“One person alone cannot push an elephant.” The proverb tells us a great deal about how this film explores the crisis in human connection that comes with conflict. How pervasive, how multifaceted, how horrifying, to find that all sense of community has unraveled in the worst assaults and intensities of a save-no-soul total war. But from there, from the aftermath of this horror, even in the midst of it, Rose Mapendo would tell us we can plant the seeds of something better, nobler, more generous.

Pushing the Elephant, an Arts Engine film, explores loss, and the unique ways it comes to people whose world is dissolved in the chaos of conflict. It is also, however, an exploration of the complex journey that comes with having actively sought to plant those seeds, to be better, to be more generous and to shape a more humane future.

The story is rooted in the civil war that overtook the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1996 and which has continued in one form or another till the present day, leaving between 5 and 7 million people dead, most of them civilians, many of them “invisible” due to the remoteness of the terrain and a generalized lack of accountability. Rose, her husband and 7 of their 8 children, were abducted by government forces and imprisoned in a death camp, where ethnic Congolese Tutsis, the Banyamulenge, were being executed in large numbers.

While their society, their freedom, their country, their right, even, to tradition, were being taken from them, they faced death and very little sign that mercy was possible. Rose’s husband was executed and despite nearly starving to death, she gave birth to twins. In the midst of it all, she received news that her eldest son was to be executed as well.

The film opens with a voice-over saying that when the president ordered the killing of all the Tutsis, “it felt like the end of the world”. Those Banyamulenge who survived, like Rose, have a choice to make between ways of fighting against and overcoming the nightmare of what they endured. Many continue to fight militarily. Rose chose the path of forgiveness and social action: she fought back from the brink of extinction, rescued her children from the death camp, and helped to build Mapendo International, an NGO based in Boston and Nairobi that gives assistance to refugees who need help resettling.

The name, Mapendo, means “great love” in Swahili, so Rose was a perfect fit in her role as ambassador for the group. In just five years, Mapendo International was able to move 10,000 people from danger to safety. The spirit of generosity and community that drives Mapendo International is the same spirit of great love that moved Rose to devote herself to making sure her family was able to thrive in a life of love and support, instead of losing themselves to the emotional devastation of hate and resentment.

Rose was the 2009 recipient of the UNHCR Humanitarian of the Year Award and has been named a CNN Hero, for her work assisting refugees. She has since left Mapendo International to found Mapendo New Horizons (MNH) with her brother, Kigabo Mbazumutima. MNH is working “To give help and hope to vulnerable survivors of physical, psychological, and social trauma in Africa by ensuring them easy access to health care, protection and security.”

Rose herself has said of the film and its message:

The minority Banyamulenge have suffered persecution in the form of massacre and exile. Our voices have been silenced in our own country as we are murdered or flee; our story is little known outside our own community. The most recent massacre, the Gatumba Massacre, has led to an influx of Banyamulenge refugees into the United States. We are grateful to be here, but we also know that as we integrate into American society, our history and culture will recede further and further into the past.

Pushing the Elephant will create a portrait of the manner in which war has impacted my family over the last two decades. While every family’s story is unique, our story well represents my community. The film will serve a two-fold role, in introducing the American public to our history and culture, and in calling attention to the plight of the Banyamulenge in Congo and our struggles and successes in forming a new community here in the United States.

Behind the opening credits of the film, one after another African cloth waves and flutters, celebrating the color and the joy of a lost country, a place still mired in extreme danger, but just as full of humanity and even the potential for hope, as any human society. The score, a blend of modern and traditional instrumentation and rhythms, reflects that ambivalent mood, somewhere between mystery and faith (which is so necessary for understanding Rose’s story).

Rose and 9 of her family, including her eldest son, plus one grandchild, were resettled to the US in August 2000. They had spent 16 months in a death camp, had lost the head of their family, had been forced to learn the hard art of forgiveness, one of Rose’s daughters giving birth to the child of a soldier with whom they had made a difficult pact for protection.

Rose explains that “Refugees are normal people, like you and like me, who lost everything in one minute and found themselves in a death camp.” To be a refugee is to have undergone an extreme trauma, to have had one’s world severed, with brutal suddenness. It is to be uprooted, to have a nation, a known world, a sense of normalcy, a family, a community, amputated, severed from what remains livable.

It is to have suffered dehumanizing crimes both too intimate and too vast to be explained. And so it can be an experience of profound isolation, an ungovernable darkness that calls out for the emergency action, violence, revenge. This is why the wisdom Rose imparts is so powerful: “When you don’t forgive others, you keep building a Hell inside yourself.”

