Three Lines of Scrawl

“6 for #Gold ”

Eighty years ago the Turkish government forced Hollywood to drop a movie project based on The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, then a best-selling novel on the Armenian Genocide by German-language author, Jew and outspoken Hitler opponent Franz Werfel. The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, originally written as a warning against Hitler through the prism of the Armenian Genocide, never saw the silver screen. Such a movie could have also raised awareness of the fate of the Jews in Nazi Germany at the time and later of the ongoing Holocaust. It could have shaped the “narrative” of the struggle against Hitler. Many have since been interested to finally turn the novel into a major production, but Turkish opposition and obstruction seemed insurmountable.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hollywood-is-losing-battle-online-trolls-992582

It had taken years — and the passionate support of Armenian activist Kirk Kerkorian, who financed the film’s $100 million budget without expecting to ever make a profit — for The Promise, a historical romance set against the backdrop of the Armenian genocide and starring Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac, to reach the screen. Producers always knew it would be controversial: Descendants of the 1.5 million Armenians killed by the Ottoman Empire shortly after the onset of World War I have long pressed for the episode to be recognized as a genocide despite the Turkish government’s insistence the deaths were not a premeditated extermination.

The Promise, which opens April 21, finally would bring the untold saga to a mass audience. But at the Toronto Film Festival premiere in September, producer Mike Medavoy watched the late billionaire’s carefully laid plans upended by a digital swarm that appeared out of nowhere.

Before the critics in attendance even had the chance to exit Roy Thompson Hall, let alone write their reviews, The Promise’s IMDb page was flooded with tens of thousands of one-star ratings. “All I know is that we were in about a 900-seat house with a real ovation at the end, and then you see almost 100,000 people who claim the movie isn’t any good,” says Medavoy. Panicked calls were placed to IMDb, but there was nothing the site could do. “One thing that they can track is where the votes come from,” says Eric Esrailian, who also produced the film, and “the vast majority of people voting were not from Canada. So I know they weren’t in Toronto.”

Everyone else: *looks at Legolas*

Legolas: [internally] fuck you, in Eregion they spoke a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT kind of elvish, I grew up with like ten different dialects of silvan, this word is pronounced differently in every one of them, this sindarin and my sindarin probably wouldn’t even be a little bit compatible, who fucking knows the door might want it in Quenya, you know what it’s probably in Khuzdul, that’s the kind of language you’d want a password to be in, the one nobody knows, fuck they’re all looking at me I don’t know this there are dozens of different languages spoken by elves you stupid fucks

Legolas: [externally] silence

Gandalf: “…Mellon”

my nam is King of ancient land and haf my face is under sand

and on a stone it can be read “the World is mine” but now I’m ded

So Bredlik has crossed the streams with classic poetry.

(Am one of three)

Old mariner

He stoppeth me

At feast will be

Gud wines an breds–

“Ther was a shippe,”

Old marner sez

He telth me tale

So ful of whoa

Wen it is dun

I do not goe.

Next morn I hav

A wiser hed.

(I sneak to feast,

where are the girls who are saving us you ask?

oh i don’t know, they are at the Oceti Sakowin camp fighting for the right to clean water and treaty rights. They are protecting their land and water against heavily militarized police forces.

They are and have been at many Black Lives Matter protests. Girls have fought against police brutality in black communities. Women, in fact, are among the top leaders of that movement.

They are the muslim girls who continue to fearlessly wear their hijabs in public despite rampant islamophobia.

And there were plenty of teenage girls at the women’s marches across the country. 

So while a single Katniss Everdeen figure has yet to emerge, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t exist. Because young women are protesting every day. They are the Katnisses and the Laia of Serras and the Aelins and the Mare Barrows and the Nehemia Ytgers and the Lihn Cinders that you’ve all read about. These girls exist. 

Rafael Romero Barros - Bodegón de naranjas - 1863