Montreal

Good-bye, Montréal,
It's so hard to leave you, now I'm gone.
Have to leave you anyway
I may cry, but I'm ok.
It's hard to leave your skies of blue
of white and grey and sunrise hue
your streets of snow, your air's breath-mist,
your trees alight, your anarchists,
"refusons l'austerité,"
et toutes autres luttes pour la dignité.
I'm warmed by your humanite,
Montréal.

The Little Death

Written and directed by Josh Lawson

This Australian-made film opens by explaining that in French, “the little death” is slang for orgasm. It then takes us on a light-hearted romp through the bedrooms, garages, parking lots and a few other places of a suburban neighbourhood, scratching its head, so to speak, at the lengths to which some straight, white, monogamous people will go in their quest for sexual satisfaction.

It’s a comedy. Though allusion is repeatedly made to sexual predation (in the shape of the new neighbour who offers home-made biscuits as a gesture to soften the disclosure he is obliged to make that he’s a convicted sex offender), the film never gets too dark.

And as a comedy, I guess it’s asking too much for it to have delved deeply into the community of kink, in its survey of fetishes from somnophilia (getting turned on by watching someone sleep) to role-playing to rape fantasy. Instead, it hovers around the edge of mocking without engaging, though maybe it’s what the audience brings that is decisive. Scenes I saw as poignant had others laughing aloud. How much is that the film’s invitation to ridicule and how much, the audience’s expectation that watching anything to do with kink will be funny? I’m not sure.

[Of course, from a certain perspective, just about anything to do with human sexuality – from the straightest of straight vanilla sex to the most latex-covered group rope or needle play dreamt up by any voyeur – has its ridiculous side. Here we are, hurtling through space on a planet that’s become more and more hostile to life as it’s currently evolved – and people put vast amounts of effort into all sorts of things for sexual gratification. And making and watching films about it, for that matter.]

And yet, there is the poignant side.

There’s Phil, the man threatened with the sack for sleeping at work – staying awake nights turned on by watching his wife Maureen sleep: a wife who, awake, has only criticism of him, seems to be unhappy because of him, never listens to him; a wife who accidentally drinks the tea he made for himself with a dose of the sedative drug given to him by his boss to ensure he gets a decent night's sleep. Finding he can tell her how much he loves her, he takes to deliberately drugging her – violating her trust not for sex, as such, but for a strange kind of sad, illusory companionship.

Or Rowena and Richard, having lots of sex to try to get pregnant – lots of incredibly boring, joyless sex, at least to judge by Rowena’s face. Told that the doctor has advised conception is more likely to happen if the she has orgasms, Richard objects dismissively, “but you have lots of orgasms,” leaving Rowena crestfallen, agreeing, “yeah… so I guess we’ll just keep on doing what we’re doing.” When she discovers she has a tear fetish – sexually aroused by her partner’s tears – how can she begin to explain?

She can’t.

And if there’s a recurring theme, it seems to be the hopelessness of imagining anything positive can come out of exploring kink. While not every scenario is pursued without consent, even where there’s consent (Maeve indulges Paul’s foot fetish; Paul attempts to indulge her rape fantasy… did I mention it’s a comedy? The results are pretty funny), only the strength of the relationship makes the disappointment of the unfulfilled fantasy bearable.

The closest the film comes to hope is in the midst of the absurd situation of Sam, a deaf man unable to sleep, making a call to a phone sex line answered by a worker who needs the money to look after her nan who’s had a stroke – with Monica, an Auslan interpreter, in between. The hope is not about the phone sex – which of course is pretty funny and kind of fizzles out – but for the warm connection made by Sam and Monica despite, or perhaps because of, the absurdity.

But kinky sex? Look, it was never going to be a substitute for Dan and Evie learning to communicate, no matter how hot their role-playing scenarios got. But really? No-one was able to negotiate their way to something consensual, intense, pleasurable and connecting?

I guess I’m still waiting for that film.

A tribute to the Rojava revolution and especially the women of the YPJ.

broken

here there is no music
only poetry
and steel

Spare me

O spare me the tiredness
of wisdom
of the wisdom
of knowing better
of the wisdom of knowing better than
to dream
impossible dreams.

Spare me the serenity
of the adult I became
when I outgrew
the folly
of spring.

