Faisal Qureshi talked to us about his film The Applicant, in which a job interview quickly turns into a nightmare.
> Download Babelgum to view the full video. Originally I wanted to adapt the Salman Rushdie short story, “The Golden Bough” but for one reason and another, that never happened. The Applicant was a script that I wrote years ago and thought it was a good replacement whilst still dealing with the themes I wanted to deal with in the cancelled Rushdie adaptation.When I was making the film, I used to joke that I’d like to see a cinema audience riot after a screening. The closest I saw to something like that was when New York Magazine did a feature on the film in Dec.2007 ( http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2007/12/filmmaker_faisal_qureshi.html ) and the debate that ensued was quite interesting. A lot of people assume that [I'm] criticizing the torturing of terrorist suspects: fine, though I feel its a bit of a copout. “Asian man torturing another Asian man, must be terrorism related, let me not look at what I do”. Torture is wrong – fine, but as Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo research showed, you just need the right set of circumstances to get someone to do something really inhumane. All you need is an authority figure to promise to take the blame for them.The thing with the story is that if you change the cast, then you change the audience interpretation. Ask yourself what the film means if it was all white males? It’d probably be interpreted as a satire on climbing the corporate ladder? What about if I made the interviewee a woman? Then could an audience view it as the sacrifices women would have to make it in the workplace?
What about if I had both the interviewer and interviewee be Black and the victim white? Then did I make a potential KKK recruiting video? The point being is that the audience interpret the film depending on what baggage they’re carrying before they see the film. The interesting response is to see how different the interpretation of the film is depending on the audience background.
The film came out of anger. I had two short film projects that very nearly had me quit filmmaking. One of them was produced but had white actors playing Asian and Arabic roles respectively. This is the 21st fucking century, we should not be doing that now. Ironically it was made by an agency that now claims it supports cultural diversity. Another project was a thriller with an Asian female lead and suddenly I was getting told to make it about honor killings. Please! Basically it was the kind of situation that Spike Lee showed in Bamboozled.
I had to make a film that was close to me, unfortunately we had to do it on an extremely low budget. Ironically enough, The Applicant is the highest budgeted film I’ve ever made, it’s only £2000 but at least I had more creative control of the material.
What I found is that people can find themselves to be compromised far more easily than they believe. I’m not saying that I have high principles other people should abide by but that sometimes you probably don’t know who you are until you’re put in a situation that really tests you. Philip Zimbardo’s “The Lucifer Effect” has an interesting last chapter on how not to become a “but they told me to” drone. Hopefully some audiences can ask themselves tough questions about themselves and change their behaviour accordingly, if they do, it’ll be a minority.
Donna Baillie‘s “microdocumentary” Waiting… offers us a glimpse into the daily struggles faced by some children as a result of the Israel/Palestine conflict.
- What made you choose this story for your film? I am interested in showing the hidden realities of peoples’ lives, especially when faced with overwhelming situations that are usually only portrayed in terms of vast, impersonal forces, such as those of international conflict. Footage of children running a gauntlet of soldiers while trying to get to school provides a very graphic and human-sized glimpse of the realities of life under military occupation.
- What’s the message you’d like your audience to take away from your film? I was only able to get the footage in the streets by using a hidden camera: otherwise I would have been stopped from filming and had my tapes confiscated. There are many aspects of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict that are not generally seen by western audiences. If we want to understand what is going on in this region, we need to look past the official statements and listen to people on the ground. One clarification: it was the soldiers who would have stopped me from filming. On previous filming trips to the region, IDF soldiers had fired warning shots at me to make me stop filming, and on one occasion confiscated my camera. I managed to get the camera back eventually, but they kept the tape.
- Why make this film now? Children’s education in Palestine continues to face obstacles due to the military occupation. The particulars change – when I was filming, soldiers were stopping the children in Hebron; today it is Israeli settlers who stop them on their way to school – but the negative impact on attendance and academic achievement is threatening the futures of an entire generation of children.
