{"id":243,"date":"2011-04-27T05:02:34","date_gmt":"2011-04-27T05:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitednotionsfilm.com\/stolen\/?p=243"},"modified":"2013-09-23T14:39:40","modified_gmt":"2013-09-23T14:39:40","slug":"review-stolen-seeing-more-possibilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stolenthedocu.com\/?p=243","title":{"rendered":"Review – ‘Stolen’: Seeing More Possibilities"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Cynthia Fuchs<\/a> 5 April 2011<\/span>
\n <\/span>PopMatters Film and TV Editor<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

You can\u2019t change these ideas until you get out and see other possibilities.
\n\u2014Tizlam<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cIs it true my white grandmother beat you as a child?\u201d asks 15-year-old Leil, Her mother, Fetim, looks at her hard, still chewing her lunch. They sit at a table, a TV behind them, as well as a doorway, open onto a bright white daylight. Leil continues, \u201cVioleta already knows,\u201d as the camera cuts to filmmaker Violeta Ayala, seated across from them. Her face turns cloudy as she listens: \u201cYou\u2019ll be in trouble, by saying that we were beaten,\u201d cautions Fetim. Again, the camera shows her instructing her daughter, \u201cIt\u2019s always been that slaves are beaten from a young age.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scene breaks here, as Leil gets up to welcome a younger sibling inside, through that bright-lit doorway. And the film,\u00a0Stolen<\/em>, has changed. Before this moment, as Ayala has narrated, the documentary was observing preparations for a family reunion. Fetim had come to a refugee camp in the Algerian desert as a child some 30 years ago, leaving behind her Moroccan mother Embarka and her siblings. At first, Ayala says, she and Dan Fallshaw meant to film Spanish-speaking refugees in the Western Sahara, and felt lucky to have access to a family about to reunite, thanks to a program initiated in 2004 by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees that brings Moroccan family members to the camp for five-day visits. With some 27,000 on the waiting list, the fact that Fetim and Embarka have been selected seems miraculous.<\/p>\n

And yet: this story is now reframed, as Ayala and Fallshaw learn that their subjects are not only refugees, but also slaves. The filmmakers can\u2019t begin to guess at the complications that follow from this discovery.<\/p>\n

Stolen<\/em>\u2014screening 5 April at\u00a0Stranger Than Fiction<\/em><\/a>, a co-presentation with\u00a0the African Film Festival<\/a>, and followed by a Q&A with Ayala and Fallshaw\u2014charts their efforts to understand what they find. Their questions elicit astonishing and also cryptic stories, as Fetim and Leil, as well as Fetim\u2019s cousin Matala, sort through what is safe to tell \u201cthe foreigners.\u201d The storytelling process, as it unfolds on camera, is at once fascinating and alarming, as it becomes clear that saying \u201ctoo much\u201d is more costly for Fetim than her Australian visitors anticipate.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the filmmakers\u2019 parts in the process are also complex, as they are increasingly responsible for what they\u2019re filming\u2014whether by paying for part of the celebration for Embarka\u2019s visit or by documenting stories told by Fetim and her family, descriptions of the system of slavery still in place in the camps and elsewhere. As the film reports, the Polisario Liberation Front, a nationalist organization backed by Algeria, have been fighting with Morocco over the Western Sahara for the last 34 years. Neither the Moroccan government nor the Polisario wants such stories documented. And yet, with at least 2 million black people living in slavery in North Africa,\u00a0Stolen<\/em><\/a> insists, telling such stories is only a first step.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Fetim\u2019s initial revelation that she has a \u201cwhite mother,\u201d Deido, surprises Ayala, who wonders how they ended \u201cup together, with so much racism in the past?\u201d Deido explains, sort of. \u201cSaharan people are not all the same,\u201d she says, her interview shot as she sits before a striking red tent wall. \u201cSome of them buy black people and own them, others free them, but keep them as their family. We don\u2019t talk about this anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
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Still, Ayala and Fallshaw find that some black Africans do talk about this, but only when they are alone together, and for a brief time, in front of the \u201cforeigners.\u201d The film pieces together bits of conversations, a fragmented structure that results from the filmmaking process per se, as the Polisario and then the Moroccans try to confiscate and at last steal their tapes. The effect of the fragments is to the point, however, as the stories are shared and whispered, then covered over or repressed, as experiences are acknowledged and then denied, as autonomy is named\u2014in the form of \u201cliberation,\u201d as Deido says she has granted to Fetim\u2014and then rescinded, when papers are withheld and daily life continues as such.<\/p>\n