The film is also an exploration of reunification, evolution and shared self-discovery. It traces the reintroduction of Nangabire, Rose’s missing daughter, to the family. She had been with her grandparents when the rest of the family was abducted, and so she had not seen them for nearly thirteen years. Nangabire’s struggle is many-faceted, because she must face a world made without her, full of all the joys and trials she missed, a reflection of the childhood, the upbringing, the mother’s love she had gone without, due to circumstance.

She would have to learn to be the child she had not had the chance to be and also a student immersed in a foreign culture, playing catch-up, even as she adjusts to becoming a woman, having to blend all of this with the character she had already forged by living all her own life’s experiences as she had lived them, first in the Democratic Republic of Congo and then in exile in Kenya.

There are moments of great beauty and simple, transcendent human quality, as she gets acquainted with the family she had lost and starts a new life. It’s a complex and moving window into the problem facing all refugees: that of having to find oneself and sustain one’s family bonds, in a place where there are no roots and the markers for meaning don’t match up with those carried within.

Rose teaches her children forgiveness, tells all gathered with her family, that the worst atrocities have to be forgiven or no one can be free. She would tell me later herself that anger is contagious, that it spreads like a fire in dry brush, that parents who cannot forgive and release their anger by doing so infect their children and perpetuate the crisis of hate and violence, building conflict into a new generation that ends up ill-equipped to work for peace.

The trauma suffered by those who have been displaced by such unforgiving violence, that sudden incident of terror and displacement, could strike anyone of any station living at or near an area of conflict. The lesson of Rose’s story is that one prospers in survival and makes a better world by thinking toward a better world and working to improve the lot of those in need.

The following is a transcript of an interview conducted by Joseph Robertson, Cafe Sentido’s editorial director, with Davoud Geramifard, a Persian mixed-media artist and filmmaker living in Toronto, Canada, whose documentary Voices of the Unheard was screened at this year’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York City…

CafeSentido (editor Joseph Robertson): Was it a difficult choice to film undercover in Iran knowing you might not be able to return as a result?

Davoud Geramifard (director): Going back to make this film was a conscious decision. I knew that I might be arrested, or even killed, as it happened before to many Iranians who tried to do the same thing. The saddest case was Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian who was murdured and raped just for taking pictures outside the notorious Evin prison. But how could I live in peace if I had chosen to be indifferent or silent about the brutalities that I felt for many years in Iran. Someone had to do it, and I hope others continue on this path, because unless we expose these critical issues, we would not be able to gain what our people has been fighting for.

CS: How are the people who were filmed? Have any of them expressed concerns about repercussions? Or are they excited to be speaking out?

DG: My participants are OK at the moment. I have constant contact with them, and till now, there has not been any issue for them. However we are still preventing the mass distribution of the film, and our goal is to show the film in festivals across the globe for now. My participants are proud of what they did, otherwise, they would not have been in the film from the beginning. The Iran that they have portrayed has been missing from the the psyche of outside world for such a long time, that they wanted to take the chance and speak out. I think now it is the responsibility of the international community to respect their courage and HEAR their stories, and do not leave them alone.

CS: Did you have a specific structure of three or four key areas you wanted to cover? Or did you break the film into chapters only after shooting?

DG: I had the structure planned carefully prior to the shoot. I did an academic research that took about two years. I identified and categorized various secular communities, and wanted to have the best structure, so that each category could have a member in the film. I knew the style that I wanted to use, and I wanted to add something to the filmmaking language as well as being fare to the topic. Each participant and his/her environment actually dictated and formed the style, and I wanted the film to allow them to be comfortable.

CS: If there’s a corner of life (or multiple) in Iran you’d like to film but weren’t able to, what would it be? And why? Will you try to do that work without a change in administration?

DG: There are many topics that I want to explore and put into film in Iran. Currently I’m working on my next documentary, Cyber Revolution which is about the use of web-based social media in the formation of emancipatory movements in Iran. This is something I can do without returning back to Iran. I dream of doing docs on topics such as the woman’s rights movements, worker’s situation, and the bitter story of the Iranian oil industry which from my perspective is the real problem of Iran and Iranians. I’m also writing a script for my first fiction film, which I hope I can bring in front of the camera it in a neighboring country, before it is too late!

CS: What role do you believe economic trends play in the mindset of the people you spoke to? Does this vary by generation?

