One of the stranger side effects of Venezuela’s ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ has been the explosion in breast implants. They cost around one thousand dollars a pair, and business is booming. With the bulk of the government’s funding dedicated to first aid centres, run in the vast majority of cases by Cuban doctors in the country’s poorest slums, investment in hospital care has plummeted, resulting in a surge in demand for private healthcare. These clinics plough their windfall profits back into their plastic surgery business, keen to pander to the crudely seductive narcissism of the only country in the world that has produced a Miss World and a Miss Universe simultaneously. Twice.

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There are many widely held misconceptions in the west about al Jazeera – what needs to be done to put that right?
It is true that there are many misconceptions about Al Jazeera in the West. The primary source of these misconceptions arises from that fact that since Al Jazeera has been broadcast in the Arabic language many people have not had the opportunity to decide first-hand for themselves what Al Jazeera is and does. Their opinions are largely influenced by statements made by officials who are not always happy with Al Jazeera’s independent approach in reporting events. Two prevalent examples come to mind. First, even though Al Jazeera has never shown a single frame of a beheading on our channel we are constantly being accused of this. In addition, when we receive tapes of hostages or statements on tapes, we have a strict editorial policy that stipulates if, how, and when we will show them. Sometimes we have shelved tapes because there is no newsworthy content on them, only propaganda. We will only show a tape if it has newsworthy content, and, if we do decide to show the newsworthy segment of a tape we always contextualize it in analysis and discussion. Contrary to the general Western public, our policies are well known by Western media analysts and journalists who applaud our approach.

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“I’m kind of a big deal around here.”

Thus speaks Ron Burgundy, wide-lapelled star of spoof film Anchorman. In his world, reading the news gives him unquestioning adulation wherever her turns. He goes to decadent parties with scant-clad women begging to get into the hot tub with him. He lives in a splendrous home full of mahogany, and he is used to being taken seriously.
Solemnly, he informs a ladyfriend that San Diego is German for a whale’s vagina. He finishes his newscast with the exhortation to ‘stay classy’. He is treated as a combination of film star and prophet, moron though he is.

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…Our main source of information on how the media work is usually through other media. Movies, for example, like to open themselves up with ‘making of’ documentaries, but these are often self-serving publicity rackets on behalf of the studios and production companies. Films sometimes contain a film-within-film like Shakespeare’s plays-within-a-play – but what do they tell us about themselves? How can we trust that what we see is an accurate reflection if we have never seen a movie set or a television studio ‘for real’? How do we know if what we are seeing is not just another stage?

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In February of this year, Howard Stern, ‘shock jock’ notorious for the explicit content of his radio shows, called for submissions for a film festival, to be held in his native New York. I found myself spluttering with disbelief, and something verging on admiration for the self- proclaimed ‘king of all media’. Most audacious was the specification that the storyline for each film entry must centre on Howard Stern himself…

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Riz tells the LIP of his unwelcome treatment on arriving back in the UK.

“When our flight landed at Luton Airport from Berlin, Shafiq Rasul was stopped at the Immigration Desk. Soon after, I was detained and questioned. I was not told the reason for this.

The officer had initially questioned me extensively by the baggage claim, taking notes from my answers and from my passport. When I asked what all these questions were for, and whether this was an interview, she led me to a small interview room and said that it was “if I want it to be”.

I gave my basic details, explained about the festival, and the film being the reason for our visit to Berlin, which she said she believed. She said they need to stop us and the Tipton boys as anyone with “terror links” must be questioned – not that I had any necessarily, she said. I added that the Tipton Three didn’t either, as is widely documented. She then asked to go through the contents of my wallet. I felt uncomfortable about the ambiguities in the purpose of the detention and this proposed search, and so asked to speak to a lawyer.

I was denied access to legal advice, supposedly officially, under powers used to detain me. However the specific powers under which I was being held were deliberately made unclear by the detaining Special Branch officer. She gave me a blank copy of a “Section 7 of the Terrorism Act Detention Form” to explain why I couldn’t contact anyone. The form stated that someone detained under its powers can be prevented from contacting anyone, including legal advisors, for up to 48 hours, by a superintendent officer. I asked her whether she was a superintendent. Her reply was that I was not in fact being held under the powers outlined in this form. I was only being denied legal advice for the first hour of questioning, rather than 48hours. The reason why I had been given this form was now unclear.

She left the room, and said she was bringing in a male colleague to enforce the wallet search, since “a lot of Muslims don’t like dealing with women do they.” As she left I quickly called an academic lawyer, Ravinder Thukral, on my mobile.

