THE SECRET TRIAL 5 - Review By Greg Klymkiw - HOT DOCS 2014 - Legacy of Canada's Thinly Veiled Fascists. This chilling, important documentary that details Unconstitutional Incarceration is a HOT DOCS 2014 MUST-SEE

STOCKWELL DAY:
CREATIONIST, SPORTSMAN, POLITICIAN
A MAN AMONG MEN

The Secret Trial 5 (2014) Dir. Amar Wala ****

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Before we take some time to consider Amar Wala's chilling and important motion picture The Secret Trial 5, which details the Canadian government's horrendous abuse of five men who were incarcerated for spurious and most likely racist reasons, let us consider Stockwell Day. He ultimately plays a large role in this film since he held the lofty Minister of Public Safety position during a crucial time in the lives of these men, their families and, frankly, all of Canada.

Stockwell Day was an avid supporter of the idiotic security certificate, a 50-year-old immigration tool that can imprison non-Canadians living in Canada for reasons of - ahem - national security. Evidence is never fully revealed, trials are held in secret and the real hope is that those arrested under them, will agree to just go back to whatever country it is they came from.

Unfortunately, since the security certificate became an anti-terrorism tool in Canada after 9/11, people arrested under their auspices would have been committing suicide by agreeing to scurry back. We're talking about political refugees here. Going back meant, and still means, torture and execution. Besides, these were people who'd already made lives here with family, friends, bright futures and contributing to the fabric of Canada's multicultural society.

In the film, however, we're treated to numerous instances of Stockwell Day defending the use of the security certificate and even finding ways to get around a Supreme Court decision that these tools were (and are) constitutional. The bottom line for those like Day and his ilk is that these people are under arrest, stripped of their freedom and pretty much have to rot until they make the "right decision" and bugger off.

Stockwell Day, an avid sportsman, preacher and believer in Creationism (Yup, mankind walking with the dinosaurs) was the Minister presiding over the horrendous incarceration of these five men at a time when they needed a champion in that portfolio instead of an enemy. Then again, this was the same man who suggested that legalizing abortion could lead to child abuse. Injusticebusters.org quotes Day from the Calgary Herald with the following tidbit:

"If you can cut a child to pieces or burn them alive with salt solution while they're still in the womb, what's wrong with knocking them around a little when they're outside the womb."

On homosexuality, the same source quotes Day from the Edmonton Journal with the following nugget of wisdom:

"Homosexuality is a mental disorder that can be cured by counselling [and is] not condoned by God."

Day also expressed that sex education might lead to teen pregnancy:

"There is a growing body of literature suggesting that, as sex education becomes more comprehensive, there is a corresponding increase in sexual activity."

These five guys never had a chance.

Watching this stunning film, I was actually feeling ashamed to be Canadian. That our country could be governed by the likes of Day and the other fascists currently in power is simply beyond the pale. We watch, helplessly, as the film details the abuses these men suffered. Adil Charkaoui, was incarcerated for 21 months and forced to live under house arrest for four years - WITHOUT CHARGES. Hassan Almrei was in jail for seven years, plus forced into three more years under house arrest - WITH NO CHARGES LAID. Mahmoud Jaballah was working as a principal in a Scarborough school when he was arrested, then incarcerated for six years and continues to live under house arrest - AGAIN, NO CHARGES WHATSOVER!!! Mohamed Harkat spent a relatively breezy 43 months in jail and has lived under house arrest since 2006!!!!! Guess what? No charges. The fifth individual, Mohammad Zeki Mahjoub, chose not to participate in the film, but we learn that he was imprisoned for seven years and has continued to live under the strictest house arrest since 2007.

The house arrest is especially harrowing to experience while watching the film. For an individual to be forced to suffer the indignities the film details is yet another aspect that made me ashamed to be Canadian. The aforementioned non-participant in the film has publicly requested to be returned to prison, insisting the cruel and unusual suffering under house arrest is worse than incarceration in a jail. What the film details here in the house arrest of the other participants is indeed, so sickening, it's almost impossible to blame him.

Sometimes, the importance of a film can take precedence over its importance as film art. Such is not the case here. Wala's picture is meticulously researched, surprisingly balanced (given its cinematic activism) and superbly crafted. But most of all, it IS an important work. On the eve of yet another Supreme Court challenge to the unconstitutionality of security certificates that could hopefully result in the release of Mohamed Harkat, every Canadian needs to see this film and raise the hugest ruckus imaginable.

