Film Criticism, Charles Clarke and Me

I haven't written anything which could be construed as questioning for a while because I have been scared witless about where it will take me. It's not as if I haven't been reading, watching, thinking or listening. And of these intellectual disciplines, listening to the continual drivel and blatant propaganda that is passed of as insightful political discourse on BBC Radio4 has been the hardest on my brain and temper. The others have been made tolerable by some beautifully lucid writing and a few great DVD's.

One of the reasons I was as timerous as Burn's 'wee beastie' about writing this piece is my multiple sclerosis. I could take the easy option and opt-out of thinking and trying to use words and images to understand the state of the world. No longer keep a critical stance to knowing. Deny my political self and what intellect I have and instead just concentrate on dealing with the day to day hassles of the MS. Try and reduce the stress and heightened emotion that has a tendency to exacerbate the condition and bring on relapses.

The recent publication of the Terrorism Bill 2005 that Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary has presented to Parliament is scarier even than the MS. And a red rag to the likes of me (my Chinese birth sign is the Ox - for what that's worth?). What finally forced my hand however, was receiving a new DVD of Rossellini's 'Rome - Open City'. But before looking at this films relevance to today and how cinema links my erstwhile friend Charles Clarke and I, a small digression via another film:

As part of the prelude to the orchestrated chaos that is now Iraq, the Pentagon had it's highest ranking personnel sit down and watch a film. Not any ordinary film. Pontecorvo's stunning 'The Battle of Algiers' released in 1965. I haven't seen the film for at least twenty years but it still resonates with me and from what I can remember it is the story of suffering and sacrifice in the cause of the national liberation struggle against Imperial France in the '50/60s. The American Generals were hoping to learn something from this film about France's defeat in Algeria that they hadn't previously learnt from the reality of having 'boots on the ground' after France's defeat in Vietnam.

But it seems all they have learnt from the film and from their own defeat in Vietnam, is the techniques of torture which they have refined and applied to the Pentagon/CIA's world wide gulag. They've certainly not understood the resolve and unselfish heroism that characterises the struggles of people to rid themselves of occupying foreign armies and which the film explores with great cinematic flare. Or maybe they believe that they have learnt something from the film, and Vietnam, and the reason why they are being so barbaric with their war crimes in Iraq is; the French were being to soft with the Algerians like the 'cheese eating surrender monkeys' America thinks they are and that the US lost the war in Vietnam because of domestic opposition and not militarily at the hands of 'peasants in pyjamas'.

I am more of the opinion that the Pentagon is applying to Iraq the lessons learnt from Israel's 38 year illegal occupation of Palestinian land and its concomitant destruction of Palestinian infrastructure, culture and history. More so than any lessons they could possibly have drawn from 'The Battle of Algiers'. If Israel can illegally keep a semblance of control by the application of brutal military force, imposing chaos and poverty on the Palestinians for that length of time; then why can't the Americans do the same in Iraq while controlling what remains of South West Asia's strategic hydrocarbon energy reserves? After all every oil company is now agreed that, if its not here already, we will be long past Peak Oil in 38 years time.

Back to 'The Battle of Algiers' which is rightly praised as;

"An astonishing piece of work in directorial technique processing to achieve not merely a newsreel tempo but a grainy realism unmatched by the average news film and all to rarely approached by even the better ventures into cinema verite." (Judith Crist, Halliwell 2005).

The central story-line in Pontecorvo's masterpiece is of a petty criminal coming to political consciousness during the Algerian struggle for independence. Filmed on location, Pontecorvo went where the poor live or more accurately, scratch a living to survive - the Casbah - and used its built environment and its people as main elements in the story. Bringing to light the reasons for removing a racist system that imposes criminal distortions on peoples behaviour. The poverty that makes for petty thieves become revolutionaries is made real, as are the emotions, believes, family ties and social rituals that bind the oppressed politically against their oppressor. The local populations are made human as actors and extras in the film - no longer 'Other' responsible and deserving of their lot as propagandised by their oppressor. Now agents in their own story. 'The Battle of Algiers' carries a great visceral impact and captures the moment of political awakening that changes people and society. Political cinema at its best.

