Click on image to visit the VIFF page for Wind & Fog.

The Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) is just days away, and, if you’re like me, you’re overwhelmed by the number of choices, and trying to fit as much as possible into a busy schedule.  Nevertheless, one more film I hope you’ll consider is Mohammed-Ali Talebi’s Wind & Fog, which looks to combine magic realism with an anti-war message.  The film is sponsored by British Columbia Teachers for Peace and Global Education (PAGE), and has been rated so that children can attend.  Note that most VIFF films are not rated and therefore open only to adult audiences.  Only a small number of films are rated in order for children to attend, and these include selections in the VIFF’s High School Program.  Most students’ experience of film is limited to the extremely restricted palette of Hollywood, so this is an excellent chance to help young people expand their horizons.  I encourage teachers to make benefit of what’s available at the VIFF, including Wind & Fog.

Schooling the World: the White Man’s Last Burden

Schooling the World is a documentary that draws parallels between contemporary education aid to the so-called developing world and historical Christian missionaries who sought to ‘improve’ indigenous cultures.  Such a premise runs the risk of overcompensating for white-man’s-burden ideology with the equally problematic concept of the noble savage.  Fortunately, there is no such overcompensation.  Schooling the World makes the very convincing point that some overseas aid imposes on recipient communities an inappropriate and even harmful education model developed for post-industrial consumer cultures.  The film includes interviews with anthropologist Wade Davis, who worries aloud about the disappearance of cultural diversity, and makes the point that many in the so-called west see their own culture as some kind of benchmark of normalcy, rather than simply another culture.  The only possible weakness of Schooling the World is that it relies exclusively on just one case study: Ladakh, India.  This, however, is a minor complaint, for which beautiful photography, skillful editing, and an excellent soundtrack more than compensate.  Schooling the World is a must-see for anyone who might be contemplating another fundraiser to build a school in some far-off land.

The White Meadows

In this mysterious film, by Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, a man travels dispassionately from island to island on a salt sea, collecting inhabitants’ tears.  On this journey, he witnesses strange rituals and horrible injustice.  A young girl is deemed to be the prettiest on her island, and therefore cast away on a raft.  An artist is blinded for failing to concede that the sea is blue.  (In his paintings, it is red.)  A man is sent down a well, and his line cut.  At one destination, a young boy, a stowaway on the tear-collector’s boat, is stoned.  The tear-collector says he’ll intervene, but certainly takes his time.  What are we to make of this man?  What are we to make of this film, which, like the man, seems unwilling to pass judgement?  (In this regard, it brings to mind Shohei Imamura’s Ballad of Narayama, in which gross injustice is carried out to hardly any objection.)  However we interpret it, The White Meadows is a thought-provoking masterpiece of heavy symbols and exquisitely framed shots – and I don’t use ‘masterpiece’ lightly.  It was for me the only transcendental experience of the 2010 VIFF, and highly recommended for those who like their films arty and over-the-top.

But no one does film discourse like Monty Python…

 This time, a prose poem:

In the fog of a May Day hangover, Stephen Harper, our leader: a stable majority.  Greet the Canucks.  Average salary: $1.9 million.  Greet them at the airport as they drive away in mostly black Mercedes SUVs.  We are all Canucks.  In good faith.  Corporatocracy is Good.  Socialism is stupid.  Give up.

I was thinking I’d deposit that here instead of my usually less cryptic editorial.  I was going to leave it to you to figure out – but perhaps some explanation is in order.  To start with, I’m tired.  It’s the end of the school year and I’m marking and planning final projects for seven courses, and doing the PAGE journal, and doing my union local stuff.  So there isn’t much time to write.  And I’ve been reading a book.  Well, several, actually.  But the one I’m thinking about here is called Your Call Is Important to Us: the Truth about Bullshit.  It’s by Laura Penny, published in 2005, related to current events of the time, so not exactly up to date.  And for or those of us raised on analysis by Chomsky or Bagdikian or Adbusters, it’s nothing new.  But it’s still good, and makes a nice gift for motivated students and friends and relations who smell something but don’t yet know what it is.  Although for most of us, I think it’s apparent we’re bathing in it.

In my ‘poem’, the word “corporatocracy” is from Micah White, writing in the May/June 2011 issue of Adbusters.  In the same issue, I learned, from an article by Tzvetan Todorov, that the US government justifies torture as not-torture if it’s done in “good faith”.  This bullshit term comes up again in our current round of bargaining with the provincial government.  They tell us they’re bargaining in “good faith”.  Which reminds me, incidentally, of a movie called I Come in Peace, in which an extraterrestrial alien goes around slaughtering people, all the while telling them, “I come in peace”.

The “socialism is stupid, give up” is another perspective on “Christianity Is Stupid” by Negativland.  As for the Canucks, well, that should be obvious.  But one should never take the obvious for granted: I’m reminded that, during our PAGE Anything But Conservative campaign, someone on the e-list asked, “Doesn’t this assume that as a member of PAGE I couldn’t want a conservative [sic] government?”  Answer: “No, it assumes you noticed the word “Peace” in “Peace and Global Educators”.  Not that there’s nothing good, perhaps, about a Conservative majority government: the sooner we dismantle any rights we have as workers, the sooner we’ll all realize what kind of bullshit corporatocracy we live in and rise up.  Socialism is stupid.  Give up.

I’d end my editorial there, but have a few more things to say – possibly hopeful.  The first is that, as public school teachers in BC, we’re in deep, deep trouble if we don’t start standing up for ourselves, and our profession.  Toward this, it will help us to have a more global sense of our world, and our role as teachers in it.  If you’ve been paying attention to bargaining, you know that we have a massive struggle ahead.  I hope we’ll be united and strong.  And if we gain anything, or just hold our own, I hope we’ll start critically investigating our complicity – or non-complicity – in a system that doesn’t serve our interests at all.  And to take us there, we’ll need brave leaders who aren’t afraid to ask big and uncomfortable questions.  And these leaders will need advocacy groups like PAGE to encourage them.

I believe that PAGE has had a positive impact on BCTF policy, and we’re taken seriously because we have the numbers (that is, members) to support us.  So please don’t let your membership lapse.  And better yet, get involved.  We’re on a campaign to build capacity by bringing new activists, and fresh ideas, to our PAGE executive.  Toward this end, PAGE executive positions now have term limits.  For example, my term as editor will end with the summer 2012 issue of The Global Educator.  In the meantime, we’ve created an editorial board (currently comprised of Pummy Kaur, Lisa Kjernisted, and Shanee Prasad) to give other PAGE members a taste of what it’s like to edit the journal.  If you’d like to join the editorial board, or check out a PAGE executive meeting, please contact me or any of the other PAGE executive members.  Our Annual General Meeting will take place during our fall conference, and I hope to see you there.

This editorial, which makes reference to hockey, was written before the Stanley Cup Riot on June 15.  To read my comments on that, click here.