticism. Because we are the victims of colonialism, racism and all the other bad things that Western (or sometimes our own) imperialists did. And we have to be grateful for this constant celebration, for the political correctness that allows us this space, for liberals and government agencies that feel sorry for us. Because we are the victims and these others our saviours. Because we apparently do not have the ability to stand up for ourselves, to ask questions, to fight for our rights, to work in the thick of the mainstream without selling the soul…and we believe it. There is an entire industry built around perpetually endorsing this mentality. The victim industry.

It is interesting, this victim industry. It’s heart is in the right place but for all the PC attitude it projects, it still preserves the colonialism it purports to correct. The power equation is of the victim and the saviour, the definer and the defined, the ruler and the ruled, benefactor and beneficiary. It is still lopsided, still about the government agencies deciding who we should be-best in our safe ghettos so that it all looks bright and wonderful and exotic and everyone feels good.

So the victim mentality came to the fore when I put up this notice. It was the usual drama, arguments and opinions but it was the lack of trust that stung me and the victim mentality, rather that it existed, so embedded in the brain it hovered over every interaction with the mainstream. So smug in itself that shouting victim would make the producers pay. They were going to anyway. It was my mistake I took it lightly, that the cheap thrill to be on telly would be more appealing than an analysis of the economics of the television industry and how it uses ‘victims’.

So colonialism lives on. In our colonised minds. Thanks to the victim industry.

Oh, I’ll need to update the readers about the next free Bollywood dance performance that Indian kids give to enthralled audience that need reassurance about multicultural New Zealand. :-*