The Sixth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

46 Ari Folman Israel b.1963 Production stills from Vals Im Bashir (Waltz with Bashir) 2008 / 35mm, colour, Dolby Digital, 90 minutes, Israel/ France/USA/Finland/Switzerland/Belgium/Australia, Hebrew/German/English/Arabic (English subtitles) / Image courtesy: Sharmill Films, Melbourne While Palestinian cinema finds its roots in the traumatic experience of dispossession — the nakba or ‘catastrophe’, 5 which followed the exodus of Palestinians from their homeland and the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 — many contemporary artists and filmmakers working in the Gaza Strip have produced works that stand out against the gravity we might expect. Elia Suleiman’s Al Zaman Al Baqi (The Time That Remains) 2009 uses irreverent humour and absurdist situations to chart his father’s move from resistance fighter during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence to postwar compliance, alongside the filmmaker’s own path from young conformist to rebellious activist then, ultimately, to mute observer. Larissa Sansour’s Happy Days 2006 employs the theme music from the 1970s American sitcom of the same name to convey the resilience of individuals in the occupied territories and their ability to transcend expectations of their experiences. A refusal to be defined by historical trauma or political circumstances is characteristic of works by artists and filmmakers from Armenia and the diaspora. At the juncture of West Asia and Eastern Europe, Armenians live with the legacies of the 1915 Armenian Genocide in which over a million Armenians were killed. 6 Economic hardships resulting from Armenia’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, as well as the Armenia–Azerbaijan conflict that followed it, are reflected in Harutyun Khachatryan’s Sahman (Border) 2009, where a buffalo becomes the symbol of trauma and redemption on a farm occupied by refugees. Artavazd Pelechian’s cinematic poems Tarva Yeghanakneve aka Vremena Goda (The Seasons) 1972 and Obibateli (The Inhabitants) 1970 celebrate resilient humanity, raw animal life, landscape and community in an allegorical register that creates new cinematic languages. The region from Afghanistan to Iraq and Iran has experienced parallel trajectories of political manipulation, war and invasion, with outside political interference in Iran’s internal politics from the 1950s, three decades of conflict in Afghanistan, the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Iran– Iraq War (1980–88), the United States’ military aggression in Iraq in the 1990s and 2000s, and the ongoing plight of Kurdish people living across the geographic lines of Iran, Iraq and Turkey. Shahram Alidi’s Sirta la Gal ba (Whisper with the Wind) 2009 is a poetic exploration of Kurdish survival in a landscape marked by this turbulent history. A postman performs the role of a messenger of hope and reconciliation, playing recordings of combatants and isolated survivors trying to reconnect with family. Other artists and filmmakers have explored possibilities for self- affirmation and dissidence in younger generations, as well as the position of women. Working against the grain of media images of war, terrorism and religious extremism, they have sought to articulate complex local knowledges, and emerge from a vibrant social and artistic context that draws on a rich heritage of art, architecture and literature, and historical networks of exchange. The last decade has seen the rise of affordable digital filmmaking and the regional mobility of artists and filmmakers, allowing local stories to be recorded in isolated regions and shared internationally. Hana Makhmalbaf’s Ruzhaye Sabz (Green Days) 2009 is a testament to these freedoms, documenting the violent government crackdown on mass demonstrations following the disputed Iranian presidential election in 2009. Makhmalbaf shoots directly amid the protests in Tehran and tells the story of a young Iranian woman’s creative crisis amid these events. Makhmalbaf has reflected on her role in mediating representations of these events: I am not a sociologist but my film is sociological. My camera works like a mirror to show you the Iranian society undergoing a revolution with all its hopes and doubts. 7 A fragile mood of hope is also revealed in Mahmoud al Massad’s Ea’ Adat Khalk (Recycle) 2007, where Abu Amar, a former Mujaheddin reflects on the economic and political conditions