{"id":28077,"date":"2013-11-06T23:32:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-07T06:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=28077"},"modified":"2013-11-12T07:05:46","modified_gmt":"2013-11-12T14:05:46","slug":"sharqiya-viva-la-liberta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=28077","title":{"rendered":"Sharqiya & Viva La Libert\u00e0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sharqiya<\/em><\/strong> is the name given to the harsh wind that sweeps across the Negev, in southern Israel. It blows nobody good, but people learn to put up with it all the same. There are no other alternatives, one imagines.<\/p>\n

\"Kamal<\/a>
Kamal (Ednan Abu Wadi) in Sharqiya\/Photo: Amit Berlovitz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A new film of the same name, directed by Ami Livne from a script by Guy Ofran, presents a deliberately understated perspective to a man-made problem in the Negev: the tasking question of what to do with the unrecognised Bedouin villages built within \u201cJewish\u201d planning areas of the Negev. Like so many other things in Israel, debate concerning the issue has been reduced to zero-sum dimensions. What Sharqiya<\/em> presents is the human dimension to the complicated, maybe even intractable reality of a marginal existence.<\/p>\n

\"Kamal<\/a>
Kamal (Ednan Abu Wadi) at work\/Photo: Amit Berlovitz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kamal (Ednan Abu Wadi) is a security guard at Beer Sheva\u2019s Central Bus Station. He gets along well enough with his colleagues, mostly students earning a bit of cash on the side. There is a curious passivity about him. When he asks to swap work stations and is turned down, he seems sulky rather than angry. We see him at his most animated when he is tinkering about with cast off electronics. It very much seems that he\u2019ll sacrifice most things for a quiet life.<\/p>\n

\"Misa<\/a>
Misa Abd el-Hadi in Sharqiya\/Photo: Amit Berlovitz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But that he won\u2019t be granted. Kamal, a Bedouin, lives in an unrecognised village \u2013 in truth, an isolated outcrop of shacks, a pen for goats alongside \u2013 with his brother Khaled (Adnan Abu Muhreb) and Khaled\u2019s wife Nadia (Misa Abd el-Hadi). Khaled has traditional expectations: he doesn\u2019t understand what his wife expects to get out of her further education studies, he disapproves of his brother\u2019s past army service and is generally suspicious of the Israeli State and all its works. Kamal, for his part, is an army veteran. Not that this seems to be standing him in good stead. They\u2019ve just been served with an eviction order, and the received wisdom is that the promised compensation is scant replacement for what they consider ancestral land. \u201cWe\u2019ve been here since my grandfather,\u201d Khaled objects. \u201cSince before \u201948.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/a>
Two brothers, two viewpoints: Khaled (Ednan Abu Muhrab) and Kamal (Ednan Abu Wadi)\/Photo: Amit Berlovitz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kamal prefers consensus where Khaled favours confrontation. But once it becomes clear that the threatened eviction cannot be headed off, he is roused into a response. Security is of the utmost importance at the bus station. It is the perfect location for making a statement that will draw everyone\u2019s attention to the plight of the overlooked Bedouin. A statement with perhaps deadly consequences\u2026<\/p>\n

Sharqiya trades primarily on the virtue of restraint. It doesn\u2019t force unlikely dialogue into the mouths of its principals (as it happens, there is very little dialogue). Nor does it seek to make cheap political points out of the unusual yet entirely plausible storyline. It\u2019s up to the audience to form their own impression from the bare bones that the filmmaker provides. It is effective, at times discomfiting. No doubt different people will come to different conclusions about the matter of the transient Bedouin lifestyle, but at the very least Sharqiya gives a human face to an issue more often than not rooted in political abstractions.<\/p>\n

First as tragedy, the second as farce.<\/strong> Whilst Viva La Libert\u00e0<\/em> is a very different film from Sharqiya<\/em>, they drink from the same well of political pessimism. But whilst Sharqiya<\/em> is a joyless affair, Viva<\/em>\u2026is passionate.<\/p>\n

\"Viva<\/a>
Viva la libert\u00e0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There\u2019s no more fun to be had of making jest of the Italian political dispensation. Certainly, Enrico Olivieri (one half of an outstanding performance by Toni Servillo) seems to have long stopped having fun himself. The leader of the main Italian opposition party, his job ought to be to simply wait for the government to finish themselves off comprehensively. But the plebiscite, not unreasonably, want something more to rally round, a message of optimism and hope. (Personally, I have a thing about the place of sugar-coated messages in contemporary politics. Take Obama, for example. But that\u2019s perhaps for another time and place.) All that said, Enrico is not the man for the job.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not entirely clear whether he is motivated by spite, or fear, or simple fed-up-ness \u2013 or a combination of all three \u2013 but Enrico does a flit by the light of the moon, leaving a cryptic note for his long suffering aide Andrea (Valerio Mastandrea). Andrea, well meaning but floundering helplessly at sea, looks for the best way to cover up his errant master\u2019s tracks until he returns from whence he has wandered. In desperation, he visits Enrico\u2019s estranged brother Giovanni for help. Giovanni (the other half of Toni Servillo\u2019s magnificence) is a philosopher with a\u2026um\u2026delicate mental disposition. He has just been released from an asylum into the tender care of the community, and is prone to bursts of exuberance. One such burst ends up in him being mistaken by a political journalist for the missing leader of the opposition. Given the alternative \u2013 own up to the fact that no-one actually knows where said leader of the opposition actually is \u2013 and with an election campaign waiting to be fought, Andrea succumbs to the hair-brained inevitable\u2026<\/p>\n

Viva La Libert\u00e0<\/em> has a simple message: to yourself be true. Giovanni certainly injects much needed passion into matters political. It is all implausible fun, but with a serious point not far beneath the surface. Politicians \u2013 or their clones \u2013 aren\u2019t usually literate enough to quote Brecht at length during a political rally. But then, neither are we the plebiscite attentive enough to appreciate this for what it is. Do we need luck?\/So you ask!\/Expect no answer except your own.<\/em> Enrico, meanwhile, has taken refuge with Danielle \u2013 an old girlfriend, a script editor now living in France \u2013 and her family, an opaque film director and their percipient young daughter. He too wants to be true to himself, but needs help along the way.<\/p>\n

Strongly reminiscent of Peter Sellers\u2019 last film, Being There<\/em>, Viva La Libert\u00e0<\/em> is more an observation piece than fully formed narrative. It does suffer a little for this, with enigmatic entrances and exits amongst the cast. But it is hard to hold these against what is a goodnatured and very thoughtful film.<\/p>\n

Sharqiya<\/em> (2012)
\nDirected by Ami Livne, Written by Guy Ofran
\nStarring Ednan Abu Wadi, Misa Abd el-Hadi, Ednan Abu Muhrab
\n85 minutes, Arabic and Hebrew, w. English subtitles<\/p>\n

Viva La Libert\u00e0<\/em> (2013)
\nWritten and Directed by Roberto Ando
\nStarring Toni Servillo, Valerio Mastandrea, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi
\nItalian and French, w. English & Hebrew subtitles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sharqiya is the name given to the harsh wind that sweeps across the Negev, in southern Israel. It blows nobody good, but people learn to put up with it all the same. There are no other alternatives, one imagines. A new film of the same name, directed by Ami Livne from a script by Guy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28077\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}