Jihad for Love – in New York City this week (take 2)

May 23, 2008

How very, very odd. I had a post up, and it disappeared.

This is a recreation, as much as I can.

If you’re in New York City this week, go see this movie. It’s got a great producer, a fellow I know only through the Louis August Jonas Foundation. It has a good director, and a few very good reviews. And it covers a topic of surpassing importance.

Below, the press release from the producer, Sandi DuBowski, and other resources.

A Jihad For Love Launches U.S. Theatrical Release at IFC Center in New York from May 21st – June 4th – Two Weeks Only!

Buy your ticket online at http://www.ifccenter.com/film?filmid=38472.
Box Office: 212.924.7771 323 Sixth Avenue (at W. 3rd St. )

“CRITIC’S PICK! BRAVE…EYE-OPENING!”
– New York Magazine

“REVEALING AND MOVING…A GIFTED FILMMAKER!”
–Wall Street Journal

“COURAGEOUS!”
-The Guardian

“LIFTS THE VEIL OF SECRECY…FRANKLY BRAVE!”
-NPR Talk of the Nation

Fourteen centuries after the revelation of the holy Qur’an to the Prophet Muhammad, Islam today is the world’s second largest and fastest growing religion. Muslim gay filmmaker Parvez Sharma travels the many worlds of this dynamic faith, discovering the stories of its most unlikely storytellers: lesbian and gay Muslims.

Produced by Sharma and Sandi DuBowski (director of the award-winning Trembling Before G-d), A Jihad for Love was filmed over 5 years in 12 countries and 9 languages and comes from the heart of Islam. Looking beyond a hostile and war-torn present, it reclaims the Islamic concept of a greater Jihad, whose true meaning is akin to ‘an inner struggle’ or ‘to strive in the path of God.’ In doing so the film and its remarkable subjects move beyond the narrow concept of ‘Jihad‘ as holy war.

www.ajihadforlove.com

After Premieres in 15 countries, being banned in Singapore , selling out everywhere including India and Turkey and five international awards, the film comes to the U.S. and NYC.

We need people to show up during our NYC theatrical run in very large numbers. Bookers across the country will be looking at the success of the film at the NYC Box Office to determine its life everywhere else in the country. If you come the first five days, you can significantly impact the film’s theatrical life in the U.S. and other countries.

Joining director/producer Parvez Sharma and producer Sandi DuBowski in the theater are Imam Muhsin Hendricks, the first openly gay imam from Cape Town , South Africa and Mazen from Egypt/France, featured stars of the film and Faisal Alam, the founder of Al-Fatiha.

We will turn the cinema into a town hall – for debate, change and transformation. Visit http://www.ajihadforlove.com/screenings_D.html for our dazzling line-up of Q & A’s and forums on Islam, Human Rights, South Asian Sexualities, Interfaith such as

Thursday, May 22nd, 7 PM & 9.30 PM
Evening with Sholay and A Jihad for Love Team

Friday, May 23rd, 7pm
Dialogue with Progressive Muslims Meet Up Group

Saturday, May 24th, 5:05pm, 7pm, 9:30pm
Human Rights Watch and Scott Long present in association with A Jihad for Love: Before the Crusade Passes By: Trapped in the middle of a “clash of civilizations.”

Sunday, May 25th, 7 PM and 9.30 PM
Films for Change

… Looking forward to seeing you there!

May 21st – May 29th Show Times: 11:20am, 1:15pm, 3:10pm, 5:05pm, 7:00pm and 9:30pm

Q & A’s and forums with Parvez, Sandi, Muhsin, Mazen, Faisal, and others after 7pm & 9:30pm shows

Get Involved! Here are some ways you can support this film:

Right Now:

* Purchase tickets online for The IFC Center
* Post a link to www.ajihadforlove.com and www.ajihadforlove.blogspot.com on your blog

Support The Cause:

* Donate to our International Muslim Dialogue Project at http://www.ajihadforlove.com/donate.html

Watch A Jihad for Love trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78jUBRio3So

Listen to Parvez Sharma on NPR‘s The Takeaway at http://www.thetakeaway.org/archives/2008/05/19/3

Best,

Sandi DuBowski
Producer, A Jihad for Love
Director/Producer, Trembling Before G-d

Parvez Sharma
Director/Producer, A Jihad for Love

Other resources:

1 Comment | Civil Rights, Human Rights, Movies | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Dangers of creationism: Synapse shutdown

May 3, 2008

One of the ultimate defenses of creationism, once you’ve demonstrated that there is no science and no good theology in it, is the creationist claim “it doesn’t hurt anyone.”

