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.
I guess I should feel ashamed. I'm a loving dad and I'm teaching my daughter too except she uses a Ruger 10/22 and we aren't screeming death to anyone when we practice.
Billy Zane's excuse is that he's Billy Zane, and its his first paycheck since his "stellar" "performance" in The Phantom.
Nope.
But I remember life before television and freeways. And cars before automatic transmissions which couldn't go up long, steep hills on hot days without adding water.
"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"."
Herr Audi Schroeder won two elections on an anti-American platform. Germany has a long history of rallying against an outside enemy. Why would any German be surprised. This is Germans as usual, hating an external enemy. That enemy is the USA, just as it's been for 100 years.
wow..ya got me!
You should see what the idiots at IMDB are saying about Zane...he's a hero to those idiots. Why do Americans hate America so much? I truly don't undertand.
No, nothing wrong with telling the truth. But let's get real. Americans treated the Indians badly. Indians treated each other badly. Indians treated Americans badly.
And of course there were also nice, honorable people on all sides too.
Are the Germans trying to pretend that they never killed anybody? Are the Turks pretending that they never killed anybody? What happened to all those civilizations that the Turks overran when they invaded what is now called Turkey? What happened to the Armenians?
In other words, telling the truth is one thing, but slanting the truth and channeling hatred at one target is something else. Why should the Germans be surprised that their Turkish immigrants hate the Jews, when the German leftists have been teaching them to hate the Jews? Why should they be surprised that they hate the Americans when they have been teaching them to hate the Americans. And, incidentally, they have been teaching them to hate the Germans, which they will soon find is a worse problem.
I doubt the Germans would have been all that disturbed if it had only been viciously anti-American. Not that I think that they now love their Jews, either. I think anti-Semitism upsets them because they are obsessed (as they should be) with trying to wash away the stain of genocide, a stain that will be remembered as long any civilization remains on earth (which might not be all that long).
LOL! Osama & Bert..give the moovie five veils. LOL!
Thanks. LOL!
The Turks are Muslim. How can a Muslim be your friend?
What part of "do not take the jews and the Christians for friends'"don't we understand? - tom
Koran: 5.51: O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people.
"...two billion Muslims...
They've doubled their claim."
That means twice as many that US citizens will have to take out...since our government is allowing this scourge to overrun us and the world.
I concur.
"It's in all the history books. Should lefties by silenced for telling the truth?"
Grant Foreman is seen as giving the most researched death toll for the Trail Of Tears, his estimate is 1,846. There were Indians before the Trail of Tears and Indians after the Trail of Tears,so"Who told these arab youths that Americans killed all the Indians? None other than our American ... leftists."
I had to look up a pic of Billy Zane. I still do not know how the heck he is. I recognize the Bussey idiot. Hard to forget his giant size teeth.
Looking at your picture back there, it looks like the slams are centuries away from the don't run with scissors stage of civilization.
How many Academy Awards has this movie been nominated for?
Did you see TITANIC??? He was the evil guy engaged to Kate Winslet...handsome.
"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."
Small detail: Mentioning that Islam is a violent religion is true. Saying that the US military is cuts out Iraqis' organs is false. Something wrong indeed!
Yes, I've seen Titanic. Thank you, I recall him now.
liberallarry: I do not want to get into it with you, but I can not move on without just saying that I hold the most profound contempt for what you have offered here, waving the bloody shirt of crimes a century and a half old to feed murderous anger toward America today. It disgusts me. An eloquent poster, Cicero, has already delivered a polite, but devastating, critique of your comment. It is just my disgust that I must tag on here. I don't care about your signup date or anything else about you. I hope I will not encounter you again.-30-
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