Branding Abu Dhabi, Israel and the USA

What's wrong with branding a conceited image for Abu Dhabi, the ex-nihilo city built with corrupt oil money in an inhospitable desert at a pricey carbon impact tag? If you're reading the pseudo-critics flown over, all expenses paid, like a typical Hollywood junket, there is nothing wrong with it. They wouldn't even question the existence of a wannabe-major scale international festival in a country famous for restricting the freedom of expression and with an insignificant cinema production.

Money can buy all, even legitimacy!

There is a nasty climate where spoiled cinephiles believe that bashing the major international film festivals is a higher priority for film culture than to unconditionally preserve any screenings of underexposed artfilms on the world stage and particularly small films coming from countries with a struggling domestic film market. However flawed the growing "commercialisation" of festivals might be (because they need to survive economically, and draw attention to the press which only cares for blockbusters and the star system in the first place!) they represent the least evil that cinephiles have to find out about new independent foreign filmmakers. If smaller festivals have the bolder luxury to focus on hardcore auteurism... they can't give these films nearly as much press exposition as Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Toronto or Vienna do. So the naive claims to expect the mammoth mechanics of a global scale festival to be as friendly and supportive as your local "pseudo-international" festival is utterly non-constructive. Though, I already said last year all I thought about these attacks on "too many festivals".

I wish these frustrated festival-goers would put as much scrutiny in their everyday film consumption as they dare to fling in the face of long term institutions that single-handedly keep afloat the good name of selfless art films in a world obsessed with Box Office numbers and quick screen turnover. Of course criticism of big festival should be encouraged in the hope to improve the general standards and always push towards more advantages than less. Only insofar as you proved you are equally critical of alternatives to what you criticise : to the imperialistic lock-down of major studios, to the cultural censorship of the populist levelling field, to the domestic distribution conservatism and the limited access to diversity on commercial screens. Instead of barking desperately at the major festivals, the loud mouths should find a more pertinent cause to defend and a more effective war to fight.

If only there was less obtuse manichaeism among film critics... Every single problem is always simplified by a black and white mentality into a forced choice between pro OR con. Everything has to be turned into something sensational, something clear cut, something scandalous, something easy to understand and easy to take a position for or against. Are you PRO or CON major film festivals?
The fast food of critical thinking! All I'm saying is that disingenuous reviewers would have us mistake a bush for the forest. Demanding excellence from high-profile festivals is laudable, as long as you don't confuse taste preferences in certain areas of cinema (or contempt for others) with an elective selection of a small number of films limited by the scope of a given festival.
A few things to keep in mind : A festival cannot show everything they would like to, either because they don't have enough screens or because of première exclusivity at other concurrent festivals. So a line up is never an ideal sample of a years' production. There are always compromises. Spending more time than it deserves on what a festival shows and what it doesn't show is as pointless as to argue with Oscars winners and nominees... Get real, the important critical battles are elsewhere.

J. Rosenbaum : "I was tempted by [the Viennale and Filmmuseum directors' joint proposal], but various roadblocks stood in the way, most of them either logistical or ideological." [One of these roadblocks] "a reluctance to restrict [himself] to 'American cinema' after living through eight years of American separatism and exceptionalism as propounded and promulgated by the administration of George W. Bush"

Gabe Klinger writes a thought-provoking article on the ideologies of festivals, where he brushes wide strokes through the landscape of recent festival controversies. He opens with the self-critical confession of Jonathan Rosenbaum on the American-centric program he was commissioned to put together at this year's Viennale. Which is, for a change, a great critical insight on the self-indulgent ways of the American industry. Nothing wrong with showing commercial Hollywood films in itself, but the (political and economical) contextualisation of such gesture is what we expect from a true film critic. So the article started insightfully. But then, in the same breath, he links this type of valid criticism with the controversy over the Brand Israel operation at last year's TIFF... Unfortunate conflation.