UPDATE: since this interview, we’ve received a link to UK newspaper The Independent and a further quote from Donna Baillie (April 21st 2008):
“One of the major newspapers in the UK has a front page story today on Israeli soldiers talking about the human rights abuses carried out by the army in Hebron”
Read the Independent article
“The testimonies of these soldiers, in which they detail abductions, beatings, theft, and torture carried out by themselves and their colleagues while stationed in Hebron, reinforces the argument of my film, and demonstrates the negative impact on the perpetrators as well as the victims of such polices and practices.”
Adil Akram is director of the short film Detained , which depicts an Orwellian scenario set in the near future and poses unsettling questions about the power of the state over the individual.
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Dear Babelgum,
Thank you for your email. Please find my responses below…
- What made you choose this story for your film?I first got the idea for ‘Detained’ because of an increasing number of experiences that different friends of mine had had with customs at airports when travelling. I also got inspiration from George Orwell’s ’1984′, (the character representing the face of the state machine in ‘Detained’ is Interrogator 101). I decided to set the story of ‘Detained’ in the near future to comment on the way things actually are now, as all good Science Fiction does. The title of ‘Detained’ is a sanitised euphemism for what happens to the lead character in the film, reflecting similar terminology used presently such as ‘rendition’.
- What’s the message you’d like your audience to take away from your film?The message I’d like my audience to take away is to be aware of what powers the state already has and is seeking, in the name of our protection, but also to monitor and control us. My concern is that we are headed towards a ‘police state’ without even realising it. ‘Detained’ is a warning about not quietly giving up freedoms we all now take for granted and that if unchecked, the state will always try to subjugate the individual. History has taught us that it is in the nature of governments to try to do this.
- Why make this film now?‘Detained’ is very timely. But in some ways, the story of the struggle for individual freedom against the state is a timeless one. The themes of Orwell’s work have never been more relevant than in the current context of the increased intrusion of the state into our private lives, all supposedly in the name of public ‘safety’. I felt strongly that now was the time to make ‘Detained’, with recentincreases in airport security and the rapid increase in statutory powers brought in by the state to further control and monitor the individual. These powers have already begun to be abused. Ask yourself – do I actually feel ‘safer’ now the state has granted itself these powers?
Alan Westaway is director of The Good Cop, a short film about an absurd, slightly sinister situation in a police interrogation room which poses questions about the relationship between individuals and institutions.
The Good Cop
Dear Babelgum,
Below are the answers to your questions regarding Human Rights.
- What made you choose this story for your film? I chose this story because I thought it was funny and poignant and beautifully absurd. I’m a huge fan of Magnus Mills, the author of the original short story, and love his sensibility in regards to the tyranny of daily work. He seemed to be saying in this short story that it is the people that work in institutions who are often more trapped than those of us that get caught up in their bureaucracy. It was only during the rehearsing of the film did it really start to dawn on us how relevant the story was at the time we were making it. Occasionally the actors would finish a scene and there would be a nasty silence in the room. The absurdity of the situation wasn’t funny anymore, it was ugly, particularly in the context of what was happening politically in our country and around the world. At this time, the British government were pushing through a bill to hold terror suspects for up to 90 days without charge and Guantanamo Bay was in the news daily. I think this affected the playing of the film and particularly the way that I shot the ending, which has a slightly darker, more sinister mood than the source material.
- What’s the message you’d like your audience to take away from your film? I didn’t really make this film for an audience to take away a message as such, more a mood or feeling and to ask questions. The film is about two men lost in a bureaucratic nightmare that begins with a funny, absurd misunderstanding and ends in a potentially dangerous situation. I suppose it’s about the problems that can be caused by people becoming disconnected from what they’re doing day to day and although this happens in most jobs the most dangerous place for it to happen is in large governmental institutions like the police force or the army. Accountability becomes almost impossible to pin point. Are the individuals making their own decisions? Or are they following a set of rules or behaviours set down by the institution they’re working for?
