Bratislava 2003

Who Cares?
by Olga Kmetova-Stajkova

Osama

Stir, stir, stir!
The world is running
in the tin.
Circles the fate
of a weak leaf
blown in the wind of tyranny.
The leaf shakes
her eyes pour
tears invisibly
bloody steps
write history.

That was the heavy feeling, which I had through the Afganistan film Osama. The eyes of the director Sedigh Barmak, whose films were forbidden during the Taliban era, wanted to show to the other part of the world the violence which exists in his native country, the part of the bare world where the bearer of life, the woman - mother means nothing. The director creates, by simple means, a strong true story of a girl who has to become a boy because the Taliban considered women as worse than animals, gave them the status of a thing without any rights, being only for the use of men. No rights means: not to work, not to have any opinions, not to go outside without a man, not to show her face in public, not to show any feelings...

Osama

Part of the audience was not as touched by the picture as me. Maybe the empathy of people who live in a democratic part of the world is not as deep as those people who lived under oppression. I realized this while watching the Italian film L´Isola by the young director Costanza Quatriglio. The story of another girl Teresa approximately the same age as Osama. Teresa dreams of becoming a sailor like the men on the Island. It is the normal dream of a girl her age. Osama didn´t dare to dream, she dreamed to survive. If. The viewer can only hope she survives, because she finishes up behind a wall of her owner who “saved “ her from an execution.

The Island

Two documentary fictions, one bears man’s principal the other woman’s, two lives from different parts of the world, one - Osama from the world which is a prison itself – Afganistan – the other L´Isola from the island which has a prison on it, though, conversely, the islanders treat criminals as human beings. Finally I understand the world Isolation comes from the world Isola (isle). As we all know once upon a time criminals and outlaws were sent for punisment to an island. Teresa’s predecessors were maybe also prisoners. Her grandma is living behind a large wall. She cannot see the free sea. At the end of the picture, Teresa’s friend, an old man, breaks the wall down with a bulldozer.

We are ISOLATED everyone of us, living on our own isle, watching from the perspective of our own experience. I believe that films like Osama and L´Isola are those which break down the walls between us.

dream, beat the drum
beat the ear drum
the sea is beating a rhythm
a storm
comes
another wave will bring
you free,
the sea bears
your secret to the Gods of will

Olga Kmetova-Stajkova
© FIPRESCI 2003

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