No SNOW in Copenhagen
by Andre Soares
Via New Kerala.com: Iranian director Jamil Rostami, whose Iranian-Iraqi Marsiyeh Barf / Requiem of Snow recently became Iraq’s first film to be submitted for a Best Foreign-Language Film Academy Award, has withdrawn his coming-of-age drama from a Copenhagen film festival as a protest against the publication in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten of cartoons portraying Islam’s Prophet Mohammed.
"I planned to participate in the festival [the Buster-Copenhagen International Film Festival for Children and Youth] in Copenhagen," says Rostami. "But since that country’s press has insulted the sanctity of the Prophet, I will boycott it."
Rostami comes from a country where there’s no such thing as separation - however nominal - between the media and the state (and, in Iran’s case, the Mosque). Thus, he and others like him see all of Denmark - including its cows, its cheese, and other assorted dairy products - and by extension every single non-Muslim anywhere to be as guilty of blasphemy as the Posten editors.
Imagine if the rest of the world were to riot against Iran or Pakistan, or boycott products from Islamic countries because of the systematic human-rights abuses committed by their murderous dictatorships and theocracies. Well, scratch that. How could all those monstrous SUVs run without gas?
Anyhow, this should not be misread as an anti-Muslim article. Instead, it is about human hypocrisy, ignorance, and intolerance. Like viruses and bacteria, those three deadly qualities exist in every culture, every religion (and secular society), and every tribal community (or nation, if you wish). And they exist in your own culture, dear reader, much more often than you might care to admit. See Carnival of Wrath and my take on Submission Part II for more.
By the way. . . In December 2005, Requiem of Snow won the best director award at the 8th Olympia International Film Festival for Children and Young People in Greece. It also received a good review in Variety. Here’s hoping that Rostami will soon realize that his presentation of a good, eye-opening film at the Buster-Copenhagen festival will do Islam - and Denmark, and the world - much more good than a misguided cultural boycott.
List of the British Academy of Film 2006 nominees
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