He called back as she re-entered and spoke directly to the her on my phone. It was unclear now whether I was officially not allowed to call anyone, or whether she simply wouldn’t help me to do so but had no power to stop me. I took another two calls from lawyers during the interview. Each lawyer was unclear about the powers she was using to detain me, prevent me from getting full legal advice, and search my wallet. Her explanations were often unclear and seem to contradict her earlier explanations about the form and its relevance.

Under the threat of “prolonging” my detention, I cooperated in allowing her to go through my wallet. She took detailed notes on all its contents. All of my bankcard details were noted down, as were the details on other people’s business cards I had in my wallet. I was searched for objects that I might use to “hurt” the officers. However this took place about halfway through the interview after I had been with the interviewer alone for some time.

While searching through my wallet she asked me whether I intended to do more documentary films, specifically more political ones like The Road to Guantanamo. She asked “Did you become an actor mainly to do films like this, you know, to publicise the struggles of Muslims?”.

She also asked me what my political views were, what I thought about “the Iraq war and everything else that was going on”, whether the Iraq war was “right” in my view.

She then asked me whether I would mind officers contacting me regularly in the future, “in case, for example, you might be in a café, and you overhear someone discussing illegal activities”.

I then took a call from Clive Stafford Smith who had been contacted by Ravinder Thukral, the first Lawyer I had contacted. He told me to wait a moment as he was on his way to Gareth Peirce’s (Human Rights Lawyer who helped secure the Tipton Three’s release) office, and she would call me in a moment. When I told the interviewer I’d have to take a call from Gareth Peirce’s office shortly, she said she wouldn’t allow me to. She started raising her voice, and behaving in a more urgent and aggressive way. She called in a male colleague who threateningly told me to give him the phone before gripping my hands and wrestling it from me. He then sat on a table in the room, grinned at me, winked and went through my phone. I protested, but he ignored me and continued to go through my phone. Then a third officer entered, and all three adopted very aggressive stances, threatening to take me to a police station, calling me a “fucker”, moving in very close to my face, pointing and shouting at me to “shut up and listen”. I complained at being called a fucker. The officer who still had my phone, and who had sworn at me, smiled at me and then said “now you’re making things up, no one called you that”.

I finally convinced the original officer to allow me to call Ms. Peirce’s office simply to ascertain the validity of the detention and the denial of full access to lawyers. She agreed on condition that if I tried to ask any further questions of the lawyer my phone would be taken away. As soon as I got through to the lawyer, she suddenly said “we’re done with you, you can go, whats the point in calling lawyers”. The lawyer on the phone told the officer (again, speaking directly to her on my phone) that he hadn’t heard of such powers existing in Section 7 of the TACT. She changed the subject and said that I was free to go now anyway and that I was now prolonging my detention by my own insistence on calling lawyers.

I took the opportunity, took the lawyer’s advice, and left the room. She advised me to go home and read up on anti terror legislation. I advised the officers in the room to learn some people skills.

I asked for any notes from the interview, and for names/ranks of the officers. I was denied both, and given a small, pink, police search record sheet – specifying that the purpose of the search was for “intelligence” and that I had been examined under the “TACT 2000”. The reverse of the sheet, “Sheet 2 “which as stated on the form itself “officers must also complete” was missing.”

Set against the background of the violence in occupied Palestine, the film sketches the lives of two young men who find themselves on the front line of the Palestinian resistance movement, for very different reasons, and with very different consequences. For Khaled, the allure of martyrdom lies in religion and infamy, for Said, his darkly brooding best friend, the motivation is personal and historical – to atone for his father’s collaboration with the settlers which resulted in his execution. The suicide mission they are sent on by local teacher and family friend Jamal promises to make the two men all that they perceive they are not – heroes, winners, and the rightful inhabitants of a peaceful kingdom in which they can live in the present, free from the violence which has formed the past and the uncertainty which haunts the future; a paradise – now. But all does not go according to plan and the two men find themselves separated on the way to Tel Aviv. Whether to go ahead with their mission after their initial effort is jeopardised is the question with which the two wrestle, a question which forces them to reassess their most fundamental beliefs.

The voice of common sense comes from Suha, the daughter of a famed Palestinian activist whose life was claimed in the conflict some years previously. The influence of her father has the obverse effect to that played on Said – she detests violence and is horrifed when she learns of his devastating intention to commit mass murder in the name of the Palestinian cause, especially given their developing romance.

