Drifting Flowers/ 漂浪青春

Another movie from the Seattle Queer Film Festival! I went with JG to watch it yesterday and we both enjoyed it tremendously.


On the surface, the movie had a very Wong Kar Wai feel ( yes, to all who love In the Mood for Love, or 阿飞 正专, and the like) What that means for me is that there is a strong sense of realism, yes, there is some drama but one that is like stream of consciousness. Things just happening without necessarily having a fixed conclusion. There is also a sequence of events that trail one after another, that reconnect is unexpected ways. This is the feel that Drifting Flowers had too. One could argue it is not all as intricate and detailed as Wong Kar Wai's films, but what is powerful about Flowers is that it captures a strong sense of movement through time and space, that the queer characters undergo. I have read comments that say that the film was too steretypical, its portrayal of lesbian butch and femme characters too expected. Maybe its cos in Western genres that is a old tired picture, but I think in Chinese films, there is a lot there that can be explored. The setting of a story is so important. It gives it all the cultural nuances that a similar story set in a different place lacks. I love the intermix of Hokkien or Taiwanese with Mandarin, just listening to the lesbian women talk about their needs and desires in a language that is home for me, feels different!

Call it cliche, call it cheesy and heartwarming, I really enjoyed Drifting Flowers and can't waiting to watch Zero Chou's previous film: Spiderlilies (which is apparently hot, beautiful and super gay)

peace!

Queer Muslims in tha house, Stand Up!

We blogged about the movie, Jihad for Love, a couple weeks ago here. Democracy Insurgent, the Middle East solidarity group that we are organizing these days, also co-hosted the screening of the movie at the Independent South Asian Film Festival, Tasveer. The director, Parvez Sharma showed up for the screening as well and held a Q and A session afterward, which he seemed to enjoy immensely! Our friend and co-organizer, Afrose, MC-ed the event. It was a very politically sharp and insightful opening to the film, which helped to highlighht the political aspects of the film, and framed it as QUEER MUSLIM film, and not some Irshad-Manji-style apologist kind of movie, which Parvez himself admitted some people mistook his film for. Parvez, btw, loved the opening and said it was the best he had had for the film...impressive!

Attached here is her speech. We are waiting on the video clip to come in. So till then, strain those eyes and read out loud to you, and your queer/queer-loving friends!

Also check out Parvez Sharma's blog here. It records reactions to his film, both heartfelt positivities and nasty negativities.

A Jihad for Love in Seattle!

I watched Parvez Sharma's movie, "A Jihad for Love" a second time last night. It is a very deep and touching movie about queer Muslims and their struggles. All who haven't seen it should try to. For folks in Seattle, please see below for more information on the movie's screening.

One thing that stood out to me about the documentary, is how resoundingly different Parvez Sharma's film is, from Irshad Manji's rhetoric. For all who don't know about Irshad, she is a self-identified queer Muslim woman who wrote a book called "The Trouble with Islam Today." One of her chapters is entitled "Thank God for the West." I mean, need I say more about this person? To add fuel to fire, she produced an hour long documentary about Islam and women (yes, you know what to expect...) which attempted to generalize the form of Islam that was practiced in Yemen, to the entire Muslim world. There was also the usual diss on the niqab as symbolic of the degeneracy of Muslim women. In the film, she portrayed Islam and Yemeni Muslims as a backward people, who, god forbid, use weapons (knives) from the 7th century ( I think "the West" similarly uses such barbaric weapons) . She is a pundit for the Western imperialist agenda that seeks to justify its take-over of the Middle East as some form of liberatory, benevolent form of aid to Muslim women.

Contrast Irshad Manji's depiction of most of the Muslim world (read, non-Western) as inherently patriarchal needing Western tutelage, to Sharma's depiction of queer Muslim folks in the Middle East and India. Unlike Manji, Sharma shows a broad array of theological interpretation of the Koran that everyday queer Muslims have undertaken. He shows the resilient attempts of many people to reconcile their faith in Islam and their sexuality.On the extreme end of the spectrum, there was Iram, a Morroccan French woman, who despite being in a lesbian relationship, was unable to see herself as a true follower of God. Then there was Sana, an African emigre to France who had undergone genital mutilation in her home country. Unlike Iram, Sana saw her love for women as a pure act, which could not possibly be sinful because she "caused no harm, only loved." Sana explains the cruel act of genital mutilation as a humanly misinterpretation and distortion of Islam, not something inherent in Islam that cannot be changed.