Roberto Rossellini's 'Rome - Open City' was the Cannes winner of 1946. It is the foundation on which a humanist world cinema, post WWII has been built. In taking the production of film out of the studio and into the neighbourhoods, the homes and streets of Rome's war ravaged poor, engaging real people in telling their own dramatised story's alongside professional actors, Rossellini revolutionised cinema with what became termed Neo-realism. Scorsese says of 'Rome - Open City', "For me, the most precious moment of film history".

Without 'Rome - Open City' - no French new wave; no gritty, British cinema of the '60s; no films celebrating the lives and extraordinary feats of ordinary people. I do not think I exaggerate. The Hollywood system's studio created staple of sophisticated comedies of manners and historical costume dramas, imbued with the contemporary Establishment's values was exposed for what it was - eye-candy filled with messages against the majority of the audiences own best interests. Hollywood is still churning out refined versions of this propaganda with spectacular violence as the 'added-value', yet since 1946 we have had a work of art to judge them by and for humanist film makers to use as a pliable, democratising template on which to build a world cinema worthy of their audience. Along with Pontecorvo; Hondo with 'Lumiere Noir', Salles with 'The Motorcycle Diaries', Sayles with 'City of Hope' and Meirelles with 'City of God' among many others have achieved this and joined with the rich cinematic heritage that Rossellini bequeathed.

The hassles of production and distribution confronted and overcome by Rossellini are well known in the film industry. Film stock in Rome, 18 months after liberation was more or less non-existent and Cinecitta, Rome's now legendary film studios was still closed. Rossellini improvised filming in the streets - necessity the artist's mother of invention - and managed to cadge pieces of film, of differing quality, from photographers and American newsreel teams, splicing it together. The differing film stock shows but doesn't detract, instead, along with the filming on location, adds authenticity and urgency to the film. The films arrival in America came via the kit-bag of an American GI, an army Private returning home from service in Italy. The GI - Rod Geiger - had agreed a typical Rossellini deal. They both had no money so everything was done on a promise. Geiger was an aspiring producer who knew a cinema owner and distributor in New York, Joseph Burstyn who agreed to organise distribution and publicity once he saw the film. Geiger went on to produce Rossellini's next film 'Paisan', the second of his immediate post-war, neo-realist trilogy that starts with 'Rome - Open City' and ends with 'Germany - Year Zero'.

Set in the last days of Nazi occupied Rome, in the interregnum between the collapse of Italian Fascism and liberation, and based on factual events, the film explores the intricate relationships between the inhabitants of a poverty stricken housing project in a bombed-out neighbourhood. The communist partisan, catholic priest partisan, the lovers, the children, the squabbling families, the vain and the love-lorn addict. Laced with humour in a desperate time, the film counter-poses the dignity of the poor and occupied with the cynicism and racism at the heart of Nazism.

Four scenes.

1. The film opens with the 'liberation' of bread from a local bakery charging extortionate prices by the women from the housing project. They are led by the female lead - a magnificent Anna Magnani - who on seeing the local neighbourhood Italian policeman as she leaves the shop, engages him in anti-occupation banter while escorting him away and giving him a couple of loafs. Not so much as bribery for him to ignore the breads 'looting', but more in their mutual recognition that the poverty and hunger they both suffered in the Italy of the time meant their social relationship was more important than the bakers loss of 'property'. The church Sexton makes an appearance, has a chat, questions his conscience, crosses himself - then wades in after the 'freed' bread.

2. In the German officers bar, the head of the Gestapo takes a break from torturing the Communist partisan and falls into conversation with Hartmann, commander of the firing squad.

Hartmann. 'Strenuous evening?'

Gestapo. 'Not very... but interesting. I've a man who must talk before dawn and a priest who's praying for him... He'll talk.

Hartmann. 'And if not - ?'

Gestapo. 'Ridiculous!'

Hartmann. 'And if not - ?'

Gestapo. 'Then it would mean an Italian is worth as much as a German...! It would mean there's no difference in the blood of a slave-race and a master-race...! And no reason for this war!

Hartmann. '25 years ago, I commanded firing squads in France. I was a young officer. I believed then, too, in a German "master-race". But the French patriots also died without talking. We Germans simply refuse to realise people want to be free.'

Gestapo. 'You're drunk, Hartmann!'

