By Jason Apuzzo. As we’ve been reporting a great deal to you recently, many new filmmakers are emerging in the indie filmmaking scene who are challenging the reigning Hollywood narrative by which the Islamic world is depicted simplistically as a supine victim of American imperialism – rather than as a complex society, struggling to emerge out of punishing religious intolerance into a Westernized, middle class future. [See the Living with the Infidels web series below as an example.] A interesting example of this new wave appears to be London filmmaker Hammad Khan’s Slackistan, which Variety reports just got picked up for distribution in the UK, and which will be opening the forthcoming Raindance Film Festival.
Since we obviously have a lot of new UK readers here at Libertas, we encourage you to go see the film when it’s released later this year, and come back to us with reviews. The film reminds me somewhat of a film coming out later this year here in the States called The Taqwacores, which showed at Sundance and which we’ve talked about previously here at Libertas. [Another film that comes to mind: No One Knows About Persian Cats, which showed at Cannes and which we reviewed here.] From a cultural standpoint, if you’re looking for signs of hope in the Islamic world, these films would seem to be it – although this ‘hope,’ of course, comes wrapped within the irony that young Islamic youth are becoming more like us in the West every day.
Are we happy about that? Is Fast Times at Islamabad High just around the corner? I can hardly tell whether this film is set in Pakistan or Encino.
Posted on September 15th, 2010 at 9:46am.
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