Month: August 2018

Emboldened by his global star power, Mohamed Salah has said out loud what many of his Egyptian teammates have been saying in private for weeks: Failure by the national federation to enforce discipline and stop meddling by sponsors was mostly to blame for the Pharaohs’ miserable World Cup run in Russia.

The Liverpool star posted a video clip this week on social media complaining about the chaos at the team’s World Cup base in Grozny, capital of Russia’s Chechnya region, and calling for better discipline in training camps and security for players.

Salah’s agent, lawyer Ramy Abbas, went further in a leaked letter to federation officials, demanding that they improve security for his client or resign. Egypt’s wealthiest man, influential business tycoon Naguib Sawiris, echoed his demands in a tweet this week.

The federation rejected Abbas’ call for its board to resign, but said it was prepared to discuss Salah’s demands.

The latest quarrel between Salah and the federation swiftly dominated the national conversation in Egypt, with fans on social media voicing support for the 26-year-old striker against federation officials they accused of corruption and inefficiency. The hashtag “resignation of the football federation is a popular demand” has been trending on Twitter in Egypt since Tuesday.

Egypt lost all three group matches in Russia. It was a bitter disappointment for a soccer-crazy nation, which had waited nearly 30 years to see its national team qualify and hoped that, with Salah leading a group of Europe-based players, the team would do well.

The Pharaohs lost to Uruguay, Russia and Saudi Arabia, with Salah scoring the team’s only goals, one against Russia in a 3-1 loss and the second in the 2-1 loss to the Saudis.

There were calls for an official inquiry into the team’s poor performance and management of its camp in Russia, including the choice of Grozny as the team’s base given the long flights to match venues, but no action was taken.

In the video clip, Salah said uninvited guests kept knocking on his hotel room door in Grozny, keeping him up until 6 a.m. in one instance. Citing the inability of the federation officials to maintain order and shield him from unruly fans, he said he was often told not to join his teammates for meals because of the large number of fans in the restaurant or in the hotel’s lobby.

“In all my years abroad, I had never seen anyone bringing his friends to my (hotel) room to shake my hand and take photos with me,” said Salah, who insisted he was seeking change for the entire squad.

He also said the federation was trying to tarnish his name and accusing him of not being patriotic, a charge that has a familiar ring in a country where the pro-government media routinely label critics as foreign agents or members of an outlawed Islamist group.

“I think people will not believe any of this. People know how I perform when I play for the national squad,” said Salah, last season’s best player and top scorer in the Premier League.

Salah is considered a national hero in Egypt, where many see him as a rare success story at a time of economic malaise and political repression. Egyptian fans are confident his popularity will shield him from the wrath of the government, which has shown zero tolerance for dissent.

But pro-government media, which had previously lavished praise on him, have increasingly sided with the federation in the latest dispute, with some accusing him of being arrogant, ungrateful and seeking exclusive privileges.

Salah’s teammates have remained publicly silent so far, reflecting fears of reprisals if they side with him against a federation known to enjoy strong government backing. Goalkeeper Sherif Ikramy, however, was the exception. He tweeted that players agreed with Salah’s calls for improved security and discipline.

Two members of Egypt’s World Cup squad in Russia, speaking on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals, also backed Salah’s complaints.

They cited the example of a TV reporter for a Dubai-based channel who, with the implicit approval of federation officials, knocked at the doors of the players’ rooms well past their bedtime offering money in exchange for on-camera interviews.

The two said federation officials were fully aware of this and other transgressions in Grozny, but chose to look the other way to avoid a clash with the team’s chief sponsor, a PR and advertising company called Presentation in which the Egyptian government has a majority stake.

Hector Cuper, the Argentine coach who took Egypt to the World Cup, had repeatedly sought to penalize players who breached camp rules in Grozny, but was persuaded not to take action by federation officials, said the two players.

Federation spokesman Osama Ismail acknowledged disciplinary problems in the Grozny camp.

“The players were not well prepared psychologically (for the World Cup) and there was no clarity on regulations governing marketing. That took away the players’ focus,” he told The Associated Press.

Two federation board members, also speaking on condition of anonymity, painted a picture of a complex network of interests between the federation, the government and sponsors that resulted in lax rules in Grozny. They said players were told that public criticism of the company could cost them their place in the squad.

“We were specifically warned against speaking to the media about what went on in Russia,” said one of the two players.

Presentation officials did not respond to several text messages requesting comment.

