Hello Kidist –
I apologize for taking so long to respond in detail to your email and your review – but I want you to know how grateful I was to be included on your distribution list, and how very much I appreciated your clear and trenchant review.
In this era of political correctness above all, it really means a lot to read something which represents a true critical engagement with significant issues and a willingness to go against the tide of (as you say, usually poorly-informed) public opinion.
Dear [...],Thank you for your email. It has been difficult getting people to understand my presentation and analysis of this film.The good thing is that the article has gone "viral" although in a small capacity, and wide range of people have read it.Beshir's film may one day end up in film and media classes. That was my purpose for sending it to the Ryerson media-based faculty. Perhaps the various Ryerson faculty and departments may take this (only) review and analysis into consideration as they form their curricula.
I meant to say "this only critical analysis and negative review"]
To: [...]
Subject: Sundance Film Festival film - Faya Dayi
I am writing to inform you of an important film, that has been awarded numerous prizes, and was first introduced at the Sundance Film Festival in 2021, under the World Cinema Documentary Competition. Jessica Beshir's film Faya Dayi was selected as a Grand Jury nominee, but received no prize.
Since then, Faya Dayi been shown in Canada, at Hot Docs, and at the Vancouver International Film Festival. It received the "audience award" at Hot Docs. Here is a list of the film's screenings, and the awards and nominations it received. I have written to both these institution informing them of Faya Dayi, and its intent.
I have not met Beshir, but I knew her family in Mexico during my research time there. Her father is an Oromo-Ethiopian (Oromo being one of the ethnic groups in the southern region of Ethiopia), and her mother is Mexican. Beshir was in Los Angeles studying in UCLA (literature and film studies) when I was in Mexico. Now she lives and works in Brooklyn.
I have written an article on this film. It covers socio-cultural issues of the Oromo, Beshir's film style, her intent, and her influences. Her main "protagonist" is a leaf called khat, which is chewed, but sometimes smoked, which is a mild stimulant. This khat has replaced crops like wheat, barely, and teff (the grain for injera), and has become an exportable commodity.
I write about her choice of imagery, her camera style, her editing technique, and her use of sound (music, speech, noise, sound effects and ambient sound) to induce a particular mood. In the article, I say:
...khat's shadey smoke...hooks the film's audience into its spell...
Beshir never articulates if she is Muslim (the majority religion in this nonetheless Christian Orthodox stronghold), nor an atheist, nor even the pagan/animalism/animism of the pre-Muslim Oromo which is combined in their general religious life. She never mentions Christianity.
Orthodox Christianity is a strict religion, where any form of "spell" initiated belief is denounced and rejected. Prayers are said to exorcise any such presence in a person or a society. Khat is not part of the "religious" life of Christian Ethiopians, with its merkhanna inducing spells.
One of my most visceral reactions to "Experimental Film," which I studied in Ryerson, is that I felt a sense of "bewitchment" of being transported away from myself, of being under a spell.
I think Beshir uses these experimental film techniques to arrive at her "bewitchment" of the audience, in order to pull them into her film, to transport them to this "merkhanna" or the high induced by khat, which becomes a spiritual high, and for the audience to enter this realm of her film - a cinematic high.
I have written an article, in defiance of Beshir's "merkhanna" spell, a defiance which I gained after watching scores of beautiful, bewitching, flickering images of the experimental films. I wouldn't have been able to write this article without my film education in Ryerson.
But Beshir has a bigger agenda of splitting Ethiopia apart, inducing young Oromo men to war, and supporting a very concrete secessionist movement in Ethiopia. People are malleable, and easily manipulated through the merkhanna of film. The majority of viewers are from Western countries, and her film was screened mostly in Europe and North America, where the understandable lack of knowledge of the viewers makes them susceptible to Beshir's manipulations, where they can influence international, and foreign, affairs related to Ethiopia. Ethiopians are slowly denouncing this film, its "drug" focus, and its political agendas. The majority of Ethiopians, the Oromo included, do not support any form of secession.
Here is my article: A Critique of Jessica Beshir's Film Faya Dayi, published at numerous Ethiopian media sites. It is slotted for the Council of European Canadians site in mid-January, focusing on Beshir's immigrant status, and her manipulation of American and Canadian film grants and film festivals to further her secessionist agenda.
I believe this small, but influential film, may appear in various film and art programs, and even classrooms, and I present a criticism, and critique, in a manner that few (if any) have approached.
Sincerely,
Kidist Paulos Asrat