RE: Re: Re: Query on Anti-Colonial Revolts
Crucible of Empire: The Spanish-American War appeared on PBS. I thought it was great, especially for PBS. to purchase, go to www.greatprojects.com\store mbs Do you know of any movies of significance, be they documentaries or fictions, on the following subjects: the Sepoy Rebellion; the Mahdi Revolt; the Spanish-American War/the Philippines-American War; the Boxer Rebellion; and any other non-Marxist but anti-colonial revolts rebellions? -- Yoshie
Re: RE: Re: Re: Query on Anti-Colonial Revolts
From: Max Sawicky [EMAIL PROTECTED] Crucible of Empire: The Spanish-American War appeared on PBS. I thought it was great, especially for PBS. to purchase, go to www.greatprojects.com\store mbs The S-A War, just like the splendid little war now in progress, put the US public in quite a feisty mood. PBS rebroadcast another interesting documentary recently on Coney Island in its turn-of-the-century heyday. The documentary, by Ric Burns, noted how the S-A war influenced popular fantasies. One web site that draws on the same material Burns used notes: Americans have always loved violence and at the turn of the century they received it in a different form. Instead of seeing hundreds of people die in a film they went to Coney and watched as an entire city got swept away by a wall of water or saw Mount Vesuvius shower death upon the people of Pompeii. ... [Coney Island] shows like 'War of the Worlds' also gave Americans that feeling of pride, a feeling of what they thought their new country was going to become. In this show the naval forces of Germany, France, Britain and Spain sailed together into Manhattan. Then, [Battle of Manila Bay hero] Admiral [George] Dewey's fleet sailed out and sank every one of the sixty boats which had come to threaten American independence. See http://history.amusement-parks.com/users/adamsandy/coneyhist1.htm Carl _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Query on Anti-Colonial Revolts
didn't get the dvd for lagaan yet (i think lagaan is expected to be
nominated for an oscar?), but this review in the latest on line
economic and political weekly
http://epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2001leaf=12filename=3798filetype=html
may suggest why it has such appeal.
__
My aim in this section has been to show that 'Lagaan', by eliminating
any reference to the 'parasitic' role of the raja/taluqdar and other
indigenous dominant groups, ends up posing -even when dealing with
only subaltern agency without any overt linkages to questions of the
'nation'- the question in terms of a homogenised 'us' ('Indians')
versus 'them' (English colonisers) and thus becomes easy fodder for
nationalist mythologies. As Aijaz Ahmad argues in another context,
if the motivating force of history...is neither class formation and
class struggle nor the multiplicities of intersecting conflicts based
upon class, gender, nation, race, region, and so on, but the unitary
'experience' of national oppression... then what else can we narrate
but that national oppression? [Ahmad 1992:102]. The result is not
only that the 'nation' becomes the legitimate community, but also
that the imagined 'nation' becomes
the mask worn by the ruling classes to cover their face of
exploitation. Thus the nationalist rhetoric here could be seen as a
strategy employed by the ruling coalition led by the bourgeoisie to
overcome the crisis of legitimacy which it is facing in the present
[Lele 1995 and Desai 1999]. It also contributes to the myth of a
benign and benevolent traditional order, which was only interrupted
by 'modernity' represented by the colonial state.22 That is
why it is imperative to recover the silences of the 'fiction' that
'Lagaan' portrays.