Hartmann. 'Yes, I'm drunk. I get drunk every night to forget. It doesn't help. We can't get anywhere... but kill... kill. We have sown Europe with corpses and from these graves arises an incredible hate...hate...everywhere!! We are being consumed by hatred without hope.'

Gestapo. 'ENOUGH!!'

Hartmann. 'We will all die without hope...

Gestapo. 'I forbid you to continue!!'

Hartmann. '...without hope...

Gestapo. 'You forget you are a German officer!!'


3. In the final torture scene the priest - the receiver of confession - bears witness when forced to watch the torture. The torturer fails to extract information and then, instead of giving absolution the priest tells the communist partisan - Marcello Pagliero - as he takes his last breath, "You didn't talk". For me this moment captures the mutual respect and unity held between partisan Atheist and partisan Theist in the struggle for liberation. This unity was a fact on the ground in 1944 Italy, despite the collaborationist Vatican's attempted suppression of contact between it's priests and the PCI (Italian Communist Party).

4. The priest - Aldo Fabrizi - is executed shortly after. The firing squad, made up of Italians, deliberately miss their target. Hartmann, the 25 year veteran commander of firing squads, walks forward and shoots the priest in the back of the head. Any sympathy you may have felt towards Hartmann after his drunken recognition that Nazi philosophy is bereft of hope, evaporates with this action of extreme personal and political cynicism.

Also on the DVD is a new documentary, 'The Children Of Rome Open City' which retraces the locations of the original picture with the lead child in the film - Vito Annicchiarico - remembering the production and history of the film. He is joined by the children of the producer, the director, the actors and, in a genuinely poignant scene, the surprise meeting of a child extra still living in the same housing project whom he had not met for 60 years. The documentary of itself is wonderful and in one telling scene gives the rationale for the issuing of the DVD at this time. Vito Annicchiarico says while in conversation,

"Today we hear about the war in Iraq, how hard it is, but you have to live through it not as a spectator, but as a protagonist, in order to understand what war means. Thinking about it makes me cry."

All those involved in the production of 'Rome - Open City' experienced the horrors of occupation and war first hand and took an opportunity to put those experiences before an audience via a revolutionary piece of cinema. Their honesty, humour, dignity and sheer humanity fill every frame of the film.

As you've probably noticed I have a love of film, especially that which celebrates the capability of people to change their circumstance. This love of film got me involved in the life of a community cinema in the London Borough of Hackney, East London where I was living in the early '80s.

The Rio Cinema (Dalston) Ltd had been set up as a 'charity limited by guarantee' after the cinema had been handed over to a hastily convened community grouping. The owner, a Greek Cypriot living in London wanted to retire and had approached various people with the idea of handing over the property to the community in the borough. One of the people he approached was a fellow Greek Cypriot of his and a comrade of mine, Andreas Michaelides. Andreas immediately got involved recognising the cultural and political importance of the resource, but after six months the project started to run into political difficulties and Andreas' other commitments did not allow him the necessary time to devout to an increasingly chaotic Rio. He raised with the Hackney CP the possibility of another comrade replacing him. Hence my involvement.

The cinema was the last left in Hackney, one of the poorest areas of Britain. If it had gone the way of the others and been converted into a bingo hall, snooker club, carpet showroom or knocked down to make way for car parking, Hackney people would need to travel to the West End or even further to enjoy the collective experience of cinema.

A resource like this coming into community play attracts all sorts - the opportunist, the scrupleless and the sectarian along with genuine community, political and cultural activists - who bring with them agendas both open and secret. The lack of a clear programme of development and the infighting and acrimony that ensued was fast losing the best staff, creating debt, and alienating the good will of funding and regulatory bodies like the Greater London Council and Hackney Borough Council. It was at this point that I and others got involved with the project. Among them were Sally Hibben and Charles Clarke. Sally went on to produce some of Ken Loach's great body of work which has carried forward Rossellini's cinematic sensibilities. Charles is presently the Labour government's Home Secretary.

During the difficult early months at the Rio a good working relationship was established amongst a grouping that won the internal struggle, kept creditors at bay and the funding and regulatory bodies on side. I include myself, Sally and Charles amongst that grouping. After about six months the Rio had been stabilised and both myself and Charles were asked to take on the roles of Directors of the Rio Cinema (Dalston) Ltd and move into the background. We both accepted. The Rio is still open, 25 years later and is responsible for London's annual Turkish Film Festival. A rare success for community activism during the time of Thatcher and since. Charles' and Sally's contributions to this were exceptional.

