reviews +interview (fwd) - Julian Samuel
Alan Sondheim
sondheim at panix.com
Wed Apr 13 09:40:55 CEST 2005
I've followed Julian's work for years and this video - on libraries and the
politics of libraries - is both troubling and incredible. If you have a chance
to see the work, do! You can contact Julian at the email address below; he
lives in Montreal.
- Alan
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 01:48:19 -0400
From: juliansamuel <juliansamuel at videotron.ca>
To: Alan Sondheim <sondheim at panix.com>
Subject: reviews +interview
To be published, online, Serai Magazine, 2005
“Save and Burn”, 80:34, NTSC, 2004. A documentary by Julian Samuel.
Reviewed by Maya Khankhoje.
[Maya Khankhoje, when not busy exploring the world out there, can be found deep
in contemplation in a library.]
Save and Burn is a compelling commentary on the world of libraries
as well as a compressed history of their importance from the days of the
ancient Sumerians -credited with inventing writing to save administrative
records- to current day Iraq, where people, along with libraries, are the
victims of massive burning and destruction. It is also a dispassionate
analysis of the role of libraries as repositories of historical notions of
the self and a passionate cri de coeur against the systematic annihilation
of such notions, such as the gradual strangulation of Palestinian identity.
If the juxtaposition of placid images of libraries where silence reigns with
images of armed conflict in Israel/Palestine and Iraq strikes the viewer as
jarring at first, upon reflection, one realizes that it is not the images that
jar, but reality itself. Why burn books –alongside countless human beings – if
not to reduce the truth to ashes? Moreover, such contrasting imagery speaks to
the need for librarians to take to the streets to defend their privilege to
continue to house the patrimony of humanity.
The film opens up with the following quote from Carl Sagan
(Cosmos):
“Only once before in our history was there the promise of a
brilliant scientific civilization. Beneficiary of the Ionian Awakening it had
its citadel at the Library of Alexandria, where 2,000 years ago the best minds
of antiquity established the foundations for the systematic study of
mathematics, physics, biology, astronomy, literature, geography and medicine.
We build on that foundation still.”
Who would want to destroy such a foundation? The culprits, say
multiple voices, are the forces that would replace civilization with
barbarism. Take the wanton destruction inflicted on Palestinian libraries and
cultural centres by the Israeli government. Or the fire set to the United
Talmud Torah Library in Montreal in 2004. Or the appropriation, by the Israeli
government, of books ordered by Palestinians, and their subsequent delivery to
the Hebrew University library, proving that the powers that be fear, not
knowledge per se, but knowledge in the “wrong” hands, that is, in the hands of
“others”.
Such destruction is not achieved by means of brimstone and fire
alone. The closure of libraries due to “lack of funding” is an obvious device.
Legislation is another powerful weapon for the mass destruction of knowledge.
For example, the USA Patriot Act of 2001, allows the government to peer over
the shoulders of its citizens as they read while increasingly denying them the
information they seek. The gradual disappearance of library catalogues is a
stratagem to control what people read. The digitalization of knowledge, while
contributing to its speedy dissemination over the ether, is also contributing
to its ethereal and ephemeral nature. The privatization of human knowledge, of
course, is the most insidious version of this onslaught.
Libraries, says Irish author Declan Kiberd, are utopian spaces for
the disenfranchised Irish, and hence promote democracy, but they can also be
used for state control. Libraries, says Julian Samuel’s off-camera
voice, produce knowledge about democracy at home and export terror abroad.
Libraries are also beautiful, says the director’s camera. Samuel, a
painter, filmmaker and writer, lets our eyes lovingly linger over the long
hall of Trinity College Library. He also treats us to a panoramic view of The
Bibliotheca Alexandrina, arisen from the ashes of its illustrious predecessor.
Its director, Ambassador Taher Khalifa, tells us that this library, partially
funded by several Arab countries, is shaped like an incomplete sun disk
symbolizing the incomplete nature of knowledge – and presumably its
illuminating attributes.
Save and Burn is a follow-up on The Library in Crisis, 2002 (cf.
www.montrealserai.com/2002_Volume15/15_4Article_9.htm) in which the author
traces the history of libraries and libricides while allowing us a glimpse into
the multicultural world of libraries in 5th century India. It is also a fervent
plea for us, as free and independent thinkers, to unite in defence of our right
of access to the knowledge that we have accumulated as a species. Most
importantly, it is an aesthetically pleasing and lyrical reminder of the links
between the contemplative space of reading rooms and the hustle and bustle of
life out there.
for more information on “Burn and Save” please
contact: juliansamuel at videotron.ca
*
18th Singapore International Film Festival, 2005
( http://www.filmfest.org.sg/main_js-int.php )
March 20, 2005 - Vinita Ramani and Julian Samuel discuss Save and Burn.
