Yamustafa!

Movie Critic Review "All cinema is Political" Costa Gavras. If you have not yet seen any of the short movies made by one of the leading African filmmakers,  then here you are! A shared copy of roughly the 27 minutes that the movie spans! Our admiration and respect go to Mr. Ibrahim Shaddad, the filmmaker. It is needless to ask if you have had enough of African cinema! Short Movie: Insan (Human Being) 1994. Synopsis A herdsman, obviously not poor, is forced to move away with his family and cattle toward the big city to avoid perishing from the drought which stroke his natural Bedouin habitat in sub-Saharan west Sudan, Africa. En route, he loses to death from thirst, his family and all but one cow left from his cattle. In the unwelcoming city, where the man is stunned by the abundance of water for him and his cow, life turns to be harsher than the drought in that his kind of people is not able to fit and sustain himself throug...

Article by Taha Elkhalifa Dogtooth , the Greek film is a drama about how dictatorship could affect human behavior and psychology. Re-framing of people, for example, was the mere goal of the Islamist rulers of Sudan from 30th of June 1989 until now. The same process is taking place in many Arab Gulf countries with a continuum of human products that reflect the complete submission to the quiet and negative rejection of the re-framing process. In Dogtooth words are given different meanings for example zombie means yellow flower, telephone means table salt and pussy (the female genitalia) means lamp and the cat is an extremely dangerous animal. The three adolescents who have no names in the film were taught these meanings by their parents as the plot of the film says. An example of this same naming type was lived in Sudan during the civil war (1989-2007). The directed and controlled media of the Sudanese Islamic rulers practiced some sort of open deception as they named genocide an...

By: Muhsin Khalid Part Six "Too late!   Too late to save him, In vain, in vain they tried. His life was England’s glory, His death was England’s pride" Rudyard Kipling "A world with no room for the Gordons, is a world that will return to the sands." The narrator in the movie Earlier in this series, mention was made of the Mahdi fighters' plundering of an abandoned cannon in the aftermath of their battle at Kashgel with the thirst-stricken army of Hicks Pasha. Near the closing scenes of the movie, the only time we learn that they could use it properly is when they aim and hit a building, not the desperate soldiers of the besieged Gordon Pasha! The hidden meaning here is that no matter what these fighters earn, they don’t deserve it because they are bound to misuse or abuse it. This structuring of the hidden meaning of worthlessness builds up to the moment when Gordon declines from holding his sword presented to him by his servant and ta...

Article by: Muhsin Khalid Part Five The Mahdi in "Khartoum" is portrayed as a Ghoul, a black vampire whose guest room is noticeably occupied by jars filled with cut off heads, whose talk is threatening to kill women and children, every soul..! The Amazigh  in the "Gladiator" are shown as no different. They sip their wine from the skulls of messengers and mail deliverers who are not, by convention, to be killed. In the movie "300" of 2006, the invading Persians come to fight the Spartans by an army from the underworld; an army of mirabilia ; of exotic creatures as though bred from marine and some monster organisms which, in their onslaught in battle have children and women entangled in the cracks of their hoofs and under their folds , before they meet their doom. In another Hollywood movie we are introduced to a Muslim terrorist . We cannot tell whether he is Palestinian or Egyptian because he uses both accents! He is on board of...

Article by Muhsin Khalid Part Four The Clowning of Olivier Lawrence Olivier's portrayal of the Mahdi is compromised by overacting.  His facial register is obviously exaggerated. His features shiver as though afflicted by an overdose of a drug. He yells at his fighters when they bring him Gordon's  head with an almost comic theatrical movement:   Take it away from me!   His lower jaw is dropped like a camel fed up salt in order to sell it puffy and swollen. This excessive portrayal of the Mahdi defeats the desired outcome of the scene. Olivier as Othello (1965) There is too much that is grasped by  camera which would have looked more effective on stage.  The mixing of film technique with that of the theater, if not done with full awareness of the subject, yields outright foolishness from head to tail. A similar mistake to this I find in Peterson Wolfgang's perspective in his film Troy when he makes...

Movie Critic Article: Part Three The Imperialist Design of Khartoum Summary and Film Specifics: Khartoum (1966) UK, 127 min. Color. Cinerama (wide screen). Available DVD and VHS. United Artists. Director Basil Dearden ; Producer Julian Blaustein; Screenplay Robert Ardrey ; Camera Edward Scaife; Editor Fergus McDonell; Music Frank Cordell ; Art Director John Howell. Khartoum has a prestige cast made of great actors: Charlton Heston as General Gordon, Laurence Olivier as the Mahdi, Richard Johnson and Ralph Richardson as Gladstone the British prime minister. 1966: Academy Award Nomination: Best Original Story & Screenplay. Set in the year 1884, filmed in Egypt and finished in England, Khartoum is a masterpiece both  in cinematography and acting. The historical twist to allow for a dramatically impactful  meeting of the two main characters, although artistically justifiable, was used to mal-represent  the character of the Mahdi and depict him as a...