Khaled, like his best friend, sees life in the Occupied Territories as ‘a life sentence’. He is unmoved by the pleas of Suha to shake off his delusions, ‘I’d rather have paradise in my head than live in this hell’, he exclaims. His almost infantile excitement at the prospect of his fate gives way to doubt just as Said’s initial reticence is galvanised into an unshaking commitment to right the wrongs of history, and of his father.

Yet Said and Khaled are not presented as fanatical monsters. Abu-Assad employs some wonderfully deft human touches- Khaled forgetting his sandwiches on the day of the mission and being pursued by his mother, the camera malfunctioning as the men make video statements for broadcast after their deaths. It is the avuncular Jamal who is chilling in his conviction and callousness, sending two of his friends to their deaths with a smile on his face. Khaled is comforted by the detailed organisation of the mission. ‘What will happen afterwards?’, he asks on the way to Tel Aviv. ‘You will be met by two angels’, Jamal replies, hesitating momentarily and drumming his fingers on the dashboard of the car. For Khaled, it is the reassurance he needs. Said’s mind is already made up.

Inevitable criticisms have been levelled at Abu-Assad for humanising suicide bombers, portraying them in a sympathetic light. The effect of Paradise Now is to bring to the forefront the human drama of the most inhuman of situations. We see in Said a normal young man driven to abnormal action by the conjunction of events beyond his control and a life that offers him nothing. His dedication is not to Islam, nor primarily to the liberation of the Occupied Territories, but to correcting mistakes from the past. Unlike Suha (and to an extent Khaled) he is unable to see the metaphor represented by the bomb belt –that of a restrictive force from which it is only possible to free oneself with the co-operation and cautious action of others, like the cycle of historical violence which calls him to arms. This film movingly illustrates the hopelessness of the situation in the Middle East and shows that whilst paradise may not be completely lost, it will take a long time to get there.

Caché tells the story of the kind of the bourgeois nuclear family that Haneke is so frequently drawn to – professional parents (in this case Anne, a publisher, played by Juliette Binoche and Georges, a TV cultural commentator played by Daniel Auteuil), and their 12 year old son, Pierrot. Their middle class life is derailed by the arrival on their doormat of video tapes showing their daily lives – someone is watching. Binoche as Anne is wonderfully sympathetic and frustrated, fearing for the safety of her family, whilst her husband Georges becomes increasingly angry, and increasingly certain that he knows the culprit. The drama which unfolds reveals both an ugly latent racism traceable back to the Algerian conflict of the 60s and a disruptive distrust between Anne and Georges which threatens to destroy their domestic bliss.

Haneke plays down the inspiration of a surveillance culture and instead concerns himself with addressing our trust in the truth as presented through the media, ‘there’s a pervasive delusion that we know more than we really do, we’re open to manipulation and I want to reflect that danger.’ The thrilling and disturbing drama which is set in motion by the arrival of the videos makes that danger a haunting central conceit, and one which provokes more questions than it provides answers; ‘when a film answers the questions that it raises, well, the work ends there’, says Haneke. Whilst the answers to his questions may remain hidden, they are certainly still worth pursuing.

The Battle for Algiers follows the story of Ali la Pointe, commander of the FLN (National Liberation Front) and his comrades. Its realistic style allows us to experience a guerrilla struggle for freedom from the inside; the oppression, the determination to fight back, the increasing violence, the conflicts amongst the leadership, the involvement of the ordinary people, and the tactics used by the colonisers to destroy the resistance.

Perhaps its authenticity comes from the fact that it was written by and stars Saadi Yasef, an active participant in the original uprising, who helped set up the first post-colonial government. It covers the years 1954-1957, when the rebels retreated into the casbah in Algiers (home to 100,000 Muslims), and the fighting intensified. Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo, also part of his own country’s resistance against Fascism, presents a drama shot as a documentary and uses many of the original locations of the uprising.

To prevent the ever-increasing attacks by the rebels, the French introduces a curfew in the casbah. The solidarity amongst the Algerians strengthens and new methods of resistance must be found. Young women are enlisted to deliver bombs to their destinations, dressed in Western clothing to slip past the police as they leave the casbah on their violent missions. The brilliant acting, along with the direction, and ADF’s music, conspired to create a feeling of claustrophobia, high-tension and fear. I held my breath willing these brave women to succeed, to avoid capture, to make an impact, to free their people… even knowing the terrible acts that they were about to commit.

Seeing the moment the bombs explode (shot in slow motion), one in a cafe crowded with people, is utterly shocking. How could I have sympathised with the bombers? This screening of the film was uncut, including its controversial torture scenes that had been banned from some prints. Watching the horrific torture of the guerrillas by the colonial forces, and the bombing of the casbah to break a strike by the population, twisted my emotions back the other way.