DG: Economics trends play a crucial role. Many of my participants see Iran as a rich country that should be strong, regardless of its oil reserves. The new generation needs work, they demand a good lifestyle, at least something similar to their father’s generation, but the Iranian government prefers to spend the Iranian money on expanding their influence in the region, or buying more arms and building a stronger repressive “Revolutionary Guard”. Inflation rate is galloping in Iran, gas is rationed, but they send billions of dollars for Hezbullah. Iranian people are not happy with that. I personally believe that the deterioration of economics combined with free communication with the outside world will be the Achilles heel of the Islamic Republic. The moment they cannot find buyers for their oil, they are on the verges of collapse.

CS: What issues (aside from political change) did you find are central to the reformists’ agenda?

DG: I think that the 30 years-long experience of the Islamic regime has convinced a fraction of the “insiders” (AKA the reformists) that free trade can prevent the total collapse of the regime. These people who are also famous as “technocrats” want people to have jobs and a little bit of freedom, so that they can be able to buy, spend and be “happy” on a consumerist or liberal democratic level. In order to make this minute change take shape, they have to for example give more freedom to the women, or to the students. Real political change, or the change of the constitution or the theocratic system has not been a part of their agenda. This notion has been forced on them just after the election, by the people whose need for change is much more drastic than the change the reformists were seeking.

CS: Were you conscious of crafting an aesthetic or a mood for the film or for any of its chapters?

DG: Absolutely. I wanted the film to have something to say with its form and aesthetics. Documentary filmmaking is an important part of cinema. I have studied it in academia and as a maker I wanted to add to this rich legacy. I studied form in both fiction and documentary extensively and wanted the film to blur the boundary between these two, because that is what satisfy me the most as a maker. In addition to that, I wanted the film to be poetic and non-expository. Poetry is the most important form of art in Iran. Even in our daily conversations we use tropes, so I always and almost unconsciously go back to that legacy and try to use it in a visual way. Finally I should mention that I think the style of this film was partly dictated by the subject. I wanted the viewer to feel as a member of the communities that they are encountering in the film. Thus I went for a verite style to create that comfort.

CS: What role did sound play in how you put the final cut together?

DG: Music and sound are my passion right after cinema. Sometimes I feel if my love affair with cinema was not this much dominant, I would have been a musician. However this secondary love story has crafted a good listener out of me. I think sound and music should add another layer to a film, and they should be able to speak for themselves. In the film, if you compare the use of sound in the opening of the first chapter with the second one, you will get the most important message of the film. In urban Iran, one wakes up with the dominant sound of religion in the morning (call to prayer); that is how ideology tries to penetrate one’s personal space. But in a nomadic regions with the lack of a religious order, one wakes up with the sound of nature, the sound of a rooster.

CS: Are there more unheard voices you feel it would be important to highlight?

DG: There are many. Iran has not passed its civic rights movement yet. Discrimination is vivid in that society. Gender inequality still persists. Gay rights has been ignored in Iran. Women rights are neglected on daily basis. Religious minorities still does not enjoy equality. In fact Iranian constitution only recognizes 5 religions officially, and there is no chance for agnostics or atheists to voice their existence openly. Ethnic minorities are heavily suppressed to a degree that their languages cannot be taught in the schools of their region. Iran has once been the land of diverse groups of people who shared the same motherland, regardless of their differences. It is heartbreaking to me as an Iranian to see what this regime has made out of Iran. But one day we will take it back, we will build it again and once that day comes if I was alive, I’m going to make sure that no human being faces repression and voicelessness in our land.

CS: What advice would you give journalists and filmmakers who want to report on situations like the one in Iran?

DG: Please familiarize yourself deeply with Iran before going there. Please read the contemporary history of Iran, as well as a bit of ancient history. Iranians are still sad about Alexander’s attack, the Arab invasion, and the Ajax operation. We live with our past, so learn it well before going there. Please read from authentic sources, I will recommend Edward G. Browne, and Morgan Shuster to begin with. Please recognize our 150 years fight for democracy. Please go inside the houses, rather than staying outside on the sidewalks. Iranians cannot speak freely with you in the middle of the streets. The Iran you will see in people’s houses is the uncensored Iran. If you want to understand Iran, travel in every region. Iran is not only Tehran.