In fact, audiences all over the world need to see this film. It's proof that IF a so-called benign democratic stronghold like Canada is willing to engage in such fascist activities, imagine just how horrendous the whole wide world is becoming with respect to the thug-like imposition of Orwellian measures to keep everyone in their place.

The Secret Trial 5 premieres at Toronto's Hot Docs 2014. For ticket info, contact the festival website HERE.

RHINO SEASON - TIFF 2012 - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Exiled Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi delivers a heartbreaking love story that engages us in cinema's poetic qualities whilst making a plea for the rights of artists to be honoured and sanctified against the whims of all repressive government policies.

Rhino Season (2012) ****
dir. Bahman Ghobadi

TIFF 2012 - Special Presentation

Starring: Behrouz Vossoughi, Monica Bellucci, Yilmaz Erdogan, Belçim Bilgin

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Artists have always been prime targets in power-hungry repressive regimes. To destroy a nation, then rebuild it in a new image, the first line of attack is to decimate its existing culture. During the 20th Century, the world experienced this again and again in every Totalitarian regime - Nazis, Fascists, Communists, Fake Democracies fuelled by corporate dictatorships and religious fundamentalism are but a few instances of this war on art.

Given that the world is on the precipice of complete collapse, works like Bahman Ghobadi's film Rhino Season are more important and vital than ever. That said, I do wish to temper this statement, since such an assertion can be a dual edged sword - relegating a work's importance to the picture's backdrop and subject matter can also place it in a lofty enough position so as to render its considerable aesthetic gifts as the sum total of its merits. Therefore, in declaring that the film is essential, I wish to also stress that the film's political and thematic necessity is not the only reason it holds a fundamental place in the world.

The picture is, quite simply, dazzling - an original voice that yields a deeply moving, artistically daring and consummate demonstration of how cinema can work at the highest levels of the medium. In the case of Rhino Season, the medium is simply not the message, nor the message it conveys, but how the medium is pushed over the usually accepted boundaries. However, in so doing, the film provides its important political stance and challenging aesthetic framework in a manner that, if properly presented and distributed to wider audiences, has considerable potential to affect cinema-goers the world over.

The tale director Ghobadi relates is as simple and ages-old as time itself - a love story that spans decades - replete with suffering, longing and passion that knows no bounds. Behrouz Vossoughi, a mega-wattage Iranian movie star now exiled to an America that has little to offer a great actor like him from a Hollywood that is so bereft of ideas that the only roles he is asked to play are those of terrorists, is the star of Ghobadi’s film.

Vossoughi plays Sahel, a Kurdish writer who specializes in poetry. In spite of the fact that his writings are not political, he is arrested, tortured and interrogated until he receives an inhuman 30-year-long prison sentence.

Not content to destroy Sahel's life, the authorities do the same to his wife Mina (a heartbreaking performance by Monica Bellucci). She is incarcerated for 10 years and upon her release, she is told that Sahel is dead. He most certainly is not. Ghobadi then delivers the unforgettable scene of Mina making her way through a forlorn graveyard devoted to the burial of "heathen" and finally weeping before the weathered marker of her husband.

Sahel serves all 30 years of his sentence and devotes the rest of his existence to tracking down Mina.

If this tale doesn't move audiences to tears, nothing will. What contributes to rendering this simple, affecting narrative in the richest and most artistically complex mise-en-scène imaginable, is how Ghobadi peppers the tale with voiceovers reciting Sahel's clearly humanist (not politically didactic) poetry which contrast the horrendous words of his torturers. Blended with images of sublime beauty that convey resplendence of the most exquisite kind, they too provide a contrast to the visual realities of the dank, foul prison Sahel spends 30 years in.

Rhino Season accomplishes the extraordinary. It achieves the highest level of cinematic poetry, tells a great story and, by virtue of Ghobadi's approach, it achieves its goal of exposing us to the plight of artists in Iran whilst gently and metaphorically delivering the most powerful plea of all - that artists have no place in prisons for simply expressing themselves (politically or not) and that finally, this should extend to all people, of all walks of life, in all countries.

Expression is who we are. It is what defines our respective cultures and most of all, who we are as a species. Humanity IS expression. What places Ghobadi's great film on a pedestal of truth is that expression includes love.

Love is what drives his picture, his characters and by extension, the human race.

Love must be protected and sanctified at all costs.

When that ceases, so do we.

"Rhino Season" received its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2012). For ticket information, please visit the TIFF website HERE.
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