Author: gffreviews

Free Money is a documentary following a pilot scheme in Kenya to give every adult in a village universal basic income. It follows the recipients for 5 years to examine the long-term impact it has on their lives, the good, the bad, and the unexpected.

Right, so like this film, I’m not gonna go over the basics of this topic, how aid is intrinsically tied to the perpetuation and legacy of colonialism, how it reinforces those established power dynamics, and the multiple ways in which it has had damaging effects both in specific cases but also generally. The film doesn’t need to recap how decades of aid in its billions has somehow not brought an end to economic and social injustice, almost as though throwing money at problems doesn’t solve them. One of the biggest issues in international aid, as with so much else, is the people with money don’t experience the problem, and the people who experience the problem don’t have the money. So Give Directly decides to cut the Gordian knot by simple allowing people’s donations to go directly to people in need in cash form.

Sounds too good to be true! So simple, poor people getting money? Redistribution of wealth? Who wouldn’t want that? I mean, the usual bampots, but among decent people, who wouldn’t want that?

Here’s the problem with that. Charity doesn’t exist in a vacuum. No one steps outside of our racist, imperialist, capitalist systems when they engage in charitable giving and work. All of that is still at play. And it can be seen really clearly in why and how this pilot scheme is created.

The founder of Give Directly seems like a fun nice guy. Studied economics and international aid at Harvard, and found that a huge amount of money pours into NGOs but the quantifiable impact of what comes out is frequently marginal, certainly far less than the stated goals, and in many cases mixed with unanticipated negative outcomes. Universal basic income is an idea that has taken up interest among the left in the States, what would that look like as an aid model? And unlike other interventions, would it have a quantifiable, measurable impact?

And here we get to the nub of the matter, because what this pilot scheme is, at base, is an experiment. To suss out if universal basic income has any negative unanticipated effects, before we try it on white urban Westerners, we will try it on Black rural Africans. Because we can. Because we have the money and the power and they don’t. Because it’s the accepted dynamic that they are done-to. Because if anything goes wrong, it’s not like they’ll have the power or the money to do anything about it. Because if anything goes wrong, they’ll be expected to just be grateful for anything they get. Because if anything goes wrong, then it’s only happening to them. Because colonialism and aid are so intertwined we don’t think twice about making Africa a playground for our own social experiments and economic projects.

So what does happen when you directly give people money? Well, the obvious good that you would expect – being able to buy food, being able to pay school fees, being about to keep your motorbike running, being able to repair your house, being able to install electricity and clean drinking water. All that really impactful stuff you hope for when you set up an aid project. It’s absolutely fair enough to point out that none of that is to be sniffed at.

But when you build an experiment, you need a control group. In this case, the control group is all the villages in the surrounding area. And what happens to a community when people who were experiencing the same hardships suddenly become a group of have and have-nots? What happens in the religious life of that community when some people feel like their prayers are being answered and some are not? What happens in families, between friends, when some people are able to pursue their education and see a better future for themselves, and others have those opportunities withheld from them?

At the beginning of the film, skeptics in the village remind everyone, there’s no such thing as free money. And they’re right. But no one could know what they would pay for it.

I am still greeting from watching Amerikatsi. Haven’t cried all festival, not once, but this…

Amerikatsi is the Armenian word for American. It’s what they call the main character, Charlie, an Armenian-American who comes back to rebuild Armenia in the 40s.

Where to start? Although too young to really remember it, Charlie was one of the few members of his family to survive the Armenian genocide, and was smuggled out the country to safety. He grew up his whole life in the States, speaking only a smattering of Armenian. Despite this, he was determined to return home to the country his family were driven from. So in an act of what, to us, looks like startling naivety, he returns to Soviet-controlled Armenia.

I’m gonna pause here and just say, from that beginning, I know what you are expecting. It’s what I was expecting. Genocide survivor, Stalin’s Soviet Union, this is gonna be grim. But it’s not. It’s actually quite funny and full of humour. And even when the drama does weigh heavy, it is to show the how the best in someone rises to meet it.

Charlie shows up in Soviet Armenia every inch the irritatingly cheerful American, stumbling roughshod over the minefield of unspoken rules in Soviet society. He makes a friend in a Soviet commander’s wife and is simple enough to think that is actually a good thing. Needless to say, the commander immediately finds a reason to get him locked up. Sentenced to 10 years hard labour in Siberia, he is saved when an earthquake brings down the prison walls, and he is kept on to rebuild it.

And it’s here the film really begins. Because in this darkest hour, what Charlie discovers is he can see through a crack in the wall, into the flat in the nearby building, and in watching their daily life, he feels connected to the world around him and has reason to go on living.

After the comedy of errors that brings him to this point, I was not prepared for how incredibly moving this film was about to become. So far the film had ducked and weaved between my expectations, having this sunny, optimistic, good humour at odds with its very bleak turn of events. From this point on though, it becomes this ode to the endurance of the human spirit.

The flat he can see into, it belongs to one of the prison guards, Tigran, and he learns pretty quickly that the man doesn’t want to be a guard, he wants to be a painter. He creates these beautiful paintings of Mount Ararat, but has to hide everything due to fear of Soviet censorship. Charlie watches from his cell, eating along with his meals, drinking along with his toasts, and making paintings of his own from the stone and sand around the prison, to paint alongside the man who also yearns for a softer, more beautiful world.