Presentation provides most of the advertising going to private television channels, which in turn have several federation board members on lucrative contracts hosting sports talk shows. The company’s drive to cash in on Egypt’s first qualification for the World Cup since 1990 and on Salah’s global celebrity meant that near unfettered access to the players was granted to commercial sponsors.

A three-member media team from a global tea brand, for example, shadowed the Pharaohs in Grozny for at least four days prior to the June 15 Uruguay match. The group regularly posted short video clips of players talking about the tea. Before leaving for Russia, federation officials appeared to go to great lengths to praise Presentation and allow representatives of sponsoring companies to address news conferences broadcast live from the federation’s Cairo headquarters.

“You can comfortably say that Presentation and those behind it are running the federation,” said a board member who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared reprisals. “There is no direct government meddling in the federation, but what it wants the federation to do is conveyed through Presentation or the Sports Ministry as ‘suggestions.’”
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As entertainment giants like Netflix and Amazon Prime woo Indian audiences, they are investing millions of dollars in making films and serials locally. And for Bollywood, one of the world’s most glitzy movie industries, the entry of video streaming services with deep pockets has opened new opportunities.

“When a Bollywood film releases, I have access to audiences in metro cities like Mumbai and Delhi for just a few weeks. On Netflix, my film could reach global audiences,” said Dibakar Banerjee, Mumbai-based filmmaker. Banerjee is one of the four top Bollywood directors who produced “Lust Stories,” a collection of four short films for the video streaming platform this year.

Besides a handful of films like Lust Stories, Netflix has released two original series in the Hindi language in a blaze of publicity. Massive billboards in India’s big cities announced last week the release of Ghoul a horror show with a supernatural twist. An action-packed thriller, Sacred Games set in the Mumbai underworld, starring top Bollywood star Saif Ali Khan, released in July.

Netflix presence known

Since launching in India in 2016, Netflix has been making its presence felt in Indian homes with popular American shows. But as it eyes a market that will have more than half a billion smartphone and Internet users by 2020, it is focusing on producing local content. Even in movie-crazy India, a massive drop in data costs is expected to turn the web into the prime platform for entertainment.

“We have witnessed a huge appetite for entertainment,” said Jessica Lee, Netflix’s vice president for communications-Asia. “Our content investment in India has scaled at a very fast pace, in fact one of the fastest we have ever made in any country launched.”

Amazon, whose subscription is much more affordable than Netflix, has also released several original Indian series, such as a drama about professional cricket and stand-up comedy specials.

Local competition

The American giants are up against stiff competition. For example, the subscriber base of Netflix in India trails local video services that are cheaper and have already made inroads. Hotstar, which offers sports, entertainment and movie channels, dominates India’s streaming landscape. Established Indian TV companies are investing their own money in online platforms.

But in a country where television is dominated by soap operas, analysts say Netflix hopes to offer higher quality content to win over the urban elite that can fork out $8 for the cheapest monthly subscription and has already shown an appetite for tuning into popular American shows like Stranger Things and 13 Reasons Why.

“They are mainly riding on the fact that they will be producing original content of a quality and genre, which possibly will not be available on the other platforms,” said Frank D’Souza, a media and entertainment analyst at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Mumbai.

Thirst for varied entertainment

That is where shows such as Sacred Games with a splash of big Bollywood names are likely to play a key role, after all, Bollywood has always been king of entertainment in India. It has been noticed: The Economist said the show announces the arrival of prestige television in the country.

In a young country thirsty for more varied entertainment, bolder shows could also be the key to winning viewers, entertainment analysts say.

D’Souza points to an advantage video streaming services enjoy: India censors movies and television but does not censor Internet content. 

“It gives them the ability to push the envelope a bit in terms of what is the kind of content that they can create and that too in the local language,” D’Souza said.

That is also a bonus for Indian filmmakers and storytellers, who always had to keep an eye on the country’s sometimes heavy-handed censor board. In the short films, Lust Stories for example, all four filmmakers focused on women and their desires, a subject that has remained largely unexplored in a country where conventional romances have been the staple fare. Scenes of sex and gruesome bloodshed in Sacred Games are not the stuff of India’s usual television shows.

For Indian artists, the entry of Netflix and Amazon has widened the canvas for storytelling and tapping a global audience, says director Banerjee, who is hugely optimistic about the potential of video streaming services. 

“It is exciting. It is giving a new platform to filmmakers,” he said. “People have been ringing me from other countries after watching Lust Stories.”
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The taut drama Operation Finale revisits history and brings to life the dramatic capture, by Mossad operatives, of Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust.