I found Charles to be straight, sharp, friendly and warm, and immensely capable. I liked him. We even exchanged Xmas cards. His political ambition was evident even though he was not yet an MP, but ambition is not necessarily a reason to dislike someone. He was certainly not authoritarian and I was hopeful when he was promoted to Home Secretary following Blunkett's welcome idiocy. There seemed to be a glimmer of a possibility that more humane policies toward prisons, policing and sentencing could emerge.

But Things Have Changed, as Dylan would say.

The following is taken from;

"House of Commons
Minutes of Evidence
Taken Before
Home Affairs committee
Draft Terrorism Bill 2005
Tuesday 11 October 2005
Uncorrected transcript of oral evidence to be published as HC 515-i.

Q16 Mr Winnick: But say such a law existed at the time when apartheid was in power in South Africa, what would have been the position of those people who refused to condemn the violence of the African National Congress who after Sharpeville decided on a policy of violence?

Mr Clarke: Not at all. There is nothing whatsoever in this Bill which at any time would make them all guilty of breaking the law for not condemning or not doing anything in relation to this."

But what of those who did actively call and demonstrate for the overthrow of Apartheid and in support of the ANC; collect or donate funds for the ANC; participate in pickets and boycotts; write articles supporting strikes and mass civil disobedience against Apartheid; attended concerts? We would all have been criminalised.

Keep your mouth shut. Ignore your conscience. Turn away from injustice. Accept racism. That is all that can be deduced from such a devious formulation of the English language. It has clearly been crafted to intimidate those who participated in the anti-Apartheid struggle from getting involved against the war. And criminalise the actions that brought success with international, non-violent direct action and mass participatory civil disobedience.

Every one of the present Cabinet would have been arrested and labeled 'an encourager of terrorism'. Every one of this Cabinet benefited from grant funded, fee-less higher education and they've pulled that ladder up after them, so why not do the same with free speech and human solidarity. The carnage instigated by a Labour(!) government with the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq has well earned them the title Terrorist in the Muslim world. Yet now they wish to criminalise those of us who oppose their policy of pre-emptive and illegal war as 'encouragement and glorification of terrorism'!

The first three clauses from the Bill - boring but important.


"Terrorism Bill Part 1 - Offences.

Encouragement and glorification of terrorism


1 Encouragement of terrorism

(1) A person commits an offence if he -
(a) publishes a statement or causes another to publish a statement on his behalf; and
(b) at the time he does so, knows or believes, or has reasonable grounds for believing, that members of the public to whom the statement is or is to be published are likely to understand it as a direct or indirect encouragement or other inducement to the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorism or Convention offences.

(2) For the purpose of this section the question what it would be reasonable to believe about how members of the public will understand a statement must be determined having regard both -
(a) to the contents of the statement as a whole; and
(b) to the circumstances and manner in which it is or is to be published.

(3) It is irrelevant for the purposes of subsection (1) -
(a) whether the statement is likely to be understood as an encouragement or other inducement to the commission, preparation or instigation of one or more particular acts of terrorism or Convention offences, of acts of terrorism or Convention offences of a particular description or of acts of terrorism or Convention offences generally; and
(b) whether any person in in fact encouraged or induced by the statement to commit, prepare or instigate any such act or offence."

Ostensibly put forward as a response to the London bombings of July 7th and attempts of July 21st, the terrorism bill is designed to outlaw dissent against the war. Anybody who says, writes or demonstrates that the Iraqi's have an internationally recognised legal right to resist an illegal invasion and occupation is facing 90 days arbitrary detention for encouraging terrorism. Any view critical of the governments actions in Iraq will be construed as 'indirect' encouragement.

To state that this law will only apply to encourager's of terrorism is patent nonsense. As can be seen from the Labour Party conference earlier this year, just saying 'nonsense' as Straw, the Foreign Secretary tried to defend the war, can have you manhandled by thugs and detained by the police under the Terrorism Act 2000, which this new Terrorism Bill 2005 refines and strengthens.

