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The Art of Negative Thinking

Geirr is 33 and irreversibly handicapped in an accident. He lives in Norway in a beautiful house with his beautiful wife, but he feels like shit. He smokes weed, he watches movies all day long in his dark room and he barely speaks to his wife. His wife invites a therapy group to house, to introduce other handicapped people to Geirr so that he would feel better. But the therapy group is composed of a government employee whose job is to take care of handicapped people in their rehabilitation and reintegration to society, a couple composed of a health man and a completely paralyzed woman, a “malade imaginaire” lady, and a man who is obviously a victim of catatonia. The head of group, the lady; is an unbearable woman who is obsessed with psychological shit like positive thinking, keeping away the pessimistic thought, inner strength and so on. She has an effect on others but she is challenged by Geirr, this sharp intelligent man who refuses to give himself into this meaningless set of ideas which would make a fake happy zombie out of him.
The struggle continues with Geirr swearing, laughing, humiliating others- which is quite challenging for the audience as we all think that we should be very nice with handicapped people at a level of absurdity. As the therapist leaves after having a punch on her face-br Geirr unsurprinsingly, the group goes through a journey of rediscovery, drinking, smoking and just letting the anger come out which they have been repressing for a while because of idiotic therapies. Night long laughs, cries, shouts, fights, destruction of home furniture, nervous breakdowns finally at sunrise give way to a more peaceful and wise acceptance of what they are. A must see. Smartest film I have seen lately. Harsh but yet full of life, based on Geirr's idea, "you can not accomplish anything unless you learn the art of negative thinking"

Taxi To The Dark Side

Another film festival on the way; I have not written about what I have seen during the previous one, IF Istanbul, an alternative film festival-as the name suggests- in Istanbul. Rush hours in theaters, lines in front of doors, human deadlock in the buildings because of poor timeline management for films. Still, unique opportunity to open new windows in one's brain. There is so much we are not even aware of. Feels like impossible to catch on.

Taxi To The Dark Side; an Oscar winning documentary directed by Alex Gibney about an Afghan taxi driver who has been arrested as Taliban member and transported to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where he died in custody, after five days. A letter sent to Dilavar's (his name) family in English to inform them about his death. The whole thing seems absurdly tragic. A family living in mud bricks with goats and cows, with dust and absolute nothingness in the middle of nowhere receiving a letter in English from the US Military. They knew what happened to their son only after the journalist who was investigating the whole thing explained them what happened. The documentary mainly focuses on torture techniques used to make detainees talk, supposedly admit they are indeed making part of Taliban. Then it links the story to Ebu Ghareyb, another prison in Iraq from which the pictures were released and shocked the whole world. Not as popular as Ebu Ghareyb, Bagram Air Base seems not to be very different.

Approved CIA techniques for detainees were performed by young soldiers who think they should only follow the guidelines they were provided with, lacking, however, clear lines, limitations and "not to do's" about how far they would go to make the detainee speak. This is a familiar story, which we know from Guantanamo where detainees are held violating their primary rights granted to them by the rules of Geneva Convention: a right to tribunal.

This is a shameful story for humankind. A denial of all we have accomplished in the name of democracy and human rights, and the idea that everyone in this planet-taliban or not-has to be heard in a court before final judgement and the punishment which will follow. Dilavar's may be was a taxi driver, who was so excited the day he was arrested about his new work, or he was a brainwashed Taliban murderer. We will never now. In both cases, he is dead in custody, like many others, after hours of starvation, sleeplessness, humiliation, sexual harassment, brutal treatment and constant shock. And this, is our primary failure. We will never know whether a human being was innocent or not. And this, is the failure of law, basically going back to state of nature.

Children of Men

In the last couple of weeks I have seen and read so much on humans future. Our common problems like global warming, inequality, human rights. It kinds of transfers me in a new state of mind. Children of Men was the lightest of all, but still it has an effect. Slavoj Žižek said a very clever thing during the interview; he said the metaphor of the boat at the end of movie should guide us in our actions from now on. To accept rootlessness. To alternate the boundaries in our minds. The boat does not have any fixed route. It is the acceptance of a borderless existence. The movie in itself I think was mostly powerful because of its long sequences which is obviously very hard to create. I noticed it very late; when the Fishes have finally managed to take Kee and the baby in the refugee camp. The whole sequence with gun fires, fights, bombs exploding, the blood on the camera was one shot, which is quite unbelievable.

I think, Zizek was right again, by saying that our problem is that we hear what scientists say about the climate change. This is not a problem of being convinced, because we are convinced that we have a such problem, the problem is that after we listen to all these, we go out in our garden and we see -as he says- the sun, the flowers, and we say to ourselves, that it is all here, and it is not going anywhere. So we continue our lives. The problem here; in my opinion that we fail to come up with this "abstraction"; to say that our garden may not be here in the near future because of global warming. Yet it is surprising because we all consider ourselves, among all others, as the only species which is capable of abstract thinking. We think about the future, the existence, self recognition, THE GOD. This is amazing to see how humankind, totally capable of thinking the intangible does not manage to accept that the garden, the sun, the flowers might vanish in the very near future. We need may be- more powerful signs to make us start to think about this crucial abstraction, like thinking of something which is here-now might not be here anymore tomorrow.

Vogliamo Anche Le Rose

An incredible documentary made of only genuine materials from public archives in Tuscany and archives of RAI and other private channels in Italy. Even the animations added in the film are genuine-except some. It basically underlines the feminist movement in 60s and 70s in Italy, based on three different stories of three different women, their diaries and what they have written given this specific period time. The producer said the diaries are also authentic, and they scanned the public archive in Tuscany, to find stories matching their subject. The film is great. The idea of a public archive with thousands of diaries is beyond my imagination. It is a freaky idea.

Apart from that the film in a simple manner points out to crucial issues that women fought for in 70s like abortion, pills and gender equality in the law. The producer also said the feminists in Italy did not embrace the film, as they found it too soft. Foe me; it is a good sign, which means the women in the streets will like it. Something does not have to be too complex to be good. It is simple, understandable, sharply clever and it is not alienating anyone. Very successful. Thanks to Alina Marazzi- the director -for that.

BOREDOM

Yes. We are DYING. We are dying every minute. Ahmets, Nicks, Sebastiens.All of us. We are a generation whose hopes and ideals were traded for some non sense commodities. They made us forget what was like being there for someone we do not know. They have made us forget the meaning of solidarity, hard working(in a real sense) creativity and productivity (here terms as"productivity" should not be understood as concepts of modern Western society-they refer to something bigger).In return, they have given us toys to play with, to fill in the blanks that remain from all that we have lost. Now the DOPE is connecting us. Coke is now connecting people in New York and Istanbul. All those people who surrender their bodies to drugs to destroy themselves so that they would never fell the "Plain" again. They are connected to each other by boredom. We are all bored. We all have something inside us, which remains unknown, of which we are barely aware. Because we are NOT happy. Most of US. In general.We all have different reasons but our state does not differ. We have to sell our bodies in Thailand, we have to die because of land mines in Siirt. We have to run away from bombs in Iraq. Or we have to explode ourselves in a metropolitan underground. We have watch TV until we fell numb.We have to be hysterically afraid in Chicago, in London, we have to listen to the news of people who suffocated in a container while trying to come to our country illegally. In Paris we have to be afraid of our Arab peers. We have to starve to death, and we have to eat cookies made of FUCKING MUD so we don't die in Africa. WE HAVE TO DIE. ALL THE TIME.