LOCAL EVENTS-WINNIPEG:

YASMINA'S YATRA:

The following invitation came to us here at Molly's Blog, and we are dutifully reporting it, despite the fact that it has no interest to Molly, being as I am neither an aesthete nor fascinated with how one can twist the politics and religion of Central Asia into some resemblance of the "pan-religiosity" fashionable in North America and, to a lesser extent, Europe. I have no doubt that the following has great "fantasy value", but, for myself, I can't get interested. Quite frankly it doesn't matter to me whether an idea is presented with the exoticism of a far-away place, as I don't share the leftist illusion of "cultural relativity". pretty well all of the "revelations" that leftists like to ascribe to peoples as far away as possible have been presented in pretty well all human cultures over the span of history. But more comment later.

WWWWWWWWWWWW
Yasmina's Yatra

International Premiere:
Date:
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Time:
8:00pm - 9:00pm
Location:
Winnipeg Art Gallery
Description
Y a s m i n a ' s Y a t r a

A film by R y a n K l a t tstarring S a r r a D e a n e

score and foley by A n d y R u d o l p h

A timeless pilgrimage towards the divine, in seven movements.

This short-feature was shot in the high altitude deserts of Central Asia. Voicing the languages of Hindi, Ladaki and Spitian, with original choral score and English subtitles.

Yasmina, a free Islamic woman, journeys in extra-terrestrial landscapes past the brink of death. Here, sages, rakshas, and foretellers are the lone inhabitants.

WWWWWWWWWWW

Well good luck to Yasmina. This sort of thing would be worth five death sentences in Saudi Arabia. I love things that make me learn things that I didn't know before. The language "Ladaki", more commonly called "Ladakhi" is current in Jammu and Kashmir, and it is spoken by a population of about 200,000 in those Indian provinces (with another estimated 12,000 in Tibet). It is classified as a "western archaic Tibetan" language. The language of "Spitian", also called "Spiti"( what a lovely word) is spoken in the northern province of India's 'Himachal Pradesh', near to the country of Bhutan ie far away from "Central Asia". In the local language it is referred to as "Piti".

It is not news to me that there is a Buddhist population in the state of Jammu and Kashmir that the states embodying Islam and Hinduism have been fighting over for decades. I've met people of such ethnic groups in the past, and, to say the least, they don't physically resemble the majority in those states who fight to rule them. let alone that they behave like they do. My own acquaintance was very much with a "nationalist" and secularist section that wanted to get beyond religious divides. In our present world that sort of thing barely exists.

So we are back to the movie being presented. One might "imagine' an Islamic woman from that part of the world going on a quest to learn from Buddhists, but the idea stretches the imagination very far beyond the usual "suspension of disbelief". No doubt there is great western sympathy for Buddhism, and also no doubt there is an urge to cover up the more oppressive aspects of Islam (which are many and various) amongst populations that the West has attacked. Still...the quest described in the movie is utterly unbelievable. Hopefully the artistry makes up for it in creating a fantasy film worth watching. I doubt that any serious point could be made.