Same Difference Film Fest in Slough
By AdviyaFrom the 28th March-3rd Of April, the Same Difference Film Festival was held in slough. Its aim was to ‘celebrate the value of resolving differences between communities and individuals’.
Various organisations based in and around Slough, came together to organise this event such as the Slough Cooperative Film Society, Resource Productions which specialises in providing video production work shops for young people and community groups, Aik Saath and Instant Films. Aik Saath which means ‘Together as one’ was the backbone of the event and is a registered charity which started off to help resolve problems within the Asian Youth in Slough during the 1996-1997 violence which caused a lot of tension between various Asian communities and religious groups. It works towards the aim of ‘empowering them to work for themselves positively and proactively towards a potential resolution’.
During the week or so, various events took place based on the central theme of Conflict and Resolution depicted through film. There were various days which featured themes such as Gangs Day which involved a film called Bullet Boy, focusing on the gang culture now prominent amongst the youth in Britain. I watched various films, two of which included Turtles Can Fly (Lakposhtha Hâm Parvaz Mikonand) and Saviour.
Saviour is about war and the horrors and atrocities it can bring.
How it can turn ordinary citizens into blood thirsty villains and murderous savages, driven by revenge and the need to kill for the sake of their identity. More specifically, Saviour is about the Bosnian/ Serb war, which took place from 1992-1995, in which 102,000 people were killed and 1.8 million displaced. Although set in 1993, the movie opens in a café in Paris in the year 1879. Joshua, played by Denis Quaid, watches his wife and son die, as they are blown apart in a terrorist bomb. Blinded by anger and hatred, he storms into a nearby mosque and massacres worshippers and feeling disillusioned and helpless he consequently joins the Foreign Legion.
Soon enough he finds himself fighting alongside Serbs at the height of the bloodthirsty war, patrolling destroyed and ruined Bosnian villages. Although ruthless and vicious himself for example there is a scene where he shoots an unarmed child, he does however witness greater horrors that he didn’t realise were possible. Besides they were the enemy, surely they deserved it? Silently he continues to serve, although from inside it is clear to the audience he is questioning his intentions and the morality of his presence in Bosnia. The story continues on in this manner, and slowly but surely reveals the true terror of the Bosnia’s conflict for all innocent people involved including ordinary Serb citizens. Saviour is clear about its message, war is iniquitous. War causes pain, suffering and terror. The atmosphere of the film is gruesome and dreary, there is no sudden sunshine, or happiness to turn this into a fairytale. It is not a nightmare, the characters don’t suddenly wake up, this is reality. More importantly the film is honest, and seeks to act as a moral lesson for the audience rather then just entertainment. Therefore it might not be everyone’s piece of cake, especially some scenes for example when a fully conscious Bosnian mother has her fingers chopped off by a Serb soldier, it is almost impossible not to grimace and turn away. Yet despite the anguish and despair, Saviour is successful in leaving the audience with a sense of hope in this crazy , vicious and bloodthirsty world.
Turtles Can Fly , a joint Iranian-Iraqi film is directed and produced by Bahman Ghobadi, a filmmaker who was born in Iranian Kurdistan. Filmed on location in a Iraqi refugee camp on the Turkish border, it is the first film to come out of Iraq since the fall of Saddam. It captures the lives of ordinary Kurdish orphan refugee children in a country on the verge of war. Living in poor conditions, often without shelter the community eagerly awaits information of an American lead invasion. Without TV they have no contact with the outside world, and anxiously buy a satellite in hope of news. The film follows ‘Satellite’ a refugee child who is a whiz kid at technology (hence the nickname) about his daily life before the invasion. He is a leader and hero for the other orphans and directs their day to day lives which include mine picking, which they can later sell for petty amounts of money. All the actors in the movie are real refugee children without previous professional experience, their performance is magnificent and outstanding. Living amongst mine fields left many of them with mutations or disabilities, one of the main characters of the film being the ‘Armless boy’, who the rest of the children believe can make predictions about the future. The film is incredibly moving and heartbreaking, shedding light not only on the lives of the orphan children, but their future, which seems to be equally torn apart by the awaited invasion. After tripping on American mines while the they are playing and having their limbs blown off, they come to doubt the ‘We are your Friends’ leaflets distributed by American planes on the eve of war. Saddening and horrifically explicit, Turtles Can Fly left everyone at the cinema in tears and it was difficult to find someone who hadn’t been moved by this harrowing account. I urge everyone to watch it, it is available on DVD and although in Kurdish it is obtainable with English subtitles.
All in all the Festival was a huge success, bringing together people from all communities and uniting them under the banner of humanity. It also goes to show that film, documentaries and other forms of media are the most popular ways of getting a message across in this day and age. It is a hugely effective and successful method that more and more people are turning to
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