Michael Jackson was ‘the king of pop’, an informal title he acquired through the relentless echo chamber of American celebrity. He won this title by topping the charts from a young age, by having the “it” quality, by innovative body motions that changed dance, like the “moonwalk”, by way of record music sales, by way of conquering the video medium, by staging a massive global drive to fund food aid to Africa, by being odd enough to garner endless headlines, or because none of us really understand what it takes to rise to the top of the popular culture that elevated him and defamed him, or what it’s like to be there. So he was “king”, the way any royalty lives a life incomprehensible —for its opulence, its complications, its stresses— to the rest of society.

People close to Jackson have said over the past 24 hours that he lived an amount of stress impossible for any human heart to endure — an indirect or not so indirect suggestion that his heart just “gave out” from a life too intense and too big for the light-framed soft-spirited pop idol to withstand. It is said he weighed as little as 100 lbs. in recent months, that he was receiving regular treatments for an unconfirmed illness, that he had suffered from heart problems, that he was engaged in intensive weight training to prepare for his revival concert tour, that he needed medication to maintain the energy necessary to do all of this, and maybe he overdosed or mixed meds in inadvisable ways.

We don’t know. But the speculation that he had perhaps gotten too close to or even abused children that stayed at his Neverland Ranch continues. There have been passionate and angry outbursts from people convinced that he somehow maneuvered or bought his way out of conviction on those charges. There have been outpourings of affection from long-time friends and acquaintances who say he never could have done any such thing and who cite his acquittal as proof he was innocent. He is at once a universal symbol of pop culture, its excesses and its rewards, its infamy and its contribution to culture generally, and a scapegoat on whom people from across society place their worst feelings, without actually having met him or having knowledge of his mysterious personal life.

The pop-culture epic that is the story of Michael Jackson is riveting in part because of the extreme air of mystery that surrounds him. For some, it is the mystery of his unique abilities and apparently natural charisma and talent. For others, it is the mystery of his intense shyness, his reclusive ways, his periodic obsessions (like the hyperbaric chamber or the veiling of his children, whom he wanted to protect from the trials of celebrity). And for others, it is the mystery of what could possess a grown man to continue to interact with children after all the ugly allegations and the suspicion and infamy that came with past interactions.

There is also, of course, the mystery of whether what is imagined about him is true at all. Did he do it? Did he suffer from deprivation of childhood? Was he violently beaten or abused as a child? Was there a trauma we don’t know about that forced him into seclusion? How did he so persistently maintain a life both isolated and in the spotlight, for decades? Why did he? Was his skin losing pigmentation and for that reason, did he bleach his skin in an effort to maintain a uniform complexion? Or was he “trying to be white”? We don’t know.

He was a child star, a talent, an innovator, a charitable man, a man of conscience, a mystery, possibly a criminal, though we don’t have proof, a stunning success and a startling failure. His biography runs the gamut of ordinary people’s dreams and nightmares, and in that way, somehow, he became like part of an extended family of emotional symbols that pop culture has become for the general public.

It is perhaps an exaggeration to say, as someone did yesterday, that his was a “once in history” talent, or that his loss is another in a long string of national traumas that will mark us all, as suggested by Larry King. But somehow, there was popular energy concentrated in the person of Michael Jackson, in his story and the life he lived, some of which he chose and some of which pursued him to his endless chagrin.

His passing has suddenly opened up a window into our collective awareness: we focused on him, discussed his personal attitudes and relationships, made guesses and judged him, freely and at will. Does that say something about us? About the kind of culture we have made and are making every day? Does it serve as a caution to us all to rethink what elements of our society we elevate or tear down, or the grounds on which we base our choices in that regard? It might.

Anything beyond that, if we are honest, is speculation. The last two days have seen journalists quipping about the pop icon like teenagers trying to get a grip on something beyond their capacity to imagine, and serious reporters bending over backwards rhetorically to blend the narrative of his status as a much beloved figure with the sad story of a man who may have engaged in morally unjustifiable abuses. Michael Jackson splits our language as he split our public consciousness, not because he is a good or a bad man nor because his fame was warranted or unwarranted, but because as a society we put so much of our energy into his story for so long.

This Playing for Change song brings together musicians who played together on “Stand by Me”, and for the first time, shows all the musicians playing together in the same place. The piece is a live recording of Grandpa Elliot and Clarence Bekker, singing with this band from around the world, in New Orleans. An audience of thousands was able to witness this inspired performance.