Well, yes, it does. Over the years I’ve noticed that creationism appears to suck the intelligence right out of otherwise smart or educated people. I also note that it tends to make otherwise good and honest people defend academic debauchery and dishonesty.

It’s as if claiming to be creationist hogs all the available RAM in their brains and forces a near-total synapse shutdown.

Cases in point: Creationists are scrambling to the defense of the mockumentary movie “Expelled!” in which Ben Stein trots out almost every creationist canard known to Hollywood in defending some of the greater misdeeds of the intelligent design hoaxers. Otherwise sane, good people, claiming to be Christian, make atrocious defenses of the movie.

I cannot make this up: Go see Mere Orthodoxy and Thinking Christian. Bad enough they defend the movie — but to defend it because, they claim, Darwin and Hitler were brothers in thought? Because evolution urges immoral behavior? I stepped in something over at Thinking Christian, and when I called it to the attention of Tom Gilson in the comments, he deleted the comment. (I’ve reposted, but I wager he’ll delete that one, too, while letting other comments of mine stand; he’s got no answer to any of my complaints.)

The stupid goes past 11, proudly, defiantly. The Constitution specifically protects the right of people to believe any fool claptrap they choose. These defenses of a silly movie come awfully close to abuse of the privilege.

Other useful things:

Update: Holy mother of ostriches! Tom Gilson at “Thinking Christian” has a nifty device that bans people from viewing his blog. Paranoia sticks its head into a whole new depth of sand!  Here’s a truism:  Creationists who like to claim Darwin was the cause of Stalin and Hitler, which is by itself an extremely insulting and repugnant claim, almost never fail to resort to Stalinist and Hitlerian tactics when their claims are questioned.  Call it Darrell’s Law of Evolution History Revisionism.

11 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, Charles Darwin, Darwin, Education, Ethics, Evolution, Free press, History Revisionism, Hoaxes, Holocaust, Intelligent Design, Junk science, Movies, Rampant stupidity, Religion, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science, War on Education, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Ben Stein busted for Godwin’s law violation

March 26, 2008

Godwin’s law predicts, reductio ad Hitlerum explains.

Image from Stein's

And Vox Day explains it doesn’t mean what Ben Stein thinks it means. Day and Stein ought to get together to coordinate — of course, as Twain noted, if they’d just stick to the facts, they wouldn’t need to coordinate at all.

Lacking any significant response from the movie’s creators or fan, scientists and skeptics have turned to debating who gets to kick the turkey while it’s down.

11 Comments | Creationism, Intelligent Design, Rampant stupidity, Science, War on Education, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Movies to make your high school history teacher cry

March 24, 2008

Via Popehat, Yahoo!’s list of the Ten Most Historically Inaccurate Movies.  Popehat notes that Mel Gibson is a big player in three of the ten.

There are a lot more to add to the list, I think — pick your favorite Zorro movie, for example.  Or think of the fog at the airport in “Casablanca.”  Especially if one starts picking historical nits in pictures that don’t pretend to portray historical events, the list grows quickly.   Has anyone vetted the years of the song in the soundtrack for “Forrest Gump?”

This list at Cracked.com hangs 11 inaccurate films.  It’s snarkier and much more profane, probably not safe for work or school.  There is a lot of overlap.

Which movies have been left off the lists, other than all of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies? 

13 Comments | Accuracy, History, Movies | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Economics in motion pictures: Essay deadline March 7

February 21, 2008

E-mail from the Dallas Fed:

The deadline for entries for this year’s Essay Contest, “Economics in Motion Pictures,” is almost here. To ensure that your students’ entries arrive in time to be eligible for the contest, the essays must be postmarked by March 7.

