"Suffragette" screenwriter Abi Morgan and director Sarah Gavron made a period film that has current-day resonance; Disney is going all out to sell 'Star Wars' in the world's second-biggest film market; Pakistani and L.A. musicians collaborated to create a new East-meets-West sound.
'Suffragette' is a period film with modern-day resonance
While the upcoming movie "Suffragette" is set firmly in the past, in many ways it still feels incredibly timely.
Starring Carrie Mulligan, Brendan Gleeson and Meryl Streep, the movie — set early in the 20th Century — documents the British women who fought for decades for their right to vote.
After the film’s world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in early September, screenwriter Abi Morgan and director Sarah Gavron joined us to talk about the hidden history of the Suffragettes, their gradual path towards civil disobedience, and the ways in which their story feels all too timely.
Interview Highlights:
Sarah, was this a story you grew up with, one that you learned in school?
Gavron: I didn't learn it at school, which was kind of astounding 'cause it's such a pivotal, key moment in women's history. But it was later that I started to read about it and I started to realize that this sanitized view we have of women petitioning Parliament and drinking tea was only a tiny portion of the story.
There's this whole, shocking material you can unearth about women who went to prison, who were force-fed, who sacrificed so much in their fight for equality and lost families, jobs, homes, and faced incredibly brutality from the police and the state. And we wanted to tell that untold story that's never been seen on cinema screens.
Abi, as you start researching that untaught story, what shocked you the most about what had happened?
Morgan: Primarily, when we started to read the accounts of the women, it was just how contemporary their situation seemed, the things they talked about — inequality in the workplace, appalling work conditions, domestic violence, sexual abuse in the workplace, inequality in regard to parental rights — and it really chimed with 21st Century preoccupations.
I had watched a lot of "Downton Abbey" and I've done period drama before, and there's always that slight curse of the language in period drama, the language you think you need to write through. But, actually, these women swore, their language was quite rough, and it felt very real — very much like East London.
It wasn't just their language that was rough, but their tactics were rough as well. They had spent decades trying to get the right to vote and they'd made absolutely no progress. So they decided there was a different path to take, a path that included what we'll call domestic terrorism. They threw bricks through windows, they blew up mailboxes and burned down the houses of MPs, right?
Gavron: In a way, it's interesting to look at the context. The word "terrorism" now has such specific associations of targeting human life, and they were very clear that they were only going to attack property. They turned to civil disobedience after 40, almost 50, years of peaceful protest that achieved nothing but endless broken promises by the government.
And also they started being treated terribly badly by the government, and it was at the point that they realized this press blockade — where nothing they did was being reported — was only broken once they started causing mayhem and disrupting society, disrupting communication channels. And suddenly they were being reported and people were noticing the cause.
'Star Wars': How Disney's making sure 'The Force' will awaken audiences in China
Even though "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" doesn’t open in the U.S. and much of the world until December, fans could start buying tickets this week — and they did, in droves.
Fandango announced that its web traffic surged to seven times normal peak levels while the upcoming blockbuster sold eight times as many tickets as the company's previous first-day pre-sales record holder.
And while it seems like "The Force Awakens" is off to a killer start in the States, one place where Disney also is hoping to make a huge splash is China — the second biggest movie market in the world.
But the marketing approach there is complicated, because the original three "Star Wars" films did not play in Chinese theaters when they were made.
We spoke with Nancy Tartaglione, the International Editor at Deadline, and she’s been writing about how Disney is bringing Chinese audiences up to speed with "Star Wars."
Interview Highlights:
China has a bit of a complicated history with "Star Wars." Can you talk a bit about that?
One thing that's important to remember is while "Star Wars" is one of the most well-known global franchises, and has been since 1977, it hasn't had the same notoriety in China as it has in other markets, certainly in other Asian markets.
Through all the first six movies, it's done fantastically well in Japan, but it hasn't really resonated in China. In fact, the first three films weren't even theatrically released to begin with.
Now, China was a vastly different market back in those days, but over the last several months you've seen Disney slowly stoking the fires in order to increase awareness of the films. I'd say that really started in June at the Shanghai Film Festival, where the first six movies were all screened.