The Playing for Change team has traveled the world to bring musicians and artists together to craft “songs around the world” that show a common emotional and aspirational fabric of humanity. They write of this particular piece:

As we made our way around the world we encountered love, hate, rich and poor, black and white, and many different religious groups and ideologies. It became very clear that as a human race we need to transcend from the darkness to the light and music is our weapon of the future. This song around the world features musicians who have seen and overcome conflict and hatred with love and perseverance.

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Conflict is far more complex than the rash dualism that it breeds: often the entrenched bias and hatred that emerged from or during conflict was unthinkable to many before the outbreak of hostilities or the imposition of a one-sided or otherwise brutal regime. Getting beyond conflict requires getting beyond the logic of conflict, remembering the common humanity that makes it possible to do so.

This “song around the world” recording of Bob Marley’s “One Love” is an expression of the Playing for Change team’s approach to using the creative process to reach the point where the message of human creativity and expression illuminates a basic common humanity. It is, like any effective rendition of the song, a hymn to love and understanding, but it is also a lesson about the little ways any given person might contribute texture and emotion to a shared undertaking, a strong example of the Playing for Change project.

The idea for this project arose from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. No matter whether people come from different geographic, political, economic, spiritual or ideological backgrounds, music has the universal power to transcend and unite us as one human race.

The Playing for Change producers traveled the world, over the course of several years, from Santa Monica, California, to Barcelona, to Johannesburg, Chennai, New Orleans, Kathmandu, Dharamsala, Tel Aviv and other cities. They stitched together the instrumentation and the voices of performers around the world to create composite folk symphonies, a chorus of voices offering up the idea that the world can come together in good feeling.

Their aim was to “break down boundaries and overcome distances between people”, recognizing that “music has the universal power to transcend and unite us as one human race.” This video brings together musicians from around the world, but also shows many of them playing in the performance-intense streets at the heart of Barcelona’s old city or Casc Antic.

The first of a series of songs mixed together from musicians around the world, for the documentary Playing for Change: Peace Through Music. According to the Playingforchange.com website:

The idea for this project arose from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. No matter whether people come from different geographic, political, economic, spiritual or ideological backgrounds, music has the universal power to transcend and unite us as one human race.

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The producers traveled the world, over the course of several years, from Santa Monica, California, to Barcelona, to Johannesburg, Chennai, New Orleans, Kathmandu, Dharamsala, Tel Aviv and other cities. They stitched together the instrumentation and the voices of performers around the world to create composite folk symphonies, a chorus of voices offering up the idea that the world can come together in good feeling.

Robert Redford talks with Majora Carter about his effort to bring together young “slam poets” to compete rhythmically and in the artful use of language for the ear of people beginning to get word that something is wrong with the environment. Redford notes that it is young people who will inherit the world we are making and their views, their concern about whether it will be stable and livable in their prime, is vital for planning now in a conscious and ethical way.

The lush, emotional fabric of Nadine Labaki’s Caramel consistently hints at how our common humanity is nested in the strains and particulars of the everyday. Seen by some as not culturally expansive enough, not ‘Arabic’ enough, for not dealing directly with traditional cultural motifs or broader political problems, the film’s intimate approach to the humanity of its characters is itself a vital comment on the nature of the human experience.

Caramel is a film about women and about Lebanon, but it is not strictly or exclusively that; there is something that goes more directly to the core of what makes any of us what we are. Longing, and the problem of how to reach out for what makes us feel, without betraying our surroundings or ourselves, is central to the story Labaki tells in Caramel.

We never learn what situation any of the characters individually lives as a result of the political and military conflict the nation of Lebanon experienced, though we find one character after another facing the problem of longing for something —an intangible, a human bond, the fact of being understood and loved by another person— not so easy to find in their surroundings.

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Layale, the character Labaki herself plays, is torn between a life she is living, as a result of desiring perhaps too deeply a love that cannot be what she wants it to be, and the life she would make for herself, had she the choice. Each of the other characters mirrors this experience in some way, though each story is different, and each is faced with her own process of self discovery.

Constructing her narrative this way allows the first-time feature-film director to perform an impressive balancing act: she can reveal the pressures and split loyalties experienced by women in this culture, while also revealing the fact that this is a culture fed into by long traditions from competing broader models of civilization, without exploring political conflict at all.

She is also able to reveal the personal pressures and cultural tensions experienced by each character without telling us exactly where they originate. This also allows her to tell us a story that is at once uniquely Lebanese and fluidly universal, in its simplicity and in its emotional poignancy. The characters whose story is opened up to us may live next door, or may be men in our lives instead of women, or may be any of the viewers.