And spare me the sanity
that traps my pain and hope
in a grey web of calm
beside stone tears
I do not shed
anguish
I do not feel
and need
I’ve rocked to sleep.

And you,
yearning
– it began with you.
Where are you now?

powder

Nothing smashes the dream
of icecream castles in the air
quite like
the grinding boot
of reality.

Cesar Chavez

US release 2014

Directed by Diego Luna

Written by Keir Pearson

Australian release date to be announced (but there it was, on a Qantas flight!)

The US 1936 National Labor Relations Act recognized the rights of workers in the US to organise and collectively bargain – but excluded farm workers.

This film tells the story of the heroic struggle of farm workers and their leader Cesar Chavez for their rights to organise and for a dignified living.

Cesar Chavez, born to a farming family in Arizona, moved with them to California when the family lost their farm during the Great Depression. He became a farm worker there at the age of 11, at a time when mass unemployment gave the farm owners immense power and workers, bugger all.

He wanted to change all this and joined the Community Service Organization, where he learned the principles of community organising. By 1962, when Chavez returned from the city to Delano in central California, farm workers were subjected to precarious employment as day labourers with no minimum wage (paid as little as $2 a day). Workers from different ethnic groups were pitted against each other and decent working conditions (like toilet facilities in the fields) were denied.

The film – not a documentary, but an artistic representation of the struggle and the people involved – portrays the arduous and dangerous work of organising within the community during the 1960s and 70s. It depicts the solidarity developed in the course of the struggle, the violence of the bosses and the state, the farm owners’ racism and the toll of their many sacrifices on Cesar and his family.

It also explores the many tactics employed by the United Farm Workers, as Chavez (played by Michael Peña) first makes contact with Mexican workers willing to organise, then along with his wife Helen (America Ferrera) and other comrades, take up work in the fields alongside them. The newly formed union, co-founded by Dolores Huerta (Rosario Dawson) establishes a credit union to make links with more workers, and distributes literature to explain to workers their rights (using cartoons because of the high rate of illiteracy).

As the bosses cut the wages of Filipino workers in 1965, the new union is called on for solidarity. A strike wave spreads throughout the region. Linked to the strike is a boycott campaign that the union spreads first across the state and then throughout the US. It features an epic 300 mile march from Delano to Sacramento to put the spotlight on the mistreatment of farm workers. As grape growers and wine makers feet the boycott pinch but remain intransigent, and newly inaugurated president Richard Nixon facilitates grape export to Europe and promises the military will purchase the excess, the union seeks and finds the solidarity of a consumer boycott and union bans in the UK.

What stands out in the film is the union leadership’s clear approach to self-organisation of the workers, hand-in-hand with outreach – to other workers and unionists, consumers, religious communities, students, civil rights groups – for support on the basis of justice and human rights.

A contradiction of the times that is treated in the film is the intersection of sexist attitudes and militant antiracist working class solidarity. It is exemplified in Chavez’ insistence his wife Helen not risk arrest – after declaring his willingness to do so himself – asking “who’ll look after the kids?” She stands up to him with the same determination she then displays in leading resistance to a court injunction prohibiting the use of the word “huelga” (Spanish for strike) in the vicinity of the farms. As she is arrested and led away, others take up the call.

This is further explored in the exploration of violence in the struggle, which at least in part is portrayed as a manifesto of machismo. Chavez’ commitment to non-violence is also portrayed as derived from his Catholic convictions. Other protagonists point to the importance of not being portrayed as crazy Mexicans in order to retain public support. A remarkable episode the film recounts from the 5-year strike and boycott movement is Cesar’s 25-day fast, directed toward the strike movement itself. He begins the fast in response to an act of retaliation to strike-breakers’ violence on the picket line. It is both a call to the movement to unite in renouncing violence and a demonstration of his commitment to pursue the strike and maintain non-violence.

Despite the violence of the farm owners and support from local, state and federal authorities, the crippling boycott and strike forces the growers to capitulate. They sign an agreement with the union in 1970, and after a further five years, the workers had win passage of legislation recognising farm workers’ right to organise.

“Cesar Chavez” is still highly relevant today, at a time when undocumented workers have been deported by the Obama administration in record numbers, and when the struggle for a $15/hour minimum wage is being fought by underpaid workers across the US. The film joins the rich heritage of those like Matewan and Made in Dagenham that successfully keep alive the knowledge of working class history and that by so doing, dare us to struggle and win.