Customer Reviews:
MORE OF THE SAME.......2004-11-29
I've got Simon's other DVD's and this one is in the same tradition. It is worth getting for the players tricks in the warm up and the dribbling at the end. Simon Clifford worked on the Michael Owen DVD, the Okocha DVD and play like a brazilian. Apart from Simon's kit the DVD is excellent and no matter who you are you will learn a trick or two.
Customer Reviews:
A tale of Taliban rule.......2005-06-27
Widely advertised as the first film to be made in Afghanistan after the overthrow of the Taliban, director Siddiq Barmak brings his documentary filmmaker skills to the ruined streets of Kabul to tell the story of a young girl struggling to survive.
Marina Golbahari plays the part of a 12-year old whose mother is struggling to find enough money to feed the family - her husband and brother were killed by the Russians, she has not been paid for some time, and the hospital in which she worked is now closing. Golbahari was actually found begging on the streets and had never seen a film or television. Other actors in the film were discovered in refugee camps or on the streets.
The characters in the film are often stripped of their names - this is a society in which the Taliban stripped people of their identity, demanding instead that they become mere ciphers who obeyed rules and followed prescribed dictates like automatons. Barmak says he chose to call the film "Osama" not so people would think it was about bin Laden, but because he sees bin Laden as responsible for stripping away the identities of ordinary Afghanis.
The girl dresses as a boy so she can work and earn enough to feed the family, but she is coerced into school to learn the Koran - when the other pupils accuse her of being a girl, one boy stands up for her and announces that her name is Osama, hoping it will instil fear into the others.
Barmak exposes the violence of Taliban society and its destruction of identity. The Taliban banned pictures, and Barmak himself had to flee from Kabul. He portrays a city in which journalists are executed for taking photographs, women are blamed for arousing men and are forced to cover themselves from head to toe and remove themselves from male society. Even domestic life is policed to enforce rigorously puritan standards, all in the name of salvation and the word!
This is a superbly shot, superbly performed piece - especially given the provenance of the actors. There is no glamour here, merely a brutal reality which contrasts with the flaccid trivia which so often appears on commercial Western screens.
Afghanistan, of course, has no oil, so no one is rushing to pump aid into the country. It does occupy an important strategic position, so for centuries powerful nations have striven to occupy it and control movement across it. "Osama" is not a film which offers much in the way of hope. It is a film in which you have no problem sympathising with the girl. But it's a film which exposes the gulf of cultural dissonance between Kabul and the Western world and one which emphasises the sense of powerlessness to which Afghanis are exposed.
Here, nothing can be taken for granted. Women have to plan the day so they can be accompanied by a male relative if they need to go anywhere. They have to apologise for their existence and their corrupting influence on males. They are powerless, turned into amorphous blue shadows of themselves.
Barmak's technique - hand held camera and a documentary style - fractures the lives of the women into disjointed episodes. The girl has no control over her own narrative - she is thrown where male society (or the filmmaker) will cast her. Her life spirals out of control. At best she gets through another day with another mouthful of bread to sustain herself.
A fascinating, bleak, but thoroughly absorbing film, and one which challenges your preconceptions and assumptions.
Heartrending.......2004-05-07
Some months ago, I saw a film entitled KANDAHAR, in which a Afghan-Canadian woman endeavors to smuggle herself back into Afghanistan to talk her sister out of a planned suicide. Though the audience sees the wretchedness of life under Taliban rule, and the shameful way in which women are treated, the film as a whole lacks impact because the plot's thread of continuity degenerates into a series of vignettes without a substantive ending. The viewers' sympathies may remain detached. Not so with OSAMA.
Osama (Marina Golbahari) is a pre-adolescent girl living with her mother (Zubaida Sahar) and grandmother (Hamida Refah). It's a family without men, both the mother's husband and brother having been slain in the war against the Soviets. Since women are not allowed out in public without a man, the mother - evidently a health worker by training - must earn money for the family by surreptitiously seeing patients. But that doesn't bring in enough to keep from starving. So, it's decided to cut Osama's hair, dress her as a boy, and send her out into society to get a job. For awhile, she works in a shop run by a kind and generous man that served in the war with her father. Then, one day, the Taliban does a sweep of the town, forcing all young boys to attend a school of fundamentalist Islamic instruction. In this all-male environment, Osama's false identity unravels with terrible consequences.
I generally watch movies for their entertainment value. But there are films that serve as sobering instruction about the blighted corners and medieval practices of our planet, and this film is one of these. As a representative of this genre, OSAMA packs a big punch. The women-denigrating practices of a Taliban-dominated society rank right up there with enforced footbinding and female castration, and I can't imagine any person of ordinary sensitivity or conscience leaving the film unaffected. Indeed, a militant feminist may be tempted to lash out at the first man she encounters without thinking of first kissing the ground of the Western democracy she's fortunate enough to live in.
The very last scene of OSAMA simply shows an old mullah taking a ritual cleansing bath, which seems innocent enough. But it implies a new level to which Osama's misery has been taken, and one should weep for her.
Product Description
This is a great documentary-tribute to one of the greatest football players ever, Ronaldo. His time in Germany, Spain and Italy is shown in this DVD.
Language: Italian
Subtitles: English, Spanish and Portuguese
DVD Review:
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