This is not just another film about something human which becomes resonant for all who see it. Some people may relate more than others and it doesn’t really pretend to be universal. But the artistry with which Nadine Labaki colors the lives of the characters in her story, the richness of feeling and the close-to-surface deep emotion made apparent, give us the chance to travel with her to a place we may never have been, into the inner sanctum of a private sphere that has much to tell us about ourselves.

One could be forgiven for arguing that her approach deliberately excludes the controversial, the ideological or the sectarian, that it deliberately avoids making any but the most vague comment on the violent political crisis by which her country is besieged. And that is because she has made a conscious choice to forego such a narrative, opting instead to highlight the non-political, non-ideological, non-sectarian humanity lived by her characters in a world just as real as any those more abstract big-picture considerations, or maybe more real.

Caramel will not give us the answer to personal stresses, nor to finding love, nor to generations’ old political conflicts. But it will do what it was intended, I believe, to do: provide us with a glimpse of how human beings deal with emptiness, longing and the search for warmth in a world where for one reason or another, these things are hard to come by. And that is a worthy contribution to any discussion of life in Lebanon, or the region, or this world.

The thing about ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ is that it is not specifically about life in the slums or about millionaires, nor is it about India or gameshows or making Bollywood into a new western movie genre. It’s about something much deeper, more universal, something that transcends class, caste or culture, and has everything to do with what weight one’s basic humanity has in this massified, globalized world of glitz and information.

The key question the film asks is: what do we know and how do we know it? Is culture organized to reinforce deeply unjust divisions and exclusions, to strip certain individuals of the opportunity to access the knowledge that makes a successful, secure life truly possible? Do such exclusions mask their own deficiencies, by depending as much on the upkeep of personal bias and deliberate exclusion as they do on discounting the value of certain unfortunate fellow human beings?

‘Slumdog Millionaire’ explores, in ways at times subtle and complex, at others very much apparent and brutal, this problem of keeping the unfortunate other from being a fellow human being at all. But the movie does not limit itself to issues of class or ethnicity, bias or brutality; instead, it takes us through the intricacies of how a person’s life is also the living of a mode of forming, acquiring and organizing knowledge.

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To some degree, maybe it is possible to say, we are the knowledge that we find, create or pull together from sometimes dangerous or problematic experiential sources. The fire of knowledge, the incendiary power of information, and of the competition to get near it, is the substance of the plot-line. The emotional attraction is of course the persecution and the none-grittier lifelong romance, but these are more setting for the telling of a different story than they are the central point.

What is the value of a given map of perception, of an experience, of a particular human being’s approach to knowing about the world? What is the value, for long-term memory and knowledge formation, for resilience of the self deep into the confusion of future circumstance, of this glance or that gaze, of this betrayal or that slip from the center? How to know when to run for the horizon? To betray the betrayers? How to interpret the claims and vestiges of strength to see clearly where it has failed and where it is possible at all?

Is there any truth at all aside from the fact of knowing someone can be trusted? Feeling it? Believing it? It may be about how we disguise ourselves in uses, roles, obligations, the seeming fact of having no choice but what there is. It is written. Maybe it is written in the character, the capacity of vision, the way one finds to bridge the gaps.

The story teaches us a great deal, if we are willing to look, and to learn a little of the backstory, the political and ethnic tension, the demographics of Mumbai, about India’s evolving into a postmodern hornet’s nest of conflicting interests, values, classes and needs. It reminds us that sometimes luxury and entitlement stand in the way of the vital needs of many more people than we can imagine. There are flashes where one asks: how many people live in those absolutely massive slums they show us?

But the story is really about how love and misfortune can be intertwined, how they can feed from each other, how they make up the fabric of a life lived either fatefully or with creative determination. We find the saturation of experience, how ultimate knowledge is beyond us, how in places of transit, we find firm footing and the reversal of slippages from the center we seek to hold, but the finding is always precarious and requires faith and determination.

Jamal’s most character-shaping moments involve either a poised determination, or faith in the outcome being what it should be. This allows him to take the gamble that may seem far-fetched, or unlikely to work out, but makes sense only if we understand the hardened approach to faith and trust, making what you believe, make the best outcome out of your best chances.

Another sub-story we trace through Jamal’s character, which contrasts dramatically with his surroundings, is the power that comes from not swearing allegiance to money or status, the strength that comes from having other, more human concerns that take priority. This is how Jamal is able to keep at his quest, to represent the best part of humanity in a world fraught with chaos and violence.