If you think you're tough enough to tackle the Middle East conflict, you should use your "objective" scrutiny on the Abu Dhabi festival and the Hollywood hegemony too. That is if you're not a prejudiced critic, that your main interest at heart is the fairness granted to film culture and how the movie industry functions; not only in countries where you're emotionally/politically/ideologically involved, but anywhere similar problems arise. If you take a case out of context as an excuse to bash your victim, regardless for the degree of gravity the problem you single out rates on a global level.
And my answer to this is that Branding Israel has little to do with cinema or politics, and it's not for film critics to exploit this controversy for a discriminatory campaign that undermines the unconditional respect for people's culture. This is the central issue here : the right to promote your own culture on the international scene.

"Brand Israel" is a marketing campaign? Big deal. The Abu Dhabi festival is a marketing campaign too, and everyone pretends it is a film festival... Why act so naive? Cinema is a costly business and people who have enough money to support this art are few. Questioning the movie economy and boycott funds of suspicious origins (involving unjust wars, torture, human rights offences, money laundering, mafia, drugs...) would stop most film productions anywhere. Come on! don't pretend you're prude and shocked in one case, and totally fine with the dirty money behind the cause you support... What a hypocritical lynch mob!

Obviously, a marketing campaign meant to promote the local tourism business is going to emphasise the positive talking points and avoid mentionning the disincentive details. How immature do you have to be to expect California to advertize a sightseeing tour by pointing out to the risk of deadly earthquake? Or a Florida cruise advertising on the frequency of hurricanes? Should South Korea's tourism be brought to a halt because of the rampant threat of an attack by North Korea? Should Iran's cultural exchanges be embargoed because of its alleged nuclear program? Should the Holy sites in Israel be forbidden because of the peace process status quo?
Can't a country overcome the stigmata of a debilitating conflict, past or present? Do inhabitants of regions destroyed by wars, terrorism, dictatorships have to pay the price of a death toll and a wrecked economy, of which most had no direct implication in their causes, adding insult to injury to cultural alienation because spoiled overseas bourgeois fancy boycott activism? I'm baffled by the reaction of human acrimony...

Now, who wants to censor the expression of a nation's culture, even if it is a shameless self-promotional propaganda? Such tourism-oriented "propaganda" is to culture what diplomacy is to international affairs. You don't shoot the messenger! Even if we disagree with political representatives (fairly elected or not) from Iran, North Korea or China, we still invite them at the United Nation table, precisely to keep diplomatic negotiations open. Well, world culture is the same non-partisan scene, where every nation can promote their art, their heritage, their political tendencies. Film critics who begin to declare on the cinema stage that certain cultures are not welcome are simply fascist in my mind.
This is only cinema! Let political conflicts to competent people. It's already a miracle to find an objective, insightful, educated film critic giving a substantial analysis of a fiction film... Taking totalitarian positions on serious Real World matters goes way beyond their responsibilities, let alone legitimacy.

What is a boycott organised by the invisible niche of an art film festival going to do to resolve a millennium old conflict? There is no symbolic value in this absurd discrimination. The little symbol it has is negative, because it resorts to fascist ways. This is as ridiculous and counter-productive than the rally of filmmakers to support Polanski. It wasn't the filmmaker who was judged, nor his art compromised. It was the man himself, who has decided himself he was above the justice of California. Let the man deal with his karma, he's accountable for the choices he made in life. What should the cinema community do about it to pressure the judicial system or the public opinion either way? Not your business whatsoever!

The epitome of boycott absurdity, misdirection and censorship : "Freedom Fries"! There is a majority of smart people in the American congress who thought that it was a productive use of their time to REBRAND a typical American junk food because they didn't respect the right of a foreign country (not to mention, long lasting ally since the birth of the USA) to dissent and express an opinion in a democratic debate. Well done! Did it matter that the appellation was wrongly attributed to France, while its origin is Belgian? No, the priority was to make a powerful totalitarian symbolic gesture against international democratic diplomacy. See the documentary : The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear (2004/Adam Curtis/UK).