One of the most engaging characters was Mazan, an Egyptian gay man who had been part of the Cairo 52 incident. Cairo 52 was a case in Egypt in 2001, when the police raided a gay bar and arrested its patrons. Mazan was one of those arrested and was raped in prison. In the movie, he had a sense that God created human beings in the best of forms. Since he and many others were gay and a creation of God, they could not be abnormal or sinful. Mazan;s character was engaging in particular because his love and nostalgia for his country came through so strongly. Mazan, like the Iranian characters in the movie who similarly escaped their homeland out of fear, did not disown his homeland. It was a bittersweet moment watching these characters speak of their homes and the people whom they left behind. It was sad in that it really reflects the injustice of the hetersexist state policies of their countries, but also beautiful in that it counters the typical Western imperialist narrative that everyone in the Third World is so enamored with the freedoms of the West that they willingly chuck off every bit of their history and tradition to become part of the enlightenment project.

The film ends on two very inspirational notes. First, is when Sharma refers back to the title of the movie: Jihad for Love. Often, says Muhsin Hendricks, a gay South African imam, Allah has been characterized as Taqwa Allah, fearful and judgmental. However, Hendricks says, Allah is also the Allah of Love, and urges the audience to not despair of the mercy of God, because God is most merciful.

The film ends on the theme of ijtihad. Hendricks is reinvited back to the madrassa that he had been kicked out of when he came out, and speaks on the theological basis of homosexuality to a group of fellow Muslims. An elderly woman shows a lot of openness to his argument, and reminds the others that Islam commands eac h man and woman to learn for themselves and to challenge the status quo. She emphasizes thatthere is space within Islam for independent thinking, and as Muslims, they should apply this principle to orthodox Islamic thinking itself.

Lastly, what was great about the film too, is how it reclaims homosexuality for the Muslim world. Various characters, ranging from Sufi Muslims in Turkey, to Muslims in Pakistan, speak about how love between men were celebrated in Islam. From the poet Rumi, to Shah Hussein, great saints in the Muslim tradition have openly expressed homosexual love.

I have some minor criticisms of the film. Mainly that even though it shows the variety of experiences that Muslims undergo, it is focused solely on religious, practising Muslims. It doesnt highlight at any point, the experiences that secular Muslim folks have to undergo as they negotiate their sexuality. The argument is often made in people of color communities, that queer sexuality is a product of Western degeneration. I would have wished for the director to portray more of how queer folks engage with that judgment of them.

For folks in Seattle interested in watching the film. It will be screening at Varsity Theatre in the U-district all of this upcoming week. Also, Tasveer, the South Asian Independent Film Festival will be hosting Parvez Sharma on Sept 27th!

Here's the trailer:

Paris Is Burning!

I watched Paris is Burning with some folks just a couple of nights ago. It was a documentary about drag queens in NYC during the 1970s. It talked about how communities, and second families were formed among transgender folks who were ostracized from their own homes. There were such things called "balls" where folks dressed up and competed with one another. The point was to be something you were not, and assimilate into that role convincingly. The film showed how this dynamic of assimilation was not only gendered, in that biological men were dressed as women, but also racialized. Most of the people interviewed in the film were men of color who were trying to dress "white," which was seen as white middle-class, corporate, successful. It shows the degree to which the high-white-life is elusive to many everyday people.

The film also contrasted the sense of family that mainly transfolks felt among one another, with the violent brutality that they faced from the larger public. I am paraphrasing what one of the interviewees said, but it was a reference to why the "balls" that are described above, are so important to drag men. Trans folks abilities to disguise themselves completely in the opposite gender determined if they were to live or to die. In other words, if drags werent convincingly disguised as women, and were found out, then they were often targets of severe hate crimes. The film also showed how the poverty and isolation that many trans folks during that period were facing, led to prostitution being a means of survival. One of the main characters in the documentary was strangled while she was presumably with a client -- being drag and prostitute meant high-risk exposure to anti-trans and anti-gay hate crimes.

Watching Paris Is Burning, set in 1970s New York, makes me wonder what the relationship between queer people of color circles in NYC, and militant racial movements. I wonder if they came together at some point. Marlon Riggs, apparently has a film called Anthem, where he discusses the queer presence in the Black Power movement. Folks like Cherrie Moraga, a lesbian Chicana playwright, had written about the notion of a Queer Aztlan, which finds itself under attack not only from white supremacists who are against the liberation of people of color, but also attack from straight, heterosexist Chicano nationalists who see queer folks as a betrayal of the nation....Moraga's play, Hungry Woman, is a powerful discussion of these themes, although I must say that when I last heard Moraga speak, she was way too much into identity politics for me. Her message was circling around identity so much that it seemed to have lost a class analysis that I remembered vaguely to be there when I was delving into the works by radical women of color, such as This Bridge Called My Back.

This it for now.
peace
JOMO