_
rb
Re: RE: Re: Re: Query on Anti-Colonial Revolts
Actually the John (aka 'General') Milius' versions of Teddy Roosevelt's view of colonial conflict in The 'Wind and the Lion' and 'Rough Riders' are amusing as mass mystifications. (and of course the Soviet use of Cuban mercenaries to invade Colorado in 'Red Dawn' helps signal that end of irony stuff, given events at Columbine). Their significance is a bit more about the Republicanism of Hollywood production deals and unfortunately require quite a bit of ideological reframing, but do say something about graduates of the USC film school. Ann - Original Message - From: Max Sawicky [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2001 10:36 AM Subject: [PEN-L:20886] RE: Re: Re: Query on Anti-Colonial Revolts Crucible of Empire: The Spanish-American War appeared on PBS. I thought it was great, especially for PBS. to purchase, go to www.greatprojects.com\store mbs Do you know of any movies of significance, be they documentaries or fictions, on the following subjects: the Sepoy Rebellion; the Mahdi Revolt; the Spanish-American War/the Philippines-American War; the Boxer Rebellion; and any other non-Marxist but anti-colonial revolts rebellions? -- Yoshie
Re: Re: Re: Query on Anti-Colonial Revolts
http://www.twn.org/
Re: Re: Re: Re: Query on Anti-Colonial Revolts
my mom tells me that she now likes lagaan better which she may be giving me on dvd tonight. rb Synopsis Set in the latter half of the nineteenth century Lagaan is a film about the adversities and injustice perpetrated by the British upon the innocent peasants who face these extraordinary circumstances with fortitude and dignity. It is Aamir Khan's maiden home production and is written and directed by Ashutosh Gowarikar whose earlier directorial attempt Baazi proved to be a dud at the box office. The film casts Aamir Khan, Gracie Singh (of Amaanat fame) and a host of Indian and British actors including Jessica Radcliffe and Rachel Shelley. AR Rahman's music in the film is folkish and have a beautiful amalgamation of Indian and western instruments. And the costumes are by Bhanu Athaiya who had done the costumes for Richard Attenborough's Gandhi. In a small village of Champaner in North India in 1890s is a community of poor and innocent farmers who are happy ploughing, sowing, praying for the rains and reaping their harvest. Part of this community are Bhuvan (Aamir) a young farmer and Gauri (Gracie Singh), his love. A spate of adversities strike them with the entry of a brute-like British army captain who challenges the locals to a cricket match. A dastardly character, he is planning, in the sly, to burden the villagers with a land tax (Lagaan). One of the conditions of the game is that the loser will pay the state the land tax. The captain knows that the villagers are ignorant of the game and its rules and therefore be beating retreat against his trained players. Although poor, the villagers are people of self-respect. Led by Bhuvan they are ready to take on the Britons despite their ignorance of the game. Now comes to their rescue the army captain's younger sister Elizabeth (Rachel Shelley). Firstly Elizabeth helps the rustic lads purely out of sympathy for them but later she grows affection for Bhuvan. But Bhuvan is fixated on one thing. With grit and determination he and villagers stand together against the ruthlessness of their perpetrators. Faith and courage comes face to face with arrogance and ruthlessness and what follows is spectacular climax of showdown between Indians and Britons. Review Lagaan, as Aamir puts it, has not been an easy film to make. When its director Ashutosh Gowarikar first narrated the idea to him, he brushed it off without showing any enthusiasm. But Ashutosh didn't give up and worked on the script and it's subtleties for a good five months. And when he showed Aamir a meticulously written script the second time, the dashing Khan relented. Not only did Aamir give consent to play the film's protagonist Bhuvan but also decided to produce it himself. With that began a challenging task that, after two year's arduous labor, culminated in a Rs 25-crore film. Lagaan is a film with a realistic theme but at the same time retains the gloss of popular cinema. With Nitin Desai as the art designer, Ashutosh has created the authentic milieu of an Indian village Champaner in 1893. Those who inhabit it go by the names of Deva, Goli, Kachra, Lakha, Bhura, Ismail. They are peasants, blacksmiths, potters, wood cutters, temple dwellers and astrologers. The dialect they speak is a mix of three bolis - Awadhi, Bhojpuri and Brijbhashsa. Clad in a darned Dhoti and with hair drenched in oil, Aamir Khan gives a realistic portrayal of a simple village yokel. Bhuvan, the character he plays, is a man of self-respect no