VR: Broadly-speaking, 'The Library in Crisis' dealt with bibliocide (a term
used by Ian McLachlan) and the increasing digitisation of texts - in a sense,
the "crises" referred to in the title. 'Save and Burn' has honed in on a more
specific issue: the systematic preservation and destruction of knowledge/texts.
What do you see as the trajectory from the first documentary to the second?
JS: I didn't plan a trajectory, but there is a trajectory which I'll tell you
about a few lines down...I write a documentary treatment after reading many
books on a particular subject and then approach funders. After a few rejections
I get a tiny budget on which to live and produce.
VR: So then do you at see documentary films having some effect on our
understanding of history and politics?
JS: Documentaries, on their own, accomplish nothing politically; they record
symptoms. If they could change an understanding of reality, and how to act,
then why haven't they had any large-scale progressive effect on society?
Despite the making of many critical documentaries, the economic right and the
religious right are hitting us in coercive ways. Rent control and the Magna
Carta all down the drain, and it's all Michael Moore's fault.
VR: There's an intellectual density in both your documentaries that is quite
different or lacking in the new wave of "activist" films that have emerged
off-late (since 2000 and the WTO protests, in particular).
JS: Someone has to make dense documentaries - otherwise we'd all be making
documentaries like The Corporation, Bowling for Columbine et al ad naseum which
are visually fun, easy and comic, but analytically as deep as a fried Mars Bar.
The directors offers no criticism of Caterpillar Corp and its support of
Israel, for instance.
VR: While you hint at the great intellectual traditions of Asia and Africa, the
documentary is very much focused on libraries in Europe, or the "west".
JS: Sadly, much is missing from Save and Burn (2004). My excuse is that they
didn't give me much money. It would have been useful to have included in-depth
discussions from other parts of the world such as Africa, Asia, libraries in
the Arctic and Antarctica. This would have filled in all the geo-bibliographic
holes. And, it would have been great to shoot all the pretty books in
grain-less 35mm. A visual exploration (in IMAX) of the 13th century wood
printing blocks at the The Temple of Haeinsa would have been enriching.
However, I think that with Save and Burn I have provided classical linkages
between the master races and the others: England and Ireland; Palestine and
America; America and Iraq. I have not explored the role between libraries in
the Mediterranean region and their impact on the development of this one-sided
democracy in Europe. The documentary makes the links between empire and
knowledge institutions apparent. The trajectory from Save and Burn is now a
documentary on Atheism. Will George Soras please help me? I only want a
millionth of his wealth.
VR: Alistair Black (Leeds Metropolitan University) and John Feather identify
the specific relationship between libraries and the advent of modernity, in how
the growth of the individual or "self" was integral to the Enlightenment
project. But Black identifies the controlling aspects of libraries as well:
they are bureaucracies par excellence. This is a tension present throughout the
film (freedom and control in relation to knowledge). Is this a specifically
western experience?
JS: Modernity? What's that? Save and Burn's slowly leads us to the following
kinds of question: Is western democracy falling apart in the eyes of everyone
else? Western democracy - with its legal trade rules and legally sanctioned
moral values in place - is transparently terrorizing resources out of vast
areas of the world.
Lefty documentary film-makers try to get answers from experts in order to
produce an abridged yet wide version of history and politics. And,
unfortunately, documentaries produce culturalists who know the world's problems
but can only vote in a certain way; go to demonstrations; have political
discussions at supper time, and buy samosas on solidarity nights. I won't put
you in a cultural studies coma by doing a Chomskian repetition of what's wrong
with the world, don't worry.
VR: Save and Burn also touches upon contrasts/tensions in relation to
perceptions of class and access to knowledge. Alistair Black is sceptical of
the claim that the working classes benefited from libraries: he says they were
rarely the constituency that used libraries. You juxtapose this with Irish
author Declan Kiberd's resoundingly positive perception that libraries for the
Irish, were and are almost utopian spaces, following the 19th century reading
room tradition, where issues in the community can be debated, read about,
shared. What is the intention of these juxtapositions?
JS: It would appear that I have a sociological reflex - inducted during
schooling.
VR: Nevertheless, the humour aside, you are suggesting something with these
recurring discussions on freedom, democracy and accesss to knowledge.