Filmmaker Chris Weitz and scriptwriter and historian Matthew Orton offer a dramatic rendition of the historic events that took place in Argentina 15 years after the end of World War II.

After Mossad received a tip that Eichmann was hiding in Argentina under the alias Ricardo Klement, Israel sends a group of elite operatives to abduct the architect of the Final Solution and bring him to Israel to be tried for his crimes.

At the time, Argentina is harboring a sizable number of runaway German Nazis, leaving Israel no hope that an extradition request for Eichmann would be honored by the Argentinian government. So Eichmann’s capture is a top secret, illegal operation.

The group led by Mossad operative Peter Malkin abducts Eichmann taking him to a safe house. 

​Humanity and courage

While they await for the day of their departure, Malkin spends time with Eichmann trying to understand the man he saw as a monster while Eichmann pretends he was nothing more than a mere cog in the Nazi apparatus.

Oscar Isaac plays Malkin, and to get a deeper understanding of his role he read Malkin’s memoir Eichmann in My Hands.

“I knew I wanted to do the movie because what happened in that room with those two men is so fascinating and so bizarre and ugly and uncomfortable,” Isaac said. “It also shows humanity, the courage that Malkin had to decide to identify with this mass murderer when it was much easier to choke him and be angry and torture him.” 

Isaac says considering his character was a man grieving the murder of his sister and her children by the Nazis, he showed incredible restraint.

“It’s almost as if Malkin convinced Eichmann of his humanity,” Isaac said. “The whole thing was about, ‘If we were like you, you’d be dead right now.’”

​Kingsley’​s motivation

Sir Ben Kingsley, who in the past has interpreted numerous Jewish characters in Holocaust films, now takes on the role of the top Nazi operative, Eichmann. He tells VOA he interpreted Eichmann as vulnerable and human to show that those who commit the most heinous crimes are not mythical evil monsters but people among us. 

He relates a personal story that has haunted him over the years and informed his decision to take up this role.

“I was outside an old synagogue with a Jewish journalist, a young woman, and a Hungarian approached us and asked us what we were doing, and we said ‘We are filming the life of Simon Wiesenthal’ to which he replied, ‘Ah you Jews. You should just keep quiet, because it never happened. And if you don’t keep quiet, it will happen again.’ Now work that one out. Work that one out. Absolutely shocking!” the actor said.

​A personal story and catharsis

Filmmaker Chris Weitz, a son of Holocaust survivors, says the story is a personal one.

“Because I was raised as a child of somebody who had lost everything to this spasm of national hatred, and so there is a notion that no matter how good things were things could go haywire down the line. And I think indeed a lot of people are waking up to the possibility that if it’s not anti-Semitism it could be anti-immigrant sentiment, or various other forms of racism that could totally disrupt society.”

During the film’s premiere at the Holocaust museum in Washington, screenwriter and historian Orton said, Eichmann’s trial in Israel was a landmark historical moment.

“The trial allowed them to grieve, allowed them that moment acknowledging that had happened to Israelis, Jewish people and move on from there. So, even if there are still people, deluded people in the world who believe that it is something that didn’t happen, look at where we are!” He points to the hallowed halls of the Holocaust Museum. “That was one of the reasons it was so pivotal. It allowed for national catharsis.” 

Orton hopes that the film will bring awareness to audiences who knew nothing about this part of history. 

“My sincere hope is that people will see a movie like this and say to themselves, ‘I want to learn more about that. I want to see where it differs from reality. I want to explore for myself,’ and so, hopefully, telling these stories through film, through television, inspires people to actually grapple with history,” Orton said
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The drama “Operation Finale” revisits history and brings to life the dramatic capture, by Mossad operatives, of Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the Nazi Holocaust. Filmmaker Chris Weitz and scriptwriter and historian Matthew Orton offer a dramatic rendition of the historic events that took place in Argentina, 15 years after the end of World War II. VOA’s Penelope Poulou spoke with the cast about the significance of these events in postwar history and their retelling on film today.
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Muslims living in United States are sharing the happiness and joy of the Eid celebration with non-Muslims, especially when Muslims sacrifice an animal and share the meat with the poor and needy. VOA’s Vardha Khalil recently visited a residential area in Silver Spring, Maryland, where a local Muslim organization distributed more than 2700 kilos of meat to the community. Khalil files this report.
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Thousands of revelers hurled at least 145 tons of tomatoes at each other Wednesday during the annual “Tomatina” festival in the eastern Spanish town of Bunol.

With a firecracker blast marking the start of “La Tomatina” shortly before noon local time, at least six trucks loaded with tomatoes drove through Bunol’s main street, providing red ammunition for the revelers to fight each other for the next hour.

