Portland Film Festival ’14: Blemished Light

The Indian subcontinent is a fractious, factionalized region, but the criminalization of homosexuality is an unfortunate constant. Of course, there are violent extremists who seek to further impose their strict Islamist agenda on those they deem unbelievers or apostates. In his split narrative following a closeted lesbian’s desperate attempt to find love and a Muslim terrorist stalking a moderate academic, director-co-writer Raj Amit Kumar issues a plea for tolerance and civility, but finds little of either in Blemished Light (trailer here), which had a special midnight screening at the 2014 Portland Film Festival.

Leela Singh is the apple of her senior police officer father’s eye, but she simply cannot submit to the proper marriage he has arranged for her. The doting but stern Devraj will be scandalized when he learns Singh is a lesbian, who intends to win back her former secret lover, Sakhi Taylor, a bi-sexual Indian-American artist. Taylor holds a downtown hipster image of herself, but she still cares about how she is perceived in Indian society. Their reunion will be uneasy, but for Singh the die is already cast, thanks to the video confessional she left for her father.

Meanwhile, Mohammed Husain has arrived in New York for a grim mission he whole-heartedly embraces. He has been chosen to abduct and execute Fareed Rahmani, a prominent proponent of a more liberal vision of Islam. In his frequent media appearances, Rahmani argues true Muslims do not go about killing people. Husain intends to demonstrate otherwise, but first is supposed to extract a confession of heresy.

While the two discrete storylines never intersect, they are highly compatible thematically and make it difficult to dismiss the film as mere “Islamophobia.” Clearly, Kumar and co-writer suggest prejudice based on religion, gender, and sexual orientation is an issue endemic to the region that transcends demographic categories.

Blemished also benefits from the imprimatur of the legendary Victor Banerjee (best known in the West for A Passage to India and several Satyajit Ray films), whose mastery of his craft remains unabated. As Rahmani, he fully humanizes the potential martyr figure (in an uncorrupted sense of the term), ultimately delivering a devastating punch to the viewer’s gut. In contrast, Adil Hussain’s Devraj Singh is appropriately intense and decidedly disturbing, credibly laying the groundwork for some otherwise unfathomable choices as a father. Bhavani Lee also demonstrates future star power potential and a vivid screen presence as the complicated and contradictory Taylor.

This is a film rich in telling scenes, such as the stilted interactions between Husain and his Americanized support network, many of whom seem to be trying to preserve their plausible deniability. There are issues here and there, including an underdeveloped subplot involving Singh’s pregnant platonic girlfriend and an excursion into surreal imagery that looks quite striking but clashes with the overall tone of social realism. However, the film’s visceral immediacy demands an audience.

Inspired by the verse of Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz, it is a bold and bracing film, featuring an extraordinarily compelling and humanistic performance from Banerjee. Highly recommended for his fans and patrons of accessible Indian Parallel Cinema (or high-end Bollywood), Blemished Light is sure to generate controversy as well as a long life on the Indian and LGBT festival circuits following its special screening at this year’s Portland Film Festival.

The Origin Story: Wham! Bam! Islam!

In late 2005, intolerant Islamists were calling for the death of twelve Danish cartoonists who dared depict Muhammad in terms that would have been considered mild had they been applied to Christ by Bill Maher or Ricky Gervais. It was a hard to time be raising seed capital for an Islamic comic-book featuring super-heroes whose powers corresponded to the ninety-nine attributes of Allah, but that is where Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa found himself. The birth and growing pains of THE 99, Al-Mutawa’s Islamic super team, are documented in Isaac Solotaroff’s Wham! Bam! Islam! (promo here), which launches the tenth season of PBS’s Independent Lens, on its new night this coming Thursday.

The dearth of legitimate hero figures for young Islamic children concerned Al-Mutawa. He was particularly appalled by news reports of a sticker book sold to Palestinian children glorifying suicide bombers and demonizing Israelis. As he explains, THE 99 were conceived to fill that void with positive, life-affirming Muslim super-role models.