JS: What's the conclusion? Libraries actually produce a knowledge of how to
practice democracy at home and export terror abroad; this is one obvious,
preliminary conclusion. The current-day British labour party members all have a
knowledge of social democracy because of the libraries they used - packed to
the gills with English Marxism and even more flashy Euro-Marxism. Many of them
were arrested for protesting during the last century.
The center of the documentary are the comments on the catalogue. The library
catalogue controls access to sections of knowledge. The techno-culturalist and
historical discussion in the beginning of Save and Burn takes us to the
destruction of the library catalogue in Palestine. Here, western democracy
falls to bits. The, Palestinians, as people everywhere, see through western
democracy's terror-laden values.
VR: Save and Burn also reveals a strong relationship between history and
libraries. Alarmingly, we can no longer speak of historiography if, as Tom
Twiss (Govt. Information Librarian, Pittsburgh), Isam al Khafaji (ex-advisor to
US forces in Iraq) and Erling Bergan collectively identify how Iraqi
libraries/museums are being systematically burnt and destroyed, books are not
reaching Palestinian libraries. History is being altered by what is saved and
what is burnt. What is the future then, from your perspective? How does one
respond to these "cultural war crimes" as Ross Shimmon points out?
JS: The future? Most documentary film-makers are non-experts who are in one way
or another looking for answers to advance a general knowledge which will lead
to criticism, action, Eden. Viewers should understand that film-makers put
viewers in the precarious position of trusting the film-maker who usually are
non-experts in the areas they are documenting. The questions encompassed by
Save and Burn are posed by a non-expert. I have tried to offer in-depth
knowledge of libraries across many voices.
The conclusion of the documentary asks: Western democracies are encouraging
Israel and other places (via innocent tax payers in Austin, Warlingham, and
Canberra) to do one illegal thing after the next. The mad search for weapons of
mass hypnosis is like the search for God itself. Many people at the other end
of American foreign policy see nothing "western" nor "democratic" but see
hypocrisy personified in various heads of states. You should have heard the
analysis the shoe-shine man in Cairo gave me about 911.
So what political models can 'they' out there look for? Can they make an
economically competitive state via an investment in Islamic or non-western
values? More questions for an expert. The idea of investing in western
democratic values is exhausted, not simply because western democracy is so easy
to see through but because democracy, give or take a Patriot Act or two, is
structured fundamentally to supply a bit of democracy at home while fully
financing dictators and their armies the world over.
*
Save and Burn – a documentary by Julian Samuel (2004)
A film review by Steve Fesenmaier
published: http://www.counterpunch.org/fesenmaier10022004.html
There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document
of barbarism.And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism
taints also the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner to another.
Walter Benjamin
Theses on the Philosophy of History, 1940
“Ueber den Begriff der Geschichte”, used at the beginning of this film
Julian Samuel, a Montreal-based filmmaker born in Pakistan, continues his
exploration of the contemporary world of libraries in this 80-minute
documentary. He first investigated libraries in his instant library classic,
“The Library in Crisis.” Here is the description from the distributor’s website
– Filmakers Library –
Dense with the informed commentary of notable scholars, this documentary in
effect traces the history of civilization through the phenomenon of the
library. From ancient China, India, Islam, and the Graeco Roman world, we see
how the library radiated knowledge and spiritual values, and facilitated the
cross fertilization of ideas from one culture to another.
http://filmakers.com/indivs/LibraryCrisis.htm
“Crisis” was made before 9/11 and focuses on the hottest crises at that time –
the effects the WTO may have on libraries, the commercialization of libraries,
mindless weeding and closing of libraries, expansion of copyright by computer
corporations, and much more. No film I have ever seen on libraries comes close
in exploring so much in such a short period of time – 46 minutes.
I contacted the filmmaker in Canada, and sent him videotapes of interviews with
leading American library activist Sanford Berman. Originally, he was going to
interview Sandy and other American library leaders, but after the draconian war
against people from Pakistan and other East Asian countries by the Bush
Administration after 9/11, Samuel took the official Canadian advice to NOT
cross the border. Thus this film did not include these voices – but rather
focused on Irish and English libraries plus the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina
Unlike “The Library in Crisis,” this film looks at race and class. Various
library historians including John Feather, Professor of Library & Information
Studies, Loughborough University, author of “The Information Society,” Royal
Society of Arts, London and Alistair Black, Professor of Library History, Leeds
Metropolitan University, London discuss how public libraries were used both to
stop the locals from contemplating revolution a la Russian Communism during and
after WWI and to serve as a place for debate. By cutting back and forth from
Irish and English library events to the history of the Library of Alexandria,
Egyptian public libraries, and current programs in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina,
like one on unemployment and youth, the viewer is counter-conditioned to reject
Western racism. Samuel wants to show the West that we are the inheritors of the
great Arab-Asian tradition of libraries going back thousands of years – not its
enemy.
