The screenings in a small room in Paddington feels a bit like a dressed up and exclusive film club, the members bar where people go to discuss the documentary films following the screening can do nothing but add to this, it maybe isn't surprising then that another person has expressed uncertainity to me whether she has to be a member to attend, she doesn't, she just has to pay more and isn't allowed into the members bar, it seems to be a film club mostly for filmmakers and journalists, after all it ethos is to champion independent journalism, I once envisioned a play in which some of the greatest filmmakers of all time get together in a secret screening room below Paris to watch and discuss cinema that wouldn't look too different to the set up at The Frontline Club, I was lucky enough to know someone who works there and managed to get a seat for the screening of Afghan Star, it is undoubtedly an entertaining and interesting subject matter as it follows 4 contestants compete on Afghanistan's version of American Idol, disadvantaged people getting opportunites they have never had before thanks to a Western television show, this premise can't help call to mind that recent giant success of 'Slumdog Millionaire', and if one could call that film 'poverty porn', as in a glimpse into poverty for entertainment purposes from the safety cinema that is reassuring of one's own position much higher up, and I couldn't help but feel that maybe that same criticism applied to Afghan Star as I looked around the room at the upper-middle class people who form the Frontline Club membership, to be fair some were developing world and war zone journalists, but only a miniority, most worked in London media, and the subject matter is entertaining and reassuring that Afghans are better off, which they may well be, but the film never asks us to connect with these people, the filmmaker Havana Marking wastes too much with way too many intertitles when she could be letting the people speak and letting the audience build a relationship, she also seemingly drops subjects when the television show, following the trajectory of the show itself but sharing none of its tension who is to be voted off, it boggles the mind that this film won 'Best Director' and an 'Audience Award' at Sundance, but then that could be said for many films that have won at Sundance, ultimately this is a story that would have been missed were it not for Havana Marking, and it may have had no exposure at all if weren't for Sundance and The Frontline Club.
Afghan Star
The screenings in a small room in Paddington feels a bit like a dressed up and exclusive film club, the members bar where people go to discuss the documentary films following the screening can do nothing but add to this, it maybe isn't surprising then that another person has expressed uncertainity to me whether she has to be a member to attend, she doesn't, she just has to pay more and isn't allowed into the members bar, it seems to be a film club mostly for filmmakers and journalists, after all it ethos is to champion independent journalism, I once envisioned a play in which some of the greatest filmmakers of all time get together in a secret screening room below Paris to watch and discuss cinema that wouldn't look too different to the set up at The Frontline Club, I was lucky enough to know someone who works there and managed to get a seat for the screening of Afghan Star, it is undoubtedly an entertaining and interesting subject matter as it follows 4 contestants compete on Afghanistan's version of American Idol, disadvantaged people getting opportunites they have never had before thanks to a Western television show, this premise can't help call to mind that recent giant success of 'Slumdog Millionaire', and if one could call that film 'poverty porn', as in a glimpse into poverty for entertainment purposes from the safety cinema that is reassuring of one's own position much higher up, and I couldn't help but feel that maybe that same criticism applied to Afghan Star as I looked around the room at the upper-middle class people who form the Frontline Club membership, to be fair some were developing world and war zone journalists, but only a miniority, most worked in London media, and the subject matter is entertaining and reassuring that Afghans are better off, which they may well be, but the film never asks us to connect with these people, the filmmaker Havana Marking wastes too much with way too many intertitles when she could be letting the people speak and letting the audience build a relationship, she also seemingly drops subjects when the television show, following the trajectory of the show itself but sharing none of its tension who is to be voted off, it boggles the mind that this film won 'Best Director' and an 'Audience Award' at Sundance, but then that could be said for many films that have won at Sundance, ultimately this is a story that would have been missed were it not for Havana Marking, and it may have had no exposure at all if weren't for Sundance and The Frontline Club.