- Why make this film now? Like I said earlier, I made the film because I loved the story, its humour and the wider philosophical issues about individuals and their relationship to work and institutions. It was only during rehearsals that I started to feel that it was particularly relevant to Britain at the time; the paranoia, the fear of terrorist attack, the government’s seeming need to stir up this fear so that they could introduce draconian laws, allowing them to hold and interrogate innocent people for as long as they could get away with. Suddenly this beautifully absurd, funny but dark short story had a wider context, that in it’s own obscure way, it might shed a little light on.
We’ve a spring in our step here at Babelgum. The trees are in bud, Easter’s round the corner – and a long holiday weekend lies ahead. To celebrate, we’ve put together a special Easter playlist for you to enjoy.
1. In 1950s America, the Easter Parade was a chance to show off your spring finery. Watch newsreel footage of society ladies literally eating their hats in Edible Fashions and check out the outrageous bonnets on display in New York’s 1952 Easter Parade.
2. The egg hunt begins on our animation channel, where peculiar egg-based nasties are causing havoc in classic British kids’ show The Trap Door and Christopher Walken makes an appearance as a deranged Easter Bunny. Meanwhile, two hapless rabbits are trapped in a Russian prison in Usavich, an animated series originally made for MTV Japan.
3. Age-old themes of birth and resurrection are explored in the Babelgum Online Film Festival, including the French short Push/Pull and German entry The Baby. We have over 1000 festival films for you to explore – enough to keep anyone busy over the Easter weekend!
4. Aniland Birth and the Young and Wild series look at birth and the rearing of young in the animal kingdom. Meanwhile, in the plant world, there’s a video from Green TV explaining how climate change has meant spring has come early to England’s Kew Gardens.
The new Babelgum open beta release is now available for download.
It’s packed with new features:
- A Mac version, at last.
- User-friendly interface.
- Social navigation tools.
- Lots of new content.
- A community system that allows you to set up your own communities.
And as you’ll have noticed, our new website has gone live too, with a whole new look and lots of information about what you’ll find on the new version of Babelgum.
Meanwhile, voting for the Babelgum Online Film Festival begins today. Go to the new Films & Festivals Community to view the entries and rate your favourites.
Remember, your vote matters because it will go towards compiling the shortlists, which Spike Lee will review before selecting the overall winners.
Download Babelgum now.
Enjoy.
Available from today on the Encounters Channel on Babelgum, “Isabella”.
The film, directed by Geoffrey Taylor and produced on a budget of £900, won both of this year’s prizes from the National Association for Higher Education and the Moving Image (NAHEMI) for the best film by a student at a film school in the UK or Ireland.
Watch the film on your PC, with Babelgum.
And, if you have any questions you’d like to ask the director, leave a comment and Geoff will answer.
At 9am GMT on Wednesday 21st November the Encounters Channel will go online on Babelgum. Encounters Short Film Festival (here) partnered with Babelgum, inviting directors to upload their shorts on Babelgum, to make them viewable to a worldwide audience for free.
To watch Encounters shorts on your PC, streaming, full screen and in TV like quality, dowload Babelgum (link).
As of today Babelgum Video Publishing site allows simultaneous upload of entire content libraries, saving valuable time and simplifying the process for all pre-qualified professional content owners and distributors.
A few reminders:
1) Upload is free of any charges
2) Rights holders maintain complete control of their assets.
3) Content owners can operate autonomously and showcase their work immediately to a global audience
4) Viewing is free for anyone who has downloaded Babelgum (here)
5) More info here
Go to the videopublishing site now: here.
We’re proud to announce that Encounters Short Film Festival is launching a dedicated channel on Babelgum.
New talent, animators and established directors can showcase their work on the Encounters Short Film Festival channel, through a dedicated upload page.
Starting from November 21st everyone will be able to watch material uploaded from the Encounters Film Festival for free, simply by downloading Babelgum.
By partnering with Babelgum the Festival, now in its 13th edition, is extending the event beyond venue screenings to a global internet-based TV platform.