And through this keyhole, Charlie gets what he came to Armenia for. He sees the celebrations, with traditional songs and dances. He learns to speak Armenian, and all the manners and customs. He sees it survive. And he survives.

Amerikatsi is based on the experience of the filmmaker’s grandfather, this was his story, his life. And it is one of a light burning in the darkness, of humanity preserved against all odds, of the unbreakable human spirit.

My favourite film of the festival.

Hong Kong Mixtape documents the activist art of the Free Hong Kong movement, from the street art, to the music, the songs, the dances, the performance art, posters, sculptures, illustrations, photos, films, everything!

As Hongkongers fight back against attack on their freedom by the Chinese government, taking to the streets in unprecedented numbers, so many iconic moments are captured, and come to symbolise the hope of the movement. What happens when the wave breaks, and in the renewed tyranny, so much of that creativity is made illegal? The film charts what happens when images, gestures, and words are all criminalised. It is not simply the threat of imprisonment itself, it is cutting the chords of solidarity, isolating people in their sense of powerlessness, and slowly choking out hope.

Amazingly so many people, especially young people, find a way to persist. Luna raps, Kacey creates these beautiful artworks, and an anonymous art collective sneak their sculpture of a defiant protestor into a gallery show. Even where they are being erased, the political slogans washed off, the stickers pulled down, their ghosts are everywhere.

This is a realistic film, as the conditions to create get harder and harder, the danger closer and closer, many artist-activists are forced into exile. But as one slogan goes, ideas are bulletproof, and for as long as there are Hongkongers, wherever they might be in the world, there will be the hope of a free Hong Kong.

I spent the whole of that film waiting for it to it to be the usual retread of queer trauma, full of the same tired tropes. How delighted I am to have been wrong.

Eismayer is the hard-ass drill instructor who terrifies all the new recruits. In the new batch that need whipped into shape is Falak, an openly gay Bosnian lad. His presence forces Eismayer to confront his own long-held secrets.

I spent the first act of this film comparing it in my head to Moffie. All the shouting and screaming, the arbitrary abuse and punitive punishments, the racism and homophobia, I just thought, “Here we go. Another movie about folk shoring up racist, homophobic institutions brimming with toxic masculinity and violence, then sitting around going, “This made me sad!” Maybe don’t do that then pal.” But that’s not what this film is.

Because Falak’s defiant refusal to be shamed demonstrates that the world has moved on. It rocks Eismayer’s whole worldview to see Falak be open about being gay and the other men in the company . . . are just fine with it. They don’t see him as a predator or a threat or a joke or an embarrassment. He’s just Falak, a cheeky bastard. By living out and proud in the army, he demonstrates the potential for a life that Eismayer, a couple decades his senior, had never thought possible.

Based on a true story, this is a tale of gay hope.

There have been so many documentaries made about Muhammad Ali, you might think, what else is there left to say? Cassius X answers that by honing in on the pivotal years of Ali’s life, the development of his political consciousness and the fights which established him as a serious force in the boxing industry. That story is told through the transition of his name, from Cassius Clay, to Cassius X, to Muhammad Ali.

Covering 1959 to 1965, you forget just how young he was. This is really his coming of age story, where his identity is formed. He’s at the Olympics winning gold in lightweight boxing, and journalists in Italy are asking him, Cassius is an ancient Roman name, how did it end up on a boxer from Kentucky? He gives the answer anyone would about their name, Cassius Clay is a family name, passed down from father to son. He’s never really thought about it much, any more than anybody else would.

But it was fashionable back in the day for slaveholders to give their slaves classical names, especially when it came to men who did heavy manual labour. It was their snide little in-joke to give these lofty names from intellectual tradition to men they saw as little more than beasts. It was a mockery and a denigration.

People were stripped of their name when they were taken into slavery, as they were stripped of everything else. Their surname was the surname of their owner. They carried it the same way they carried their brand.

But these things were not commonly known in America before the 60s, even among African-Americans. The history of enslaved people in the U.S. was yet another thing that had been taken, silenced when slaves were barred from literacy that might help them pass down their experiences. Schools taught only the history of White America and white Americans.

Into this erasure came like a bombshell the Nation of Islam. There were many, many organisations working towards the betterment and protection of African-Americans, spanning a huge spectrum of opinions and worldviews. But undoubtedly the Nation was one of the most influential. Stressing self-reliance instead of integration, self-defence instead of non-violence, and Black power and pride instead of forming coalitions. They were considered radical and dangerous. And one of the most radical things they spoke on was recovering a Black identity as part of the African diaspora, linking the oppression of today in segregation back through the oppression of the past in slavery, and extending it globally across colonialism and imperialism, to give a name and shape to white supremacy as a global destructive force. It was these ideas Cassius heard when listening to Elijah Muhammad on the radio.

This was as his career was just beginning, when he was regarded as charming but a braggart, someone who had not yet paid their dues. And seeing these early fights, there was some basis for that. He had won at the Olympics, but he wasn’t an established professional boxer. He had yet to go up against men who were in the prime of their career, who had real experience. There were lots of fights which are retroactively swept up in his legend as The Greatest, which at the time were touch and go.

Cassius X follows that early development of him as a man, as a boxer, as a Muslim, as politically conscious, as a cultural icon. It is the journey from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali which describes not just the character of the man, but the epoch in which he was living.