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Established 1961 13 Lifestyle Features Monday, September 7, 2020 ustralian director Roderick MacKay Australia to help cart goods through the was blown away one day in 2014 desert, often on an indentured basis. “It’s Aviewing 19th century photographs a hugely important part of Australian his- of Muslim and Sikh men leading camels tory that not only is the rest of the world through his native country’s harsh desert not so aware of, but Australians them- outback. That sudden awareness of a selves aren’t aware,” MacKay said. Their forgotten part of Australia’s history is now interaction with local Aboriginal popula- the basis of the director’s first feature film, tions mean that some Australians today A worker washes jugs at a factory. Workers sort through broken glass at factory. “The Furnace,” which premiered at the living in remote desert communities do Venice film festival on Friday. not know the true history of their Sikh and “I couldn’t believe what I was looking Afghan last names. were sent for reuse at Uniglass and women kitted out with sturdy shoes, that are piling up in Beirut, they’re at,” MacKay told AFP. “To see men in Five languages are spoken in the film Koub/Golden Glass in Tripoli. masks and heavy gloves sort the glass, mixed with everything. Glass and rub- their traditional garb with a camel train besides English: two Afghan languages Abichaker said he hoped, with funding, pulling bits of detritus out of the piled ble and metal are mixed with organic behind them in the otherwise familiar out- (Pashto and Dari), Punjabi, Cantonese to bring the total to 250 tons. shards under a scorching sun. Anthony waste... and this is not healthy,” he back was pretty revelatory.” Enter six and Badimaya, a language of Aboriginal Abdel Karim, who months before the said. “We don’t have proper recycling years of work to bring the historical dra- Australians. Because the last speaker of ‘Tip of the iceberg’ blast had launched an upcycling glass in Lebanon.” ma to the screen-including painstaking Badimaya died one year before shooting, At the volunteer hub dubbed the project called Annine Fadye or “Empty Abdel Karim was drawn to recycling work piecing together dialogue spoken in a team had to piece together appropriate Base Camp in Beirut’s hard-hit Mar Bottle” in Arabic, coordinates the oper- glass after seeing huge numbers of Badimaya, a dying Aboriginal language. dialogue with the Aboriginal community. Mikhael district, young men and ations. We have “mountains of waste bottles being thrown out while working “The Furnace” points a lens on forgot- “It was certainly a much more exhaustive in events management in Beirut’s ten Islamic and Sikh cameleers whose and lengthy process but also a great deal nightlife, one of the city’s calling cards stories have been eclipsed by white set- more meaningful because we felt we first quieted by the pandemic and eco- tlers’ history. Set amid the late 19th cen- were really doing our bit from stopping nomic crisis, and now battered by the tury gold rush in Australia, the film follows this language from vanishing off the face blast. Glass from the explosion poses a young cameleer from Afghanistan, of the earth,” MacKay said. different challenges from bottles, as Hanif (Ahmed Malek), who finds himself MacKay said the timing of the film - much of it is dirty, so the initiative partnered with a bushman and fugitive arriving in a year in when non-white talent focuses on gathering glass from inside thief Mal (David Wenham). Helped by is being actively sought out by the homes and other buildings, setting up Hanif’s camels and in pursuit by the law, Western movie industry - was accidental, a hotline where people can request the two embark on an odyssey through but fortunate. “You’re walking in the pickup. Western Australia’s inhospitable outback shoes of this Muslim character. Pitching a Abdel Karim said they aim to find in search of a furnace to melt down stolen story like that in 2014 when diversity on other ways of recycling the glass that is gold bars. screen wasn’t such a big agenda was not suitable to send to Tripoli, possibly tricky and not a lot of people were inter- by crushing it to be used in cement or Diversity on film ested,” he acknowledged. “So I’ve other materials. “This is the tip of the Cameleers from Afghanistan, Persia bizarrely enough watched the world iceberg,” he said, noting just a fraction and the Punjab region straddling India come more in alignment with that.”— AFP of the glass so far had been collected and what is now Pakistan - all dismissive- and repurposed. “It needs a lot of time, ly referred to as “Ghans” by white settlers we know that.”— AFP - were brought to Britain’s then-colony A construction vehicle clears glass from a damaged building in Beirut’s Gemmayzeh neighborhood. A truck empties shards glass in a plot of land, reserved by the A glass maker pulls a cart of broken glass from Beirut port Beirut municipality to serve as a location to gather all the debris explosion. ahead of recycling, in the Lebanese capital. British actress Vanessa Kirby arrives for the screening of the ﬁlm “Pieces of a Woman” pre- sented in competition on the fourth day of the 77th Venice Film Festival, on Saturday at Venice Lido, during the COVID-19 infection, caused by the novel coronavirus. — AFP A glassblower forms glass over a furnace at factory. he Crown” star Vanessa Kirby #FreeSZFE to support students who are said Saturday that her latest occupying Budapest University of “Trole as a woman who loses her Theatre and Film Arts after the country’s child after a home birth goes wrong was prime minister Viktor Orban appointed her scariest yet. The British actress plays one of his supporters as its head. alongside Hollywood star Shia LaBeouf Orban’s critics have taken to the in “Pieces of a Woman”, which is pre- streets to support the students and say it miering at the Venice film festival. It is the latest bid by his nationalist govern- opens with a 25-minute-long birth scene ment to wrest power from institutions it which was shot in one take by Hungarian sees as left-leaning. Mundruczo said he director Kornel Mundruczo and written supported the students’ defence of the by his longtime partner Kata Weber. “My university’s independence. Earlier he told wife and I wanted to share one of our reporters that he had moved to Berlin most personal experiences with audi- more than a year ago because “the pres- ences through a story of an unborn child, sure is growing on free art” under Orban, with the faith that art can be the best who has been in power for more than a medicine for pain,” Mundruczo said. The decade. “My country started to be a little film is one of a series of deeply personal strange,” he added. films competing for the Golden Lion top prize. Family after terror attack Kirby, 32, said trying to be true to the Another hugely autobiographical film suffering of the women she talked to making headlines at Venice is Italy’s before the shoot was “really scary”. But “Padrenostro” (Our Father) by Claudio she threw herself “really deep” into her Noce, which is inspired by a terrorist Workers sort through broken glass at factory. first lead role in a movie in a way she attack on his police commissioner father hasn’t since she made her name playing when the director was two. His father sur- Princess Margaret, sister of Britain’s vived the assassination attempt in 1976 Elizabeth II, in the hit Netflix series. by the left-wing Armed Proletarian Nuclei Mundruczo admitted that making a film (NAP), and the film focuses on the after- “about how you lost your baby” wasn’t effects on a family of a similar horror the most commercial idea he has ever seen through the eyes of a 10-year-old pitched. boy. “One of the reasons why I wanted to do this film was to try to overcome this Street protests fear,” Noce told reporters. But the acclaimed director said deal- “Certainly it was painful. The idea of ing with such searing grief, which is also making a film... on what had happened tied up with the trauma of the Holocaust to my family, to my father particularly, in the character’s family, was universal. had been living with me for a long time,” “Loss steps beyond the boundaries of he added. Italy was wracked by two understanding or control for all of us, but decades of domestic terrorism from the comes with the ability to be reborn,” he late 1960s in what became known as the added. Both Mundruczo-best known for “Years of Lead”. — AFP A worker shows jugs at a factory. Recycled jugs and jar are pictured at a factory. his 2014 Cannes prize winner “White God”-and Weber wore T-shirts declaring.

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