A feel good project, Al-Mutawa attracted decent support from Kuwaiti investors and recruited several Marvel Comics alumni. Yet, the project faced considerable opposition from Islamist quarters. Al-Mutawa and his team repeatedly stress their characters do not have the power of Allah. Rather they have the heightened but still imperfect human traits corresponding to each attribute. It seems this distinction was rather lost on the fatwa-issuing set. Of course, their uniforms could never be loose-fitting and modest enough to pass muster and the uncovered faces of the heroines were unacceptable under any circumstances.

In addition to examining the clash of culture and religion, Wham is very much a business story. It was frequently unclear whether Al-Mutawa’s Teshkeel Comics would make a go of it not, but it appears the international publicity THE 99 generated created enough brand awareness to draw more investment and open up the Saudi market. Yet, one wonders at what price? Suddenly, there is almost no conflict of any kind in the comic books, as per the instructions of the Islamic advisors. Indeed, the special English language origins issue is not merely tame. It is frankly dull.

The truth is the Indonesian publication of I Found the Meaning of Jihad, the life story of former terrorist turned counter-radicalization activist Nasir Abas, raises the bar for moderate Islamic comics. Simply being pleasant and ostensibly peaceful pales in comparison to his forthright repudiation of Islamic terror.

It is pretty fascinating to watch Al-Mutawa build a mini-empire atop a brand name with relatively few readers. Solotaroff clearly had ready access to the Teshkeel team, capturing them at some of their lowest moments. He keeps it all moving along briskly and includes some cool animated sequences to help set the mood. Still, just how significant THE 99 will really be remains a much more open question than Wham would have us believe. A bit boosterish, but undeniably intriguing viewing just the same, Wham airs on most PBS outlets this Thursday (10/13) as part of the new season of Independent Lens.

Tribeca ’10: Just Like Us

Western stand-ups regularly mine their Christian and Jewish faith for comedic material without the fear of violent reprisals. Jokes inspired by Islam have been an entirely different proposition altogether, considered “Haraam” or “forbidden” as the Danish cartoon fatwas all too clearly demonstrate. However, a group of multi-faith comics were able to gingerly address such subjects in a first of its kind comedy tour of the Middle East, documented in tour headliner-director Ahmed Ahmed’s Just Like Us (trailer here), which screens during the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival.

Ahmed and the tour impresario frequently assure viewers the mere possibility of such an endeavor proves how much the Islamic world is loosening up. Perhaps, but until a Jewish Israeli comic can safely join the tour, their effusions seem a bit premature. Still, unlike the slavishly politically correct (and decidedly unfunny) material heard in from the stand-ups featured in the Allah Made Me Funny tour-documentary, many of the JLU performers are actually funny.

In addition, Ahmed and his tour-mate Omid Djalili (also represented at Tribeca in the surprisingly brave The Infidel) actually satirically address Islamic topics directly, offering some understandably cautious but still pointed commentary on the state of their faith. For instance, in a neat pivot, Ahmed subverts the clichéd “flying while Islamic” joke by turning the focus of his bit on the wanted terrorist who unfortunately happens to be his namesake, thereby putting his name on every “no fly” list.

Ahmed and Djalili are indeed quite funny and frank on-stage, leading them to half-jokingly fear their routines will get them banned in Dubai. Overall though, the line-up is a decidedly mixed bag. Probably the best known participant, In Living Color’s Tommy Davison, is easily the least funny (though he seems to kill with some highly partisan material). Still, that is pretty much par for the course for such large ensemble tours.

There are a fair number of legitimate laughs in JLU, primarily from Ahmed and Djalili, but there is far too much extraneous travelogue sequences. The audience really does not hear the beautiful virtues of each city on the tour extolled over and over again. It starts to sound a bit forced, particularly in Riyadh, where the comics must perform in an underground club. As a result, at 72 minutes, JLU is relatively brief by feature standards, yet it still feels padded. Certainly, it is encouraging to see the reception granted to the haraam comedy tour, but it ultimately seems like more of a halting test of prevailing limits, than a watershed cultural event. Reasonably amusing, it screens during Tribeca on Monday (4/26), Tuesday (4/27), and Friday (4/30).