Posted on 02/25/2006 6:02:52 PM PST by blam
Outcry in Germany as anti-Semitic film sells out
By Tony Paterson in Berlin
(Filed: 26/02/2006)
A virulently anti-Semitic film about the Iraq war has provoked a storm of protest in Germany after it sold out to cheering audiences from the country's 2.5 million-strong Turkish community.
Valley of the Wolves, by the Turkish director Serdan Akar, shows crazed American GIs massacring innocent guests at a wedding party and scenes in which a Jewish surgeon removes organs from Iraqi prisoners in a style reminiscent of the Nazi death camp doctor Joseph Mengele.
US soldiers storm a wedding party in a scene from the film
Bavaria's interior minister admitted last week that he had dispatched intelligence service agents to cinemas showing the film to "gauge" audience reaction and identify potential radicals.
Edmund Stoiber, the state's conservative prime minister, has appealed to cinema operators to remove what he described as "this racist and anti-Western hate film" from their programmes.
The £6 million film, the most expensive Turkish production ever made, had already proved a box office hit in Turkey, where it first opened last month at a gala attended by the wife of the country's prime minister.
The production went on general release in Germany a fortnight ago and has had full houses ever since. More than 130,000 people, most of them young Muslims, saw the film in the first five days of its opening. At a packed cinema in a largely Turkish immigrant district of Berlin last week, Valley of the Wolves was being watched almost exclusively by young Turkish men. They clapped furiously when the Turkish hero of the film was shown blowing up a building occupied by the United States military commander in northern Iraq.
In the closing sequence, the hero is shown plunging a dagger into the heart of a US commander called Sam, played by Billy Zane. The audience responded by standing up and chanting "Allah is great!"
Afterwards, an 18-year-old member of the audience said: "The Americans always behave like this. They slaughtered the Red Indians and killed thousands in Vietnam.
"I was not shocked by the film, I see this on the news every day."
The nature of the film and the enthusiastic reception given to it by young Muslims, has both shocked and polarised politicians and community leaders.
Bernd Neumann, the culture minister in Chancellor Angela Merkel's government complained last week that the reaction to the film "raises serious questions about the values of our society and our ability to instil them".
Kenan Kolat, the head of Germany's Turkish community, insisted that a ban on the film would make matters worse. "If it is withdrawn, it will raise levels of identification with the film," he said. "A democracy must be able to endure films that it doesn't approve of."
Alin Sahin, the film's distributor in Germany, argued: "When a cartoonist insults two billion Muslims it is considered freedom of opinion, but when an action film takes on the Americans it is considered demagoguery. Something is wrong."
But those arguing for a ban on Valley of the Wolves appeared to have won a partial victory last week when Cinemaxx, one of Germany's largest cinema chains, announced that it was withdrawing the film.
No, I don't think they would.
No, I don't think they would.
I just went on IMDB to see what people were saying about this movie...and you wouldn't believe the posts about how great this movie was. The amount of Anti-American, George Bush bashing on that website surprised even me.
He's right. The film should not be banned but rather given distribution consistant with market data - it should be shown to people who will pay to see it.
It's a tough call but freedom of speech should be honored as much as possible. If it turns out that Turks have sentiments and views incompatible with Western values then free speech will make those views visible...and they can be deported or worse.
Afterwards, an 18-year-old member of the audience said: "The Americans always behave like this. They slaughtered the Red Indians and killed thousands in Vietnam.
He's right, too. We are ruthless in war. But so is everyone else. We're better at then others and, because that's true, we can afford to be less savage, less brutal, more magnanimous than others.
Busey and Zanes are whores, who'd sell their mothers for post-theater video rights.
ping
Really? Why do you think they wouldn't?
Wow - I say we riot over this racist film!
(/sarcasm)
Isn't it great that you can do that...instantaneously from your home? I'm so thankful I lived to see this time.
"Zionists control us in America. Same thing is true in India and Australia and Papua New Guinea, I guess.
Of course, sometimes I forget.
It is....and it's also good to have the reference to appreciate it. I was talking to some 25 year olds today about how, when I first worked in an office, we had the first fax machines...it took 7 minutes to send a page, and the receiving office had to have the same, huge machine that entailed a roller and a gauge...do you remember them?
They are big stars...they are paid well here. I just don't think they'd go to a foreign country to make an anti-American, anti-semetic movie. I may be wrong...but I don't think so.
Gary Busey - no agent - att'y is Vicki Roberts - 310.475.8549
Cultural suicide. Don't these idiots understand that after they have stirred up the Muslims far enough, THEY are the ones who will be hated and perhaps murdered if some Muslim fanatic gets the chance, not some imaginary cartoon figure of an American Indian-killer or Islamic wedding-killer.
They are teaching the world to despise themselves as well as us. But they just don't seem to get it.
Same with the Germans. Why are they outraged by this behavior when they themselves have been teaching it to all the kids in school?
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I made it a mission to confront them on every Aturk and company thread. They hated me which made me feel that I was on the right track..
I was thinking...a horses head in the bed always gets the attention of those bigshot producers but how about the heads of a couple of horses asses
Fax is short for Facsimile - the ability to send an image (a replica of a piece of paper) - down a line. It seems like a sophisticated telecommunications technology and people think of it as quite recent - an invention of the 1970s or 1980s.
In fact, it's one of the oldest - an offshoot of the chemical telegraph invented by Alexander Bain in 1843. The reason fax took such a long time to develop is that the machinery to use the technology wasn't really there at first. So the experience of actually sending or receiving a fax has changed most radically of all.
The first FAX was sent in Italy in the mid-1800's.
Jackson's record regarding Native Americans was not good. He led troops against them in both the Creek War and the First Seminole War and during his first administration the Indian Removal Act was passed in 1830. The act offered the Indians land west of the Mississippi in return for evacuation of their tribal homes in the east. About 100 million acres of traditional Indian lands were cleared under this law.
Two years later Jackson did nothing to make Georgia abide by the Supreme Court's ruling in Worcester vs. Georgia in which the Court found that the State of Georgia did not have any jurisdiction over the Cherokees. Georgia ignored the Court's decision and so did Andrew Jackson. In 1838-1839 Georgia evicted the Cherokees and forced them to march west. About twenty-five percent of the Indians were dead before they reached their new lands in Oklahoma. The Indians refer to this march as the "Trail of Tears" and even though it took place after Jackson's presidency, the roots of the march can be found in Jackson's failure to uphold the legal rights of Native Americans during his administration.
It's in all the history books. Should lefties by silenced for telling the truth?
You're probably right. And they can make anti-American movies right here in the US if they want to.
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