The participants in the anti-Apartheid struggles, the demonstrators, leafleters, pickets, direct action activists, writers and their anti-Apartheid publications represented, acted for and were supported by Britain's majority whose broad political consensus cements our collective values - justice, equality, solidarity and fair play. Despite Thatcher's and Blair's best attempts at corrupting these values they re-emerged in the organisations and demonstrations against the Iraq war. The sons and daughters of the anti-Apartheid generation are now the people, their values, actions and publications that are now being threatened by this Bill.

The first people to experience these new police powers will be British Asians and Black British young men and boys. Profiling as terrorist by race and religion will be codified in law and racist police officers and their practices legitimised.

Prosecutions will not happen immediately the Bill is passed into Act, but they will happen and all left and socialist publications have been warned.

The British government lost the argument in the country and the world for the war and now they are losing the troops. Morale is shot; an RAF officer, Flt-Lt Malcolm Kendall-Smith, is challenging his court martial for refusing to return to Iraq with the defense that it is an illegal war - lets hope he wins; 70 members of one battalion of the Princess of Wales Regiment have left the army in the last year not wanting to return to Iraq. The picture on the left was taken at the Sept 24 demo in London. At the same time the government, echoing their masters voice from America, is ratcheting up the belligerent language of confrontation with unfounded accusations against Iran. As if the quagmire in Iraq isn't enough. (As I write a UN report blames Syria for the assassination of Harari in Lebanon and America has started making threats to Syria in an attempt to destabilise the region even further).

Black operations by Blair's government have been exposed with the arrest by Iraqi's of two SAS members working undercover in Basra. The Iraqi's believe the contents of the SAS members car and their disguises proved that they were trying to plant a car-bomb during a religious festival as part of the age-old imperialist strategy of 'divide and rule'. Setting off internal Shiite strife between Sistani and Sadr supporters. The speed of the response and resolve in the assault on the police station to retrieve the captured soldiers was a clear indication that the British army could not afford the soldiers talking about their operation. Strengthening the Iraqi view that the bombs exploding outside Mosques and in markets all over their country have been planted by proxies of the coalition occupiers. That Zarqawi is a phantom created by the CIA. And who can now credibly deny it?

The driving force behind this illegal and immoral war is oil. Everything else is a lie. And which neither Bush nor Blair can afford to admit because it would expose their messianic 'Faith' in exporting democracy as nothing more than a cynical ploy.

We have come to the point where the exploitation of this finite resource has peaked and every drop of oil extracted from now on will be more difficult to get at and hence more expensive until the wells become uneconomic. This will happen long before the cost of extracting one barrel of oil is the energy equivalent of one barrel of oil. (For those who want to find out more order the DVD 'Peak Oil - Imposed By Nature' via a link on the right).

As the global energy crisis deepens and food, heating and transport gets more expensive very quickly, laws like the proposed Terrorism Bill 2005 will be used more and more often against those who would exercise their conscience and challenge the attempt by Bush and Blair to resolve this crisis violently at the expense of the poor.

Human dependence on hydrocarbon energy (natural gas and oil) cannot be over-emphasised. As a species we arose only 200,000 years ago and since the beginning of our exploitation of oil as the cheap energy source, just 125 years ago (0.0625% of our existence), our world population has increased exponentially from 1.5billion to 6.9billion. Without it the global population of homo sapien sapien will crash. It will affect Britain just as much as the rest of the world.

The oil companies know all this. It is now being argued that a major reason for illegally invading Iraq was to drive up the price of oil and help out Bush's major electoral funders. Really? This of course does have a perverse, free-market logic to it if the oil companies exploration and extraction forecasts foretell of apocalyptic times in the near future - which they do. These oil executives are legally bound to find the best short-term returns they can for their shareholders. When the prognosis for the oil industry is terminal then the quickest way to drive up the price and make as much money in the shortest possible time is, wait for it, War. Fuck the possibility of a global plan to fund alternative energy, ration what oil is left and reorganise our life styles in ways which could help alleviate the worst of a population crash. This would require long-term planning and investment which would eat into the legally required best short-term returns and high dividends for shareholders. With this rationale, morality and social responsibility have been outlawed from business school, the law and the courts. With the Terrorism Bill 2005 we have another law that outlaws morality and social responsibility from our relationships with our fellow human beings.