Disney also made a deal with online streaming giant Tencent to make the six films available via VoD. And then, just yesterday, there was this massive event at the Great Wall [near Beijing], which I think just looks fantastic when you look at the photos.
They used the Great Wall like a screen for a projection of the trailer, is that right?
Yes. There were several hundred fans there and, at the end, all of a sudden there were 500 Stormtroopers standing on the Wall. And there were these massive beacons shining the Chinese characters for "The Force Awakens" through this particular portion of the Great Wall.
Who were the people who attended this screening?
Fans. There are people that certainly do know what the movie is. I'm not trying to make it sound like nobody in China's ever heard of "Star Wars" [laughs]. The Chinese are very Internet-savvy, they've had exposure to the films in the past several months, and we know that China also has quite an issue with piracy, so they've probably seen these movies before.
And one would expect that the public there is getting wind of what's happening on the rest of the world. When you have a trailer release like you did on Monday during Monday Night Football, the resonates around the world.
Los Angeles musicians learn Qawwali, a centuries-old South Asian musical style
A family of Qawwali musicians from Pakistan recently spent a week jamming with local musicians in Los Angeles. The four brothers and their band, named Rizwan Muazzam Qawwali, descend from a long line of musicians. They’re nephews of the legendary Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who was known as the King of Qawwali.
Qawwali is a musical genre from South Asia that dates back hundreds of years. It’s spiritual Sufi music, which stems from Islam, and it’s very upbeat. Think gospel with a South Asian twist.
Singers and musicians from all over L.A. packed the historic Boyle Heights Arts Conservatory to learn from the Pakistani brothers. They had just a few days to get ready for a big Qawwali show at Grand Performances in downtown L.A.
At the jam session, the singers listened attentively and nodded with appreciation as the Pakistani brothers explained the style and lyrics. The Americans then practiced singing the Urdu language verses. For many, it was their first experiment with Qawwali.
“They are singing with the full range of emotional expression that they have inside their bodies,” said Sri Panchalam, an Indian American singer from South Pasadena who joined the jam session. “And when you see that, it makes you want to — as a singer — aspire to more.”
The Pakistani singers said they put all their heart and soul into their music since it’s a family tradition. “Our ancestors have been keeping this tradition alive for 700 years," said Muazzam Ali Khan, the youngest brother. "It’s been continuing generation after generation."
But, this wasn't your ordinary Qawwali session. There were all sorts of instruments – from clarinet, cello, violin, saxophone, trumpet, guitar and drums, all the way to harmoniums, tablas, a traditional Indian wooden flute, a mandolin, and even a Middle Eastern oud. There were also three saws. Yes, the kind you might find in a hardware store.
“You walked into this room and you see all of these instruments lined up across the wall," Panchalam said. And my first impression was, How in the world is this going to work?”
By fusing musical sounds from South Asia with western instruments, the brothers hope to reach a younger generation. They came here all the way from Faisalabad for their week-long residency and concert.
“We want to attract people to Qawwali music, especially the youth, who have distanced themselves from this music,” Muazzam said. Their famous uncle also experimented with Western music, notably with Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder on the soundtrack to the film, "Dead Man Walking."
After some practice time in the Boyle Heights venue, everyone started jamming together, with the L.A. musicians following the lead of the Pakistanis. It was a little tricky to harmonize at first, but the musicians soon figured it out.
Danny Moynahan played one of the Appalachian-style saws with his bow. “It was just like, hey, what would it sound like if we put a saw on this?” he said. “All the elements really blended nicely and everybody was really psyched about it.”
One of the vocalists, Eddika Organista, is a Mexican-American native of Boyle Heights who studied music at UCLA. Despite the language barrier with the Pakistanis, she said it wasn’t hard to sing together: “Because music is universal and it’s a whole other language, you can communicate something just with sound."
Panchalam, who performs with both a jazzy folk band and a South Asian punk band in L.A., was impressed with this fusion of sounds: “There’s just everything coming together from two sides of the globe."
“Both of these worlds are usually really separate to me — the South Asian music and the Western music,” Panchalam added. “To see it all together in this space really felt like all my worlds were colliding musically.”