Friday, April 8, 2011

They took your life, they could not take your pride



I did not knew Juliano Mer-Khamis. Never heard of him. Never knew his work. Yet when i heard of his assassination (on same day as Martin Luther King), something hit me deep inside. I wondered why. How can you move so much by death of stranger when your own would certify you to be as cold as rock when it comes to emotions towards a human.


To get an idea of what and how i felt, you would have to see the movie he made: Arna's Children (BUY THIS DVD  all the money from this purchase keeps Freedom theater alive)





His mother started it all. Arna started a theater in war torn Palestenian village of Jennin and tried to give a way out of the madness all around. Juliano was perhaps the only one who could understand the full intensity of her effort and her logic behind the same. You can see this in his movie. You see the children taken from war torn society struggling amongst hatred and conflciting propagandas. Then you will see them pushing the anger (born out of so called injustice) and channelise it into thier talent. Then you would see how talented they become at actual performance (to me they seemed better actors than the trash i see on screen). You can also see the hope in their eyes. Then you are introduced to the darker side of story when you realize that they end up dead for the cause of "their people". You could see all this because Juliano made you see through his lens. He could make you see all this because he could understand the issue to its core. He could see a way out of propaganda and was perhaps disturbed by the way Arna's effort could not compete with the realities of time.


He continued the same efforts and "they" took his life. They tried to kill hope. Hope of a way out. Because "they" like madness to hope. They would rather prefer gun over stage. The cycle of violence seems more sacred to them. The un-named and masked "them" wanted rational to shut up since its too loud and disturbing for irrationality they live.


I don't know yet what i can and will do about this but its for sure that I wont let the idea die.


Some videos involving Juliano's work:



























1 comment:

nagardee said...

to me, freedom is the freedom theatre
- Juliano Mer-Khamis.
nice. he'll live on.
his kind of people do.

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