Please remind students to review the rules of entry carefully. For details, visit http://dallasfed.org/educate/essay/index.html

If you have any questions, please contact Heather McDonald at heather.mcdonald@dal.frb.orgblockquote>

Leave a Comment » | Economics, Student projects | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Oswald’s Ghost appears in Texas Theatre, 44 years later

November 22, 2007

President John F. Kennedy died 44 years ago today. Five year anniversaries tend to get more attention.

High school U.S. history students have been alive less than half the time since the assassination. To them it is ancient history, even more than the Vietnam War. Teachers need to find ways to make the history stick even in years that are not multiples of 5.

President Kennedy greeting a crowd in Ft. Worth, Texas, Nov. 22, 1963

A new film offers some aid. “Oswald’s Ghost” had it’s world premiere at the Texas Theater in Oak Cliff, the place where Lee Oswald was arrested. Restoration of the theater is not complete, but it is far enough along to host events.

The movie is in severely limited release prior to a January 14, 2008 premier on PBS stations. Director Robert Stone places the assassination in history and tells some of the effects on America, rather than dwelling on facts or controversies around the shooting. The movie got a good review from the Dallas Morning News:

“Nobody had stepped back and told the story of the debate itself,” he says.

“How did these ideas come about? Who propagated them and why were they so widely believed? And what had they done to this country? Seventy percent of Americans still believe the government was involved in the Kennedy assassination or has worked to cover it up. And that’s had a huge impact.”

In the end, a seemingly disparate chorus of voices – including the late Norman Mailer – accomplish the filmmaker’s objective.

As he says, Oswald’s Ghost is “a way of explaining the ’60s. We’re not arguing anymore about what happened in Dealey Plaza. It’s an argument about explaining what came after … and how did everything go so wrong.”

With luck, it will be on DVD for classroom use by early February.

Dallas’s PBS outlet, KERA, is showing another locally-produced film this week that I have found useful in the classroom, focusing on the news coverage that day, JFK: Breaking the News. For slightly more adult teachers, there is the fun of finding news people in their infant careers, people like Robert McNeil then of NBC, Peter Jennings, and then-local Dallas reporters Jim Lehrer and Dan Rather, and Fort Worth reporter Bob Schieffer. Few other one-day events have produced such a stable of news greats — the Kennedy assassination spurred the careers of more new people than any other event with the possible exception of World War II. Jane Pauley narrates the story.

The Baltimore Sun’s Frank James offers serious thought on the historical influence of the day in a blog post, “The Big ‘What If?‘”

There is a webcam view of Dealey Plaza from the Texas Book Depository Building — the cam claims to be from the 6th floor window from which Oswald shot, but it looks like the top of the building to me.

The Kennedy assassination kicked the wind out of America. In many ways it was the event that triggered 1968, perhaps the worst single year in American history.

44 years, and we still don’t know the full set of ramifications of the events of that day. Historians keep chipping away.

1 Comment | Disasters, History, History images, History museums, History video sources, JFK assassination, Texas, Texas history | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Strong hints that “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is fiction

March 14, 2007

The DVD release of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s latest cinema episode is probably driving the traffic to the post I did a while ago noting that the movies are not based on any Texas incidents (see “Based on a true story, except . . .). The original movie, in 1974, was billed as “based on a true story.” “The film which you are about to see is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of five youths, in particular Sally Hardesty and her invalid brother, Franklin,” the Narrator says opening the film.

The latest enfilmations apparently carry the same claim (I say apparently because I have never seen any of them through, and only a few snippets on television of any of them — I go by what I hear and see from others).

We have the testimony of the author of the original screenplay that it is fiction, loosely based on a famous case in Wisconsin which was also, very loosely, the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and the later, more horrifying Silence of the Lambs. Other internet sites say it’s fiction, such as Snopes.com (a favorite and very good hoax and error debunking site).

Still, the kids ask.

Why not turn this into a geography and/or history exercise? Read the rest of this entry »

34 Comments | 100 Milestone Documents of U.S. History, Accuracy, Bogus history, Geography - Physical, History, Lesson plans, Movies, Texas | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Based on a true story — except, not Texas. Not a chainsaw. Not a massacre.

October 8, 2006

Nota bene: Be sure to see update, here.