THE LAST YAK, PANGOLIN’S TEATIME, PLEASANCE DOME
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Pangolin’s Teatime are a young Edinburgh-based puppet theatre company, who in 2007 picked up a clutch of awards at the National Student Drama Festival for their previous work Haozkla. This year they return to the Fringe with a new original production, and have created a thoughtful, mature fairy tale about power, reality and the magic of belief. With lovingly handcrafted masks and puppets, some rod, some glove, and a flair for storytelling, this is a beautifully thought-through work that should appeal to adult and child alike.

As the audience file into the Kingdome studio, the company are backstage and in the wings, surrounding us with the sounds of the jungle – rasping crickets, whooping monkeys, whistling birds and more. A narrator booms out that “in the beginning”, the Tiger gave orders in the jungle, and went on a search for God by climbing the mountain, passing the search to other animals as he climbs higher, until, at the summit, the Yak is discovered. As there is no-one higher, the jungle adopt the Yak as their divinity. This sequence is told as an enchanting piece of shadow-puppetry, before the almost-life-size papier mache models enter. We are treated to the parallel tales of the power struggle within the jungle, as the Bears attempt to usurp the Tiger’s leadership role, and the human story of a brother and sister coming to terms with the loss of their father. Hinging the two stories is the puppet-child Dharla, who inhabits both realities at once. As the play unfolds, the two realities unfurl and ripple into each other, and by the conclusion it seems the frontier has come down altogether.

The jungle community is beautifully realised and performed, with the sardonic Crocodile providing comic relief during the weekly jungle meetings, and the scheming but delightfully charming Bears doing their best to spend every minute of the day eating. There are fantastical creatures here too – the Dzo, and the Mango Ferrets – and the workmanship and handling of the puppets are first rate. The human story, while not as strong, provides a useful dramatic counterpoint to the jungle world, and the performers are committed and engaged with their creation. Puppetry, in all its varied forms, is undergoing a welcome revival, and Pangolin’s Teatime deserve to be at the creative vanguard of the movement. A treat.

15.40, until August 25

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TALKING HEADS PLUS, GEMS OF MAZAL, THE MEADOWS
***

Alan Bennett is much admired and much performed, but his characters are currently being given voice in a more unusual setting than he is probably used to. Stop by the Sainsbury’s Local on the Meadows this Fringe at around 6pm, and you’re likely to be greeted by a group of twentysomethings milling about, a skateboard doing the rounds, chirpily singing songs, before one of them begins narrating an excerpt of what sounds like Roald Dahl in a heightened voice. As he starts his speech, the company sets off down Middle Meadow Walk into the greenery, trailing an audience behind them. This is Talking Heads Plus, combining Bennett’s much-loved pieces with works by other authors, and claiming to bring the monologue form to life as you’ve never seen before.

After a rhyming poem about Matilda, and a speech given from the top of an upturned electrical cable roller, a girl jumps on the skateboard and races down the way, soliloquising as she goes. Her words may get lost as the distance between her and the spectators grows, but we traipse after her in the wind and the chill to catch the end of her segment. We’re then treated to a fine performance of Bennett’s Soldiering On at the side of the path. With local dogs ambling into the action, and curious passers-by joining the growing crowd, actress Ruth Thompson captures the essence of Muriel’s stoical, chin-up tragedy, prompting laughs along the way. After a final monologue by a man in a camouflage jacket, the company break into a rendition of Arlen and Koehler’s Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, and skip off into the distance, leaving the audience to melt away.

It’s debatable whether the open-air setting helps or hinders the performers – it’s an ultra-naturalistic, stripped-down approach to presenting theatre, with no special costumes, no setting of scenes, and no programme to enlighten the audience as to what it is we’re watching at any one point. The shock tactic of ending the lengthy Bennett monologue with a segment of The Vagina Monologues gives a nice dramatic shift, as our attention is yanked to another part of the Meadows, but with no defined space in which to work, and the scattergun effect of the quickly-shifting vignettes, the actors are required to work that much harder to create focus for their particular scenes. On the whole, they rise to the challenge, and Talking Heads Plus provides a pleasant, intriguing hour of exploring the boundaries of what makes theatre, and how to present it.