The facts are piled on, not using the standard Ken Burns-style of slow
discourse, but rather throwing the facts at us, using optical printing, aiming
to create a much more complicated GESTALT in our minds. This is extremely
refreshing to someone who has watched a thousand such films, and found them
boring. His style is more like the Hong Kong master Wong Kar-wai or Godard,
demanding that the viewer has a universe of images already in his mind, waiting
for someone to link them together in new ways.
Like all serious intellectuals, Samuel begins with Walter Benjamin, the
cornerstone of post-WWII global analysis. By doing this he shows right from the
beginning that he is not guilty of anti-Semitism and Arab fanaticism. He shows
that he really wants truth and justice, at whatever cost. He wants to show that
libraries have been one of the few places of truth and justice for a long time,
and that there are really only two kinds of people – those who respect such
sacred places and those who do not.
The visual images of the libraries he shows are exquisite, lingering on the
walls, the books, the people, and the spaces that libraries have used over the
centuries. He is a painter, an artist – as well as a philosopher, historian,
and freedom fighter. Ambassador Taher Khalifa, Director of The Bibliotheca
Alexandrina talks about the shapes of the library – using an incomplete sun
disk, the earth, a moon, the sea, and alphabets from all over the world, none
making a single sentence.
I found one scene particularly positive, given the ocean of negative images
flooding us now. A young Arab man reads from “Dubliners” in front of the James
Joyce Wall in Dublin -in his native tongue. This brief scene may be the
clearest direct message Samuel is trying to make – we are all one people,
friends, not enemies.
This film notes a key historical possibility that I very much believe in – and
that is that if the great world of the original Alexandrine Library had been
allowed to continue, our world would have been much better, and mankind would
have landed on the moon by 1000 AD. There is a new field of alternative
histories, including Philip Roth’s new book, “The Plot Against America," about
a US with a Nazi Charles Lindbergh as president. Samuel has a text crawl that
states that there was one other time when there was a possibility of a
“brilliant scientific civilization” – the 700 years of the first Alexandrine
Library under the Greeks, and he notes that most of the Old Testament comes to
us from items once found in that library. Apparently he believes, as I do, that
if mankind had channeled its energy into the arts and sciences rather than war
at the time of the world’s greatest library, our world would now be a
humanistic paradise rather than a toxic corporate American hell.
During the last half of the film he interviews Tom Twiss, Government
Information Librarian, University of Pittsburgh, who has flown to Canada for
the interview. During the next 30 minutes Twiss discusses the war against
people’s access to federal government information, pointing out that as our
government has limited our access to them, they have increased their access to
us – library patrons- under the Patriot Act. Twiss is also an expert on the
destruction of Palestinian libraries. He talks about what happened to
Palestinian libraries during an Israeli invasion of the West Bank. He points
out that Lutheran libraries were also attacked without any reaction worldwide –
but that there is ample proof of the events. He notes that some Israeli
newspapers even ran editorials about the “cultural cleansing” but many Israelis
deny it even happened. One gruesome story he gives is about the Israelis taking
books ordered by Palestinian libraries being shipped to Palestinian
libraries being seized and shipped to Israeli libraries instead.
Another expert on the reality of libraries in Palestine is Erling Bergan,
Editor, Librarians Union of Norway, Oslo, who talks about the destruction of
their libraries, and a tour by international librarians to these libraries,
seeing first hand how much the children use them. He discusses one particular
act of destruction involving The Orient House. Bergan is like one of the
thousands of Jewish Holocaust survivors one has seen in films about Nazi
Germany. (I have programmed the local Jewish film series for 25 years), shaking
his head in disbelief. Sanford Berman is the inventor of a word that should
have been uttered – bibliocide. ( Ian McLachlan uses this word in Samuel’s
earlier film, “The Library in Crisis.) Some librarians even use the term
“biblio-holocaust” for the destruction of books in our modern age.
Finally, the destruction of Iraqi libraries is discussed, mainly by Ross
Shimmon, Secretary General, International Federation of Library Associations
and Institutions and Isam al Khafaji, ex-advisor to USA forces in Iraq. Khafaji
discusses who destroyed the books, and how important they still are in the life
of war-worn Iraqis. Shimmon talks about writing letters to Saddam and Blair
requesting that they protect Iraqi libraries during the coming war.
