On Mon, Dec 20, 2021 at 6:43 AM Kidist Paulos Asrat <---@yahoo.com> wrote:
Hello Ms. Sun,
I read a review of Faya Dayi here, and the initials AS were at the bottom of the article. Are you the author of the article?
Thank you,
Kidist Paulos Asrat
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On Monday, December 20, 2021, 11:25:21 AM EST, Abby Sun <---@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Kidist, yes indeed, that's my writing! I wouldn't characterize it as a review though, they are intended to be program notes for the series, the DocYard, which I curate. Did you attend the screening last week?
Abby
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On Mon, Dec 20, 2021 at 12:08 PM Kidist Paulos Asrat <---@yahoo.com> wrote:
Thanks for your reply. How do you feel about aestheticizing a narcotic? Beshir never really comes clear about her position on this plant. And much of her critique of khat centers around various Ethiopian regimes, on whom she seems to lay the blame for the frustration of these youth, and hence their "languid" existence, and drug addiction.
KPA.
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On Thursday, February 10, 2022, 04:02:49 PM EST, Abby Sun <---@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Kidist, so sorry for the super late reply! I fell and hit my head, and have been recovering from concussion symptoms. (I'm recovered!) I think that narcotics are frequently aestheticized in documentary form. Even the griminess of a "realistic" video a la Pedro Costa's work, for instance, is a specific high culture aesthetic treatment (kind of reminiscent of chiaroscuro, in his case). In films like Midsommar the approach of emulating, visually, the experience of being high/hallucinatory makes up almost the entire last act. So for something relatively mild, and culturally important, that isn't depicted as often within the Western documentary circulation spaces (like the DocYard at the Brattle), I think that the political position of representation is to take up that space.
For me, personally, the aesthetics don't bother me around khat or drug use. What concerns me is that they have become a bit common in recent years—handheld, gliding, b&w images in documentaries lauded on the international film festival circuit. Jessy's camerawork is an uncommonly beautiful example of this way of filming, but its ubiquity is starting to become a bit of a trend, and whenever something becomes trendy, my personal stance is to call into question its usage.
Did you want the film to have a clearer position on khat itself?
Abby
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On Thursday, February 10, 2022, 08:42:20 PM EST, Kidist Paulos Asrat <---@yahoo.com> wrote:
Hello Abby,
This article, mine, which is published in various Ethiopian online sites, and now widely read, will answer most of your questions.
It is interesting that you equate griminess with aesthetics. But, in contemporary film, beauty, and aesthetics as an independent concept and quality, is shunned, or camouflaged by: griminess; sex; hallucinatory - i.e. a state of narcotic high; violence; infantilism - in the "cartoon culture" of recent literature and artists such as Jeff Koons; horror, third world poverty; crime; and death, as in Damien Hirst's dead animals installations. And so on.
Beauty is no longer acceptable in our culture unless it subsumes, or interacts, with one of the above elements (there are many more, but I think you understand what I'm saying).
These filmmakers take on these "themes" - horror, narcotic-induced high, etc., - at the expense of the subjects, the people, that make up their films, whether documentary of fiction. Their canvasses can be film or video screens, photographs, and of course paintings and drawings.
I believe it is because people/artists have eschewed Christianity, from which the greatest achievement of Western art were produced. And all these filmmakers are trained/educated in this Western aesthetics and culture, wherever they're from, and wherever they create their works, so they understand the importance of this religious influence.
All high art has a fundamental religious component, some explicitly, some implicitly. When Western, and West-educated, artists renounce, and reject the Christianity that is at the core of Western art, they have to latch on to some other form of religious/spiritual replacement. Some claim atheism, but they present other "religious" forms such as paganism, for example.
So even if Beshir claims to come from an "Eastern" culture, her aesthetics are informed by her contemporary Western, Christianity based, art education. And she takes on khat as part of the southern Oromo people's merkhanna, a Muslim and Pre-Muslim (pagan) idea of connecting to deity through narcotic-induced "high." Her grimy film thus takes on a religious and spiritual tone.
This "spiritual" high, induced by khat, thus becomes an excuse, or an explanation, for these youth and their drug habit. And her hallucinatory film style mimics this highness, this intoxication.
But, the reality is that these young men are high. And the religious component is left to their elders, parents, grandparents, etc. Their intoxication is separate from the merkhanna.
So like all contemporary films on fundamental human conditions - love, sex, family life, and of course religion - Beshir's aesthetics becomes an exercise in criticizing culture. And in the end, her film is actually about a narcotic that is taking over the lives of these Oromo youth.
Since, as most contemporary artists, she also has a "social" message she wishes to impart, her film becomes a "message" and takes on a political component. She films "beauty" in order to show us the "reality." of the grimy, hard life.
And like all politically-oriented artists, she needs to find a "reason" for this harsh life of these youth.
She blames the historic, dominant, Christian, Amhara culture. The Amhara are the founders of Ethiopian civilization (the link is to one of my articles), and they are the ones who maintain it. But, in their Christian oriented philosophy, all human beings are part of God, and they pulled the various regions in Ethiopia, including the Oromo, and considered them part of this Greater Ethiopia.
Beshir, political accusations don't hold. The Oromo were not malignantly persecuted by the Amhara. In fact, true destruction started during the Communist era of the mid-to-late twentieth century. But ALL Ethiopians suffered then, and probably most of all the Amhara.
Well she has to choose, or to act. Her work was made on the backs of these young men and their families. So what's next? She can sit in her New York apartment and take on interviews through the comports of zoom and talk of Oromo oppression. But what is she doing about it? My article challenges her to go and help, directly, with concrete on the ground projects like drug rehabilitation centers. "Put her money where her mouth is."
So, this is where her real, underlying message comes across, through these zoom "confessions." Beshir is fundamentally a secessionist. She has attached herself to anti-Ethiopia groups which are stationed in Canada and the US. They instigate, harm, and endager the lives of the Oromo youth through their arm chair, West-based, secession agitation.
Contemporary filmmakers, with their aetheticized films of grimy real life, are caught between being revolutionaries or being aestheticists. Most of course choose the latter, and leave the revolution to others, as do Beshir's groups. This means putting these Oromo youth in the avant-garde, to fight Beshir's and her arm-chair instigators' agendas. It is much easier to hold a film camera rather than a gun.
These are the backstories that Beshir will not tell you.
Kidist
Published article: A Critique of Jessica Beshir's Film Faya Dayi
My articles at Art and Commentary by Kidist Paulos Asrat on Beshir and Faya Dayi here, here, here, and here
Kidist