The event takes its origins from a spontaneous food fight that broke out amongst villagers in 1945. It was banned for a time during the 1950s at the height of General Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, but has gained popularity again since it was reinstated, drawing a huge international crowd.

The Tomatina attracts thousands of participants and onlookers from Spain and around the world to Bunol, one of the country’s prime tomato-producing areas. The Reuters news agency reports that at one time, the festival involved up to 45,000 participants. Now, it has become a ticketed event with only 22,000 available slots, 5,000 of which go to local residents.

 
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Cardi B has apologized to the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. for portraying the civil rights leader’s wife, Coretta Scott King, in a comedy skit.

News outlets report the Bronx rapper was featured in “The Real Housewives of Civil Rights,” a two-minute parody that surfaced Tuesday on TMZ. Tuesday was the 55th anniversary of the March on Washington and King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

The sketch from comedian Rip Michaels’ new series Off the Rip portrays pettiness between Coretta Scott King and Malcolm X’s wife, Betty Shabazz, and ends with a joke about Dr. King sleeping with “The Iggy Azalea of the Civil Rights Movement.”

But Bernice King later thanked Cardi B on Twitter for reaching out and apologizing, and said she looked forward to talking with her.
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A Massachusetts living history museum that depicts life in the early 19th century is looking to overhaul the way it presents the past in an effort to stay relevant to a 21st century audience.

Old Sturbridge Village has received a $75,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities it will use to partner with scholars and other consultants for a multiyear study into how it portrays four areas: agriculture and food, civics, industry and economy, and race and gender.

It’s a modest grant, but it could have a major impact.

“What this grant will allow us to do is look at the entire picture and really dive deep into making sure that it’s a cohesive, purposeful experience for the visitor as they progress through the museum,” said Rhys Simmons, Old Sturbridge Village’s director of interpretation.

The reboot, the museum’s first in about 40 years, is sorely needed, Simmons said. Old Sturbridge Village hasn’t updated its staff training material since the 1970s, and visitor experience surveys have found that people, while generally positive about their visit, feel something is missing.

Many museums are dealing with similar issues, said Jeff Hardwick, deputy director of the National Endowment for the Humanities Division of Public Programs.

According to a 2016 report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Humanities Indicators project, visits to historic sites have been on the decline since 1982.

“Many historic site interpretations have lagged behind scholarship, so they have to become more relevant to a more diverse audience,” Hardwick said.

Old Sturbridge Village, on 200 acres (81 hectares) in central Massachusetts, depicts life in a small New England town of the 1830s, with 40 to 50 employees dressed in period clothing going about daily routines in the home, workshops or farm and interacting with visitors. It gets about 250,000 visitors a year.

The early 19th century was a time of social upheaval, and the role of minorities and women was changing. Slavery no longer existed in most of New England, and the abolitionist and temperance movements were in full swing.

Yet the museum hasn’t done a good enough job of presenting those stories, Simmons said.

“We underrepresent the African-American and the Native American story dramatically,” Simmons said. “You leave here with the sense that it was an almost exclusively white- and male-dominated picture of what life was like.”

The role of women also needs to be re-examined, he said. While men held jobs in the fields, or in workshops, women held the household together.

“The home was the foundation of every family so women played probably the most important role in rural New England life,” Simmons said. “Men couldn’t manage without women.”

People have more options for their leisure time and money now than they did 20 years ago, and museums need to figure out how to better compete for that time and money, said Lauren McCormack, secretary of the Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums. The Old Sturbridge Village study may help.

“Anything they learn at Old Sturbridge Village hopefully would be shared throughout the field and be applicable to some extent at other museums,” said McCormack, executive director of the Marblehead Museum in Massachusetts.
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Michael Jackson’s estate and IMAX are partnering to digitally remaster Michael Jackson’s Thriller 3D into IMAX 3D.

The partnership was announced Wednesday, which would have been the singer’s 60th birthday. It will be released in IMAX theaters across the U.S. for one week, beginning Sept. 21.

The estate’s co-executors say Jackson loved to give his fans the “latest and greatest in technology and entertainment experiences.”

The short film, directed by John Landis, premiered in Los Angeles in 1983. The 3D version was first shown at the 74th Venice Film Festival in 2017.

The remastered release precedes the launch of Amblin Entertainment’s fantasy film, The House with a Clock in Its Walls, starring Jack Black and Cate Blanchett.

Jackson was 50 years old when he died in June 2009.
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