The final comments in the film are by Khafaji. Earlier in the film pictures of
Iraqi libraries that have been burned are shown, giving the viewer the reason
why this film is called “Save and Burn.” It’s horrific to see the rooms of
ashes, and reflect on the eternal loss the millions of Iraqis have endured as
pawns in the game between the Arab fanatics and the America extremists – now in
control. I had to recall the ashes from “The Day After,” showing a world
incinerated by men of equal sadism.
Samuel has again created a masterpiece about the contemporary library. I
suggest that it be included with the many Arab Film Festivals that have been
created by thoughtful people around the world since 9/11. As always, non-Arabs
and Arabs will discover that they have much more in common than they realize –
and that they are brothers and sisters, not enemies. All librarians should see
this film, and I am sure they will feel like I do that librarians must leave
their beautiful houses of culture, and join the fight to protect them from the
despots East and West who will eventually destroy them. One librarian talks
about how the Book of Kells was protected from the invading English, being
moved from site to site, even in a building used by the invaders as a
headquarters.
A very good companion book to read is Matthew Battles recent, “Libraries -An
Unquiet History.” I read it two summers ago on a porch near Wilmington, North
Carolina, smoking and sitting under a semi-functioning ceiling fan with my dog.
I took my time and savored the amazing history Mr. Battles has written, taking
a global perspective somewhat akin to Mr. Samuel’s. I was very impressed with
his brief history of libraries in China and England, and consider his account
of the war against my friend Sanford Berman to be the best in any book I have
read so far.
There is a brief discussion of “libricide” in this film – and now there is an
excellent book on the subject – and now there is an excellent book on the
subject – “Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries
in the Twentieth Century” by Rebecca Knuth. It looks at five particular cases -
Germany, Bosnia, Kuwait, China and Tibet. Of course it doesn’t mention the
uncontrolled “weeding” of American libraries during the last decade, most
famously in San Francisco where thousands of books were buried in a landfill.
Read together, “An Unquiet History” and “Libricide,”” along with “Save and
Burn” would make an excellent introduction for beginning MLS students anywhere
in the world. Or as a “Continuing Education” course for working MLS librarians.
Hopefully I will be able to show “Save and Burn” at the spring West Virginia
Library Association conference in April 2005.
To obtain a copy of “Burn and Save,” e-mail the director, Julian Samuel, at -
juliansamuel at videotron.ca.
Save and Burn; 80:34, NTSC; 2004
The Library in Crisis; 46:41; NTSC; 2002.
List of people interviewed –
Ross Shimmon, Secretary General, International Federation of Library
Associations and Institutions;
Isam al Khafaji, ex-advisor to USA forces in Iraq; (Holland); Ambassador Taher
Khalifa, Director, Bibliotheca Alexandrina; Alexandria; Dr Youseff Zeidan, Head
of manuscripts department, Alexandria;
Dr Hesham Abd El Moshen, Head of architectual department, Alexandria; Robin
Adams, Librarian and College Archivist, Trinity College, Dublin; Bernard
Meehan, Keeper of Manuscripts, Trinity College;
Charles Benson, Keeper of Early Printed Books and Special Collections, Trinity
College; Michael Ryan, Director, Chester Beatty Library, Dublin; Declan Kiberd,
author, Inventing Ireland, University of Dublin; David Grattan, Manager,
Canadian Conservation Institute, Ottawa; Paul Bégan, Conservation Scientist,
Canadian Conservation Institute, Ottawa; John Feather, Professor of Library &
Information Studies, Loughborough University, author of The Information
Society, Royal Society of Arts, Alistair Black, Professor of Library History,
Leeds Metropolitan University; Erling Bergan, Editor, Librarians Union of
Norway, Olso; Peter Hoare, library historian and adviser on historic libraries,
Bromley House Library, Nottingham; and, Tom Twiss, Government Information
Librarian, University of Pittsburgh.
Steve Fesenmaier is the film reviewer for Graffiti magazine, the largest
monthly in West Virginia. He was director of The West Virginia Library
Commission Film Services 1978-1999, receiving his Masters of Library Science in
1979. He was previously the chairman of the University Film Society, University
of Minnesota, 1972-78. He is the co-founder of the West Virginia International
Film Festival (1984), The West Virginia Filmmakers Film Festival, (2001) and
the WV Filmmakers Guild (1979). He has worked on many films including John
Sayles’ “Matewan”(1987) and presented a week of films made in WV in March 2004
at the Two Boots Pioneer Theater in NYC. He is the associate producer of an
indie feature film, “Correct Change”(2002) and the executive producer for
“Green Bank – The Center of the Universe.” He provided research information for
Mr. Samuel.
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