(It could be even more sinister than this. Oil is in terminal decline, we can see the end of the Oil Age and one way to deal with the problem is to destroy demand by locking the oil that remains in the ground, engineering a global depression. What oil is still available is commandeered for military use only. Bush meanwhile enters his bunker and prays with his Dominionist 'base' that they ride out the repercussions as billions starve. When they re-emerge humanity is reduced to a stone age hell, but the oil is still there. A far-fetched 'Mad Max' fantasy? Mel Gibson's narcissism pales into insignificance beside Bush. Bush really believes he is exceptional; that he talks for God; that his shit comes out clean, that his murderous actions are for the best and that it is common sense if capitalism devour itself along with everybody else but him.)

If it is true, and I have no reason to disbelieve it judging by his actions, that Blair will join the board of the Carlyle Group when his Prime Ministership ends, then he has betrayed his professed Christian moral and social responsibility to us, the people he serves. The Carlyle Group is the Bush family firm - 'family firm' as in Mob - whose racket is war and with whom Blair wishes to sup on the profits! For the full horror story that is Family Bush and the Carlyle Group bookmark Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque. Clear, morally lucid reporting where truth is written with a witty and wicked lexicon of anti-Bush invective.

The way of dealing with this global crisis has to change from war, from might is right, from means justify ends. It cannot wait much longer. We have probably already passed the point when all the worlds 6.9 billion people can be shielded, protected or saved someway from the effects of Peak Oil, climate change and American imperial designs. It may even have come to the point where it will take hundreds of millions to save billions. A depressing thought but in a destabilised world where the USA has fully integrated nuclear weapons into it's theatre battleplans, a distinct possibility.

Like everybody else, I don't know how to fix any of this. The depth and complexity of the problems facing us are to great for any one person, no matter how talented they think they are, to fully comprehend all the realities and offer a blueprint for changing our future. Superman is a figment of a Neitschean imagination and Hollywood iconography. There is also no single unifying theory for action, the more we look the more complex everything gets, as must the nature and timing of our interventions.

What I do know is that the answers will not be found while Bush and Blair are in power and that the present situation will be made worse, much worse if they are not forced from office, both our country's roles in the war halted and the troops brought home out of harms way. How? In Britain? Non-violent direct action and mass participatory civil disobedience - the traditional means of civil society when demanding change and confronting political power. The country needs to be disrupted, stopped from working and Blair's Government expelled. The only people capable of doing this are the poor, the very people who will die in vast numbers when there is a population crash. Those who think they are not poor? You soon will be.

Is there a national movement able to do this? No. Not yet. The Sept demo in London showed the possibility was still alive, the outlook though is rather bleak. A police state beckons for the British people. But who knows what tomorrow may bring?

In 'Rome - Open City' the peoples common humanity is recognised by secular humanist and catholic theist alike and it made for unity in action against oppression. Both die in the film but their history lived on. Rome did shed its tyranny.

Before seeing the film, I had been surprised when visiting Italy in the late '70s and early '80s on discovering pictures of Gramsci or Marx or Berlinguer displayed on mantlepieces alongside statues of The Madonna. It made me reassess the nature and breadth of alliances and not to dismiss the church as a centre of reaction but recognise that common ground can be found, even against the wishes of the Church hierarchy and sectarian atheists. The film cemented this view and it became part of my political practice.

What is happening in Iraq with the bombings of Mosques, festivals and markets is partly designed to disrupt and ultimately stop a similar secular/faith alliance developing amongst the Iraqi resistance. Sectarian terror of this sort only benefits the occupation forces. This was Northern Ireland. Has been Palestine for the past 38 years and is now Iraq.

Maybe I have underestimated what the Generals learnt from 'The Battle of Algiers'?

So, now what of my erstwhile friend Charles Clarke. The last time we met was while I was doing some street work with a camera in Hackney and we bumped into each other. It was sometime in the late '90s after I had moved back to the area from Cardiff in Wales. Charles had recently been elected to Parliament. I was pleased for him. We had a pleasant chat and went our ways.

Charles is now the third most powerful person in the British Government and he is presently guiding through Parliament a piece of regressive legislation that will equate dissent with terrorism. He is a member of a Cabinet that takes collective responsibility for its policy decisions. Decisions on Iraq that will have all members of the Cabinet facing charges of war crimes at The Hague once they lose power.

What can I say? You are on the wrong side of history Charles.