A testament to the sensitivity of the piece is that it also makes one empathise with the experience of the colonialists. There is a growing sense of fear and tension amongst the Pieds-Noirs (French Settlers) as they come under attack, and the desperation of the political leaders for the army to crush the guerrillas is plain.

Eventually, a crack team of French paratroopers is brought in to identify and capture the guerrilla leaders. General Phillipe (Jean Martin) tells his troops how he fought against the Nazis in World War Two, and how his unique understanding of the psychology of struggle against an occupying force will help him succeed against the Algerians. Again, I was forced by the filmmakers to re-examine my feelings, as ‘cruel occupying soldier’ morphed into ‘brave resistance leader’ on screen.

‘It is not by chance,’ it is noted in publicity for the recent screening of the film, ‘that the Pentagon chose to stage internal screenings of The Battle for Algiers ahead of the invasion of Iraq.’ The IRA, the Sandinistas and the Viet Minh have also reportedly used the film.

The Algerians succeeded in winning their freedom from France in 1962, having lost one million of their nine million people. This is a deeply affecting film, which forces us to examine our own attitudes, prejudices and sympathies. Whatever our political position, The Battle for Algiers has a lot to teach us about the pain and complexity of struggle.

Moolaadé scooped the Un Certain Regard award at the 2004 Cannes Festival and is due to be released in the UK in June 2005. The film’s director, Senegalese Ousmane Sembene, is widely recognised as the ‘father’ of African cinema. His view: that ‘when women progress, society progresses’. At a time when female genital mutilation is practised in 38 of the 54 countries of the African Union, this is a hugely important film.

Set in a West African village, Moolaadé immerses the viewer in the greens and reds and ochres of Africa. There is dance, there is song, there is storytelling and most importantly, there is the way things are done. Women answer to their husbands and the young to their elders. Within the family hierarchy, the first wife has authority over those wives junior to her, and the eldest brother over his younger siblings. The (male) village elders are outraged by Colle’s defiance of their customs. They decree that her husband should command her to break the Moolaadé on his return.

The film is peppered with delicious characters. There is the loquacious town spokesman and the wily mercenaire – irredeemable flirt and slippery salesman. Particularly enjoyable is the relationship between Colle and her husband’s first wife. They have a mutual respect for one another: Colle, for her elder, and the older woman, for the feisty younger wife daring to fight battles she could not. This is a society in which women are not openly defiant. Their victories are subtle, won by stealth or through the embarrassment of their menfolk. Colle’s stance upsets the status quo.

Amongst the women in the village, sex with their menfolk is endured. After all, one of the results of female genital mutilation is to impede a woman’s enjoyment of sex – truly a subjugating act. During sexual intercourse, Colle relives the experience of her own circumcision as a child. It is particularly poignant when her daughter, Amsatu, later rebukes Colle for preventing her from being cut as a girl. Amsatu fears that as a Bilakoro, she will be unable to marry the son of the chief elder, as had been intended.

With the exception of her co-wives, Colle’s protection of the young girls and her stance against genital mutilation are unsupported by the village women. What is it about women that they champion adherence to traditions detrimental to themselves? Is it because they themselves have endured it? Perhaps there is a need to believe in the acceptability of a ritual in order to be able to justify it to oneself. Otherwise, what was once a traditional ceremony becomes an assault, and feelings of righteousness become feelings of violation.

There is fear in the fury of the elders. Fired up by Colle’s stand on circumcision, it is declared that all radios should be cast out, to limit the influence of the outside world on the village womenfolk. In maintaining ignorance, there can be domination. Ruing the loss of the radios that help them sleep at night, the women lament that ‘our men want to lock up our minds.’ A pile of radios grows in the village square, outside the mosque built by the village ancestors and the anthill symbolic of a Moolaadé of old. The film reaches its climax when Colle is beaten by her husband to force her to remove the Moolaadé she has imposed. Everyone in the village takes sides, but the only person prepared to intervene is the mercenaire – to his great cost.

Such is the charm of Moolaadé that the viewer is sucked into the film unwittingly before being reminded that it is about a debasing, debilitating, dangerous custom and indeed about life and death. It is a film about men and women, ignorance and knowledge, tradition and modernity, power and submission. ‘The film will stir debate in Africa’, Ousmane said. ‘I make militant films and this one will serve as a basis to bring men and women together to talk.’ Ultimately, it is about society’s reluctance to change in the face of the truth. But films like this one give us hope.