As Ayala and Fallshaw tell it\u2014their own voiceovers working in tandem, finishing each other\u2019s sentences\u2014they\u2019re struck by Fetim\u2019s submission to Deido, her performance of chores and her lack of independence. Further, though no one will \u201cspeak about this,\u201d they also discover that Embarka belonged to Deido\u2019s father, and that she bore him several children. \u201cDeido\u2019s father fucked her,\u201d says Fetim\u2019s friend Jueda after Fetim becomes so unnerved by the conversation that she leaves the room. \u201cThat\u2019s how the white girl Fatma was born,\u201d Fatma being Fetim\u2019s sister, still living with Embarka in Morocco.<\/p>\n

A friend of Leil, Tizlam, is also outspoken concerning what it means to be a slave. \u201cYou\u2019re just scratching the surface,\u201d she says, her face at once poised and fierce in dim shadows. \u201cThey come and take the children and the parents can\u2019t say anything, they have no rights.\u201d Her grandmother concurs, and they seem willing to speak, though they don\u2019t seem to expect a change. \u201cThere is no law for us,\u201d Tizlam says, \u201cWhat we want is for this not to exist. It should be erased, it should be from the past, not the present or the future.\u201d Ayala and Fallshaw describe their growing concern, not only for their own safety but also for \u201call the people who trusted us with their stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their worries are well founded, as they are detained by the Polisario. The filmmakers bury their tapes in the desert\u2014an apt and awful metaphor for the experiences they\u2019ve heard about\u2014and then escape to Paris, where they pursue the story, hoping to recover their material and make public what they\u2019ve witnessed. A phone call with Leil reveals, however, that their own ambitions and hopes don\u2019t matter much: Leil cries, \u201cTrying to do good, you did bad. Now the police are all over us.\u201d As Ayala ponders this notion in voiceover, that \u201cwithout intending to, we got Leila and Fetim in a lot of trouble,\u201d the film structure makes clear the problem: she\u2019s in a hotel room, at a distance. None of us can know what Leil and Fetim are experiencing\u2014off camera.<\/p>\n

The film traces how Ayala and Fallshaw come to know the ongoing complexities of slavery. As it is denied by most North African regimes (in Mauritania, Mali, and Senegal, as well as Algeria and Morocco) and described here by Ursula Aboubacar, the Deputy Director of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, as \u201ca cultural issue that is existing.\u201d That is, as Aboubacar puts it, the UN can only \u201ccombat\u201d the practice by bringing it to the attention of local police forces, the Polisario included. Ayala is horrified by the lack of power wielded by the UN, or anyone else, it seems. Indeed, as Tizlam has said, \u201cThere is no law for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The documentary makes this case forcefully. In addition to assembling interviews that officials and others have tried to keep quiet, it includes footage of a screening and audience responses in Sydney. The ethical questions here impossibly tangled: even after Fetim, Leil, and Deido withdraw their consent to appear in the film, Alaya and Fallshaw include not only their interviews, but also footage of Fetim at the film\u2019s premiere (the Polisario, a note explains, \u201cflew Fetim to Sydney to protest at the film\u2019s premiere,\u201d along with her husband). Her objections have led to other repressions, as the\u00a0Swedish public broadcaster SVT-UR<\/a> has pulled the movie from its schedule. While the truth remains elusive off-camera,\u00a0Stolen<\/em> insists that still more needs to be exposed, that documentation is indeed only a first step.<\/p>\n

\n

Rating:\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Cynthia Fuchs is director of Film & Media Studies and Associate Professor of English, Film & Video Studies, African and African American Studies, Sport & American Culture, at George Mason University.<\/p>\n

Link to article on POPMATTERS<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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By\u00a0Cynthia Fuchs 5 April 2011 PopMatters Film and TV Editor You can\u2019t change these ideas until you get out and see other possibilities. \u2014Tizlam \u201cIs it true my white grandmother beat you as a child?\u201d asks 15-year-old Leil, Her mother, Fetim, looks at her hard, still chewing her lunch. They sit at a table, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":244,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolenthedocu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolenthedocu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolenthedocu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolenthedocu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolenthedocu.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/stolenthedocu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":563,"href":"https:\/\/stolenthedocu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions\/563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolenthedocu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolenthedocu.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolenthedocu.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolenthedocu.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}