The Miscreants Of Taliwood

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On Febuary 17th 2010, the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art opened their 2010 “Documentary Fortnight” film festival on international non-fiction films and on the 18th, they presented a film by George Gittoes titled “The Miscreants of Taliwood”. This was the third film of a trilogy by George Gittoes, of which the previous two films had also been presented at previous Documentary Fortnights. The MoMA promotional summary advertized the film in a classic travelogue style - “an extraordinary journey to a forbidden zone”. MoMAs promotional material fails to go beyond the cliché to present any insight as to why the curators chose to include this film or why they feel that George Gittoes body work deserved to be included in their film festival three …show more content…

Through his narration we learn that he was in Islamabad during the siege of the Red Mosque. The only relevant background that he reveals to the audience is that young religiously motivated students soon needed to decide between adherences to their religious principles and face possible death, or to surrender to the Pakistan military. Gittoes also shows some brief footage of his Pakistani assistant, Waqar Alam, who is also the cameraman who records all the footage of Gittoes. He plays upon a classic travelogue technique to establish the authenticity and authority of the film maker as a heroic explorer who travels to dangerous and hostile lands to bring back the trophy footage and act as an intermediary between the audience and the exotic locals pictured. Gittoes consciously both heightens and mocks this tradition at the end of the Red Mosque footage sequence where he shows footage in which he is “shot and killed”, using exploding dye packs under his shirt. This also is an early indicator to the audience that that even though it is a non-fiction film, Gittoes is neither attempting to nor pretending to present an objective impartial truth, and that he feels that he can present a greater filmic truth by not attempting to obtain a objective neutral camera viewpoint. While not evident in the movie, Gittoes frankly tells us in the Q&A session that Waqar, who has …show more content…

While filming on location, the actors and crew are threatened by Taliban members to stop filming or they will be shot. The director elects to shut down production instead of risking the lives of everyone involved. Gittoes decides that the cost of funding a Taliwood film, $4,000 US for one film and $7,000 for two, while a large investment of capital for locals, is an amount that as a Westerner, he can easily find, and so he becomes a financial backer for two films. As the financial backer, he has power over the film and the cast and crew of the film industry which is seeing fewer and fewer productions. Gittoes can decide the plot, the script and importantly the film locations, which he uses to push into the tribal areas at the fringes of the Northwest Frontier Provinces next to Afganistan. Locations where he admits is the most dangerous not only for himself, but the film crew as well, who later balk at filming in the Tribal areas but are ultimately persuaded to do so by Gittoes. Since this is done by voiceover, the viewer cannot tell how much was real sentiment and how much was added excitement to create the aura of risk and danger. One of the movie participants, an actress called No-No, is aware of the power that Gittoes has, and views him as a

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