First, there was the woman who squealed in class when I mentioned Travis County, the Texas county in which resides Texas’s capital city, Austin. She said later she had thought it was a fictional county. By the way, she asked, was the rest of the “Texas chainsaw massacre” story true, too? (I have never seen any of these movies; I understand the 2003 version was set in Hewitt, Texas, which is a real, small Texas town near Waco, between Dallas and Austin — but not in Travis County. I’m not sure what Travis County has to do with any of the movies.)

Logs awaiting processing at a sawmill in Nacogdoches County, Texas - Ron Billings photo

Victims of a real Texas chainsaw massacre: Victims await “processing” at a sawmill in Nacogdoches County. Photo by Ron Billings, Texas Forest Service.

Since then, in the last couple of weeks I have had at least a dozen requests to teach the history behind the movie, the “true story.” The movies are all highly fictionalized, I note. Perhaps I should plan a day to discuss real Texas murders, and just what fiction is, especially from Hollywood.

According to Snopes.com, one of my favorite debunking sites, there was never a Texas chainsaw massacre. There was a Wisconsin farmer who stole corpses from the local cemetery, and upon whom was based the earlier Alfred Hitchcock movie, Psycho. There was the chainsaw exhibit at Montgomery Ward seen by writer/director Toby Hooper, when he needed inspiration to finish a screen treatment. That’s about it.

But it’s nearing Halloween, and the studios in Hollywood hope to make money.

There are real Texas crimes that would be good fodder for movies, in the hands of intelligent and creative people. One wonders why more movies aren’t done on the real stories. Read the rest of this entry »

120 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, History, How do we know what we know, Movies, Texas | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Turning Point Presentations: Nixon’s “Checkers” speech

October 7, 2006

During one of my phase-shift transitions between universities and public schools yesterday, I caught a snippet of a commentary that I thought was on Richard Nixon’s 1952 speech that kept him on the ticket with Dwight Eisenhower. Public reaction was reported to be overwhelmingly warm, the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket won the 1952 election, won again in 1956, and Nixon eventually took the presidency for his own in 1968.

Shouldn’t that speech be considered one of the greater presentations of the 20th century, at least? It probably should, especially when we consider what history might have looked like had Nixon left the ticket — no Nixon nomination in 1960 against John Kennedy, no later Nixon presidency, Nixon continuing in the Senate . . . gee, which path is more gloomy?

The Checkers speech does not wear well, I think. Reading it today, I see the origins of smear campaign tactics and diversionary tactics that mar so much of today’s election campaigns and policy discussions.

This all comes up because the transcripts of the famous 1977 interview series newsman/comedian David Frost did with Nixon is the basis for a new play in London, “Frost/Nixon” by Peter Morgan, with Frank Langella playing Nixon and Michael Sheen as Frost — a play that is already being made into a movie for Universal Pictures by Academy Award winning director Ron Howard, but after a Broadway run in 2007.

Nixon’s mea culpa answer to Frost on the entirety of the Watergate scandal — “I made so many mistakes” — in the NPR piece voiced by Langella, sounded exactly like Nixon. I mistakenly thought it a recording of the Checkers speech, hearing just a snippet. The Frost/Nixon interviews would probably never have been necessary, had the Checkers speech not been a success. Surely there is a direct line from the Checkers speech to Nixon’s attempt to revive his reputation in the Frost interviews.

Watergate on Broadway, with a movie in the works, should offer good opportunities especially for high school history teachers to bring Watergate to a new generation. Too many people today fail to understand the depth of the damage done to Constitutional institutions in that crisis, and how lucky our nation was to have survived it. There are many lessons there for us in our current Constitutional crisis.

A lesson awaits, also, in the career of David Frost, who crossed from news to comedy and back. Many kids today use comedians as their chief source of political news. We should not be surprised — but let us hope that today’s comedians have as much a sense of public duty as David Frost did in 1977, even while using his public service interview to revive his own career.

Sometimes free markets work spectacularly, don’t they?

4 Comments | Ethics, Famous quotes, History, Lesson plans, Movies, Presentations, Presidents, Quotes, Turning Points, Watergate scandal | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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