A boycott is meaningful when its effect directly impacts the issue at its root, when the offenders are directly punished by the sanction. Even when the UN embargoes a country it is a stupid move... so imagine how disgraceful it is for a film goer to boycott a country. Leaders in Iran, North Korea, China (or even France!) are not affected by embargoes and boycotts, it's their common people that are starved, the image of their culture that is tarnished for no reason. A war of attrition might be good enough for the military; however it is not a sensible action for political activists, who should know better than to cut a tree to catch the worm in one of the apples.

People in Israel don't agree at 100% with the conservative government policies. Just like Bush gulf war was not approved by 100% of Americans. Were American films censored by the rest of the world during the stand off around Iraq? I don't think so. Just like the Iranian people is not at 100% behind Ahmadinejad. Should we boycott Kiarostami, Makhmalbaf, Panahi, Pitts, Farhadi? Should we blame Iranian culture because we disagree with the policies of its government, because it threatens to nuke Israel? Is there any sense in boycotting Ozu, Mizoguchi, Naruse during WW2 (if they had been known in the West at the time)? Should Murnau and Lang be ostracised because they made film in Nazi Germany?

Should we refuse to watch Israeli films by Avi Mograbi (contesting the unjust treatment of Palestinians); Ari Folman's Waltz With Bashir (a less than glorifying introspection on the Lebanese war); Eran Korilin's The Band's Visit; Joseph Cedar's Beaufort (on the Israeli army); Samuel Maoz' Lebanon? I don't think that Hollywood pseudo-introspective war films on the Middle East occupations are as interesting formally or narratively... Should we dismiss the fiction work on Israeli society's contradictions by : Amos Gitai, Ronit Elkabetz, Keren Yedaya, Shira Geffen, Etgar Keret, Raphael Nadjari for the sole reason they live and work in a country torn apart by religious hatred?

It's fascist authorities like the Nazi Germany, Franco's Spain, Staline's Soviet Union, the Catholic Inquisition that blame culture and believe that hiding culture makes its (more or less) related ideology go away. Why would anybody today want to resort to such anti-democratic, retrograde, censoring means to get a political point across?

You want to lambaste Israel's unjust occupation of Palestine, its warmongering theocratic government, it's imperialistic marketing campaign? Fine. Follow the money. Who gives military supplies and protection, economic support, diplomatic pressure on his enemies? You know it. It's another warmongering theocratic government, with imperialistic marketing campaigns throughout the world, and unjust occupations in a few sovereign nations... If you want your political activism to be any effective, put pressure on Washington D.C. not on Israeli films and tourist venues. This is beneath anyone calling them-selves art lovers.

Besides Israel is a country smaller than New Jersey and slightly bigger than Lake Erie, with a population 40 times smaller than the USA! Should we compare the questionable American military bases and prisons around the world that compare to the wrong treatments of Palestinians in Israel? Do the USA get nearly as much flack for Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo...? I mean, criticism they receive it (even if they discredit anyone disagreeing with their ways, abroad or at home), but how much effective political/economical pressure do they get, comparatively to the cultural alienation of tiny nation like Israel?

A misdirected attack against Israeli culture (instead of its political leaders) is most often a sign of latent anti-Semitism, concealed under false pretence of a Politically Correct (although intellectually dishonest and a blanket discrimination) vendetta against an all in all harmless cultural promotion of local tourism.
Maybe Glenn Beck could resort to such dodgy rhetoric to persuade an audience of ignorants... but could any art critic take part in such xenophobic agenda, while art is supposed to bring people together beyond all barriers?

So what about Abu Dhabi, messieurs les censeurs?

Is the carbon emission impact to go review The Informant over 10000 km away from NYC a sensible exercise of the profession of film critic? Domestic junkets aren't good enough? Is it even respectful of the local culture to act like a spoiled festival goer and expect to find the Cannes quality standard in a remote micro-country that is only recently embracing cinema? Is it an informed opinion to blame a poor Arabic culture while ignoring the subduction imposed by former colonial powers in the region?