[R-G] Venice hails Chile's 911 film

[Barry Stoller]

AP (with additional material by BBC). 6 September 2002. Anti-U.S. Film
Hailed in Venice.

VENICE -- A controversial movie about the Sept. 11 attacks was received
enthusiastically at the Venice Film Festival yesterday, with the
audience reportedly giving the longest applause to a segment considered
among the most hostile to the United States. 

Some of the films, directed by luminaries such as the UK's Ken Loach,
Bosnian film-maker Danis Tanovic and Hollywood actor/director Sean Penn,
criticised America and its foreign policy. 

At Thursday's screening, the audience of mainly film-industry and media
guests applauded after each segment and at the end of the 135-minute
film, the ANSA news agency reported. 

ANSA said the longest applause was for British filmmaker Loach's
segment, which features an exiled Chilean living in Britain who writes a
letter to the families of the Sept. 11 victims. 

[N.B.] He tells them that in Chile on Sept. 11, 1973, a U.S.-supported
coup d'etat ushered in an era of torture and death. 

Another controversial segment is by Egyptian director Youssef Chahine.
In it, the ghost of a U.S. Marine who was killed in a terrorist attack
in Lebanon in 1983 is lectured about destruction caused by U.S. meddling
in the world - from Hiroshima to the Middle East.

Chahine's film set out to explain that anger towards the US only
increased violence in the Middle East. His film showed a Palestinian
suicide attack in Israel, laying part of the blame on Washington. 

"Israel fools everyone. Bush lets them decide who the terrorists are,
but imagine your house or the olive trees your ancestors planted being
bulldozed," says the father of the Palestinian who carried out the
attack in the short. 

"11'09"01" also will be shown at the Toronto Film Festival, on Sept. 11.
It opens in France and a dozen other countries on that date. 

There are no immediate plans for a U.S. release. 

A German film critic said the films showed there were poor countries who
have suffered under the influence of the United States. 

"They are saying: 'We have our own pain. We respect your pain but you
have to look at us too'." 


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Barry Stoller
http://www.utopia2000.org
The NEW ProletarianNews