STOLEN, 2009 (Grade B)

Directed by Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw
Western Sahara, 2009 , 75 min.
Shown at the 21st African Film Festival in 2011, Portland Oregon

per the festival "Directors Ayala and Fallshaw set out to make a simple documentary about family reunions in Saharawi refugee camps controlled by the Polisario Liberation Front. Their project became much more complicated when they discovered that many of the dark-skinned refugees were in fact the slaves of those with lighter complexions. Or were they? Was there really widespread servitude or was it something more culturally subtle? The Polisario denied the filmmakers’ assertions, labeled them cultural imperialists, and tried to stop the project. The result is a powerful, suspenseful film, which raises thought-provoking questions about the possibility of documentary objectivity. The film has provoked an ongoing international controversy. Winner of the Best Feature Documentary Prize at the 2010 Pan-African Film Festival in Los Angeles.  In Hassaniya, Spanish, and English with English subtitles."

sez says: fascinating --this can be understood in so many ways that it is hard to even start to discuss it here.  Is this just a naive look at one example of actual slavery?  (It exists all over the place. It pops up regularly here in the US.  Sex slaves are on the rise again.  And what of wage salves?)  Or are they pawns in an international dispute between Morocco and the Polisario Liberation Frount?  Why dod so may people recant the stories they told the film makers?  Were they not understood --and paid to lie as they are accused of..or are those people under pressure from powers within their own communities and must recant to keep their families safe?  This list of questions is endless...but the  film is worth seeing becasue it will make you ask these questions about a pressing and often ignored social reality: THere are still salves in the world.  Humans still are bought and sold--and even STOLEN.  


mjc says: truth is slippery and slides sideways and creeps out from under rocks and bursts from the mouth's of children. I believe the filmmakers were searching for truth and I don't know if they found it.