18.00 and 20.00, until August 20

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SCARAMOUCHE JONES, GUY MASTERSON TTI, ASSEMBLY SUPPER ROOM
*****

Justin Butcher is a man of many talents. Not content with penning a sumptuous script, full of wonder, lyricism, evocative imagery and beautifully crafted turns of phrase, as a performer he also keeps the audience wrapped in his spell for an hour and a half, never slackening or flagging. It’s an extraordinary achievement, and Scaramouche Jones is as delightful, funny, moving and thoughtful a Fringe show as could be hoped for.

The ancient titular clown is on the cusp of his hundredth birthday, at the dawn of the 21st century, and tonight is to be the last of his life. For his swansong, he takes the audience with him on a recounting of his magical story, of his origins and his adventures through the twentieth century, from his birth to a gypsy whore in a fishmonger’s in Port of Spain, Trinidad, through Senegalese slave traders, North African snake charmers, Italian nobility and Romany travellers from Eastern Europe. The play takes a darker turn as Scaramouche is captured by the Nazis and imprisoned in a concentration camp in Split, before concluding with his arrival in post-war London to begin his career as a clown. As he says, “half a century to make the clown, half a century to perform the clown.”

Throughout his travels, he is the wide-eyed innocent with the unnaturally white face, recipient of action rather than agent, leaping (and being thrown) from one adventure to the next as Butcher leaps from side to side of the stage, now crouching behind ship ropes to peer at his mother receive her train of nightly customers, now straddling his writing desk as he rides a camel over the sands of Africa. As the show progresses, Butcher sheds his several layers of costume, red nose, wig, jacket, as Scaramouche comes closer to freeing himself of his history. The physicality of the performance combines with his rich delivery of the lines, themselves deliciously thick and heady, like a soup. Scaramouche conjures up for us the smells and sounds of Trinidad, North Africa, Somalia and Nuremburg, as his face becomes ever whiter and his destiny draws closer, against the backdrop of the first half of the twentieth century.

This is a first rate piece of storytelling theatre, brilliantly written and performed, and well-supported by excellent direction, set and lighting design. Made famous by Pete Postlethwaite’s performances in 2001, Justin Butcher here reclaims his own work, and stamps his authority all over it. A must see.

12.20, until August 25

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TITUS ANDRONICUS, ACTION TO THE WORD, C VENUE
***

Fringe productions of Shakespeare are usually best approached with caution. Everyone wants to have a go and show their mettle, and the temptation to add their own mark to the works by offering a “reinterpretation” often begs for disaster – Hamlet in space, perhaps, or The Tempest re-enacted as a Marxist parable of the evils of modern society. Occasionally it’s a spectacular success, as with the Midsummer-Night’s-Dream-in-a-roller-disco of The Donkey Show, a recent Edinburgh Fringe smash hit that went on to a run in London’s West End and from there to New York. The list of equally spectacular failures stretches on into the middle distance. Cambridge University-born company Action to the Word’s version of Titus Andronicus falls squarely between these two stools, passing the test with, if not a distinction, then enough merit to be shared round the sizeable cast, without ever really breaking any new ground.

Their particular “twist” on the piece is to frame it in a gothic urban setting. In modern dress and squeezed into a running time of 75 minutes, this is an accessible, fast-forwarded highlights package of the epic play. Titus Andronicus, Roman hero and general, returns from a successful campaign against the Goths, bringing as prisoners the Goth queen Tamora and her children. His first task is to settle the dispute between two brothers over who should become the next Emperor of Rome. He chooses Saturnine, who then immediately frees Tamora and makes her his Empress. Titus and his family are made to pay a series of increasingly heavy prices for his harsh treatment of the former Goth prisoners, before the play’s sensationally over-the-top finale.

The company of trained performers make good use of the space, and there are no discernible weak links in the acting, although Tamora is occasionally difficult to hear. In an inventive approach to the rape of Titus’s daughter Lavinia, movement and music are used before she is slung over a shoulder and bundled offstage, later to reappear, naked and trembling, in a shopping trolley. The short running time keeps the production from flagging, the pace always lightning fast. There are some questionable aesthetic uses of the “gothic” motif, with some unnecessarily misogynistic sequences of scantily-clad girls gyrating and grinding, for no particular reason, but on the whole Action to the Word treat the play with respect and no small amount of technical skill. Simple but effective lighting, and a soundtrack featuring Placebo, Billy Corgan, and an unexpected use of Madness’s Driving in My Car, help move things along. This is a good, solid take on Titus Andronicus, allowing the text to come to the fore and do its work, and would make an excellent introduction for those who’ve not yet been acquainted with Shakespeare’s bloodiest early tragedy.

23.00, until 25 August

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