Daughter Of Keltoum (First Run/Global Lens)
Picture: C
Sound: C+ Extras: C+ Film: B
Out of Algeria comes one of the braves films about the
regressive situation in The Middle East to date, made in 2001 by director Medhi
Charef, he could not have know how timely he was about to be with Daughter
Of Keltoum. The film focuses on a
19-year-old woman looking for her biological mother and meeting a strange old
woman who keeps following her on her journey, for better and worse. From Switzerland, she has never been to The
Middle East and learns first hand what a brutal, backwards, woman-hating set of
societies her roots are connected to.
However, to find her real mother, she is willing to endure
the worse and it is amazing the automatic open hatred men have for women there,
so accurately portrayed here. There are
the men who think women are just for raping, then there is another loser who
yells at a woman just for wearing make-up and starts beating her head into a
bus window for offending him. Mind you,
she was a total stranger. That the
society hides behind religion and their “traditions” as a way to excuse this,
that these men are used to doing this openly because it is explicitly
sanctioned by the Muslims and jointed governments involved is an abomination
and makes their concept of “infidels” very worthless.
The actual story is a bit melodramatic at times, but the
misogyny at the hearty of the story, which is at the root of why the young lady
is on her journey to begin with, the educational and economic oppression of
these women and the blatant disposability of females from newborn status to the
grave. 9/11 happened since then and I
wonder how much harder this film would have been to make so soon afterwards. Daughter Of Keltoum is a gem indeed.
The 2.35 X 1 image is soft, detail challenged and color is
mixed. Part of the problem may simply
be a PAL to NTSC transfer issue. The
film was a Dolby analog SR (Spectral Recording) release, but the Dolby Digital
2.0 Stereo here has no real surround activity.
Extras include two sections on other Global Lens pieces, a DVD-ROM PDF
discussion guide, text director’s statement, and stills.
- Nicholas Sheffo
