LIDF

David Teague. Photo by Cattleya Katie Jaruthavee

In Intifada NYC David Teague films a controversy around opening the United States’ first public Arabic language school in Brooklyn. He talks to Kamila Kuc about the perception of Islam in New York after the 9/11, the power of media and how the film exposes racism and xenophobia in some Americans.

Kamila Kuc: Your film tells a story of Khalil Gibran International Academy – the first public Arabic language school opened in Brooklyn in 2007. Needless to say, the issue caused a lot of controversy in America. Why attracted you to the subject?

David Teague: At first, the announcement of the school was only mentioned in our local papers in New York. The school was very near my apartment in Brooklyn so I had heard about it but didn’t think too much of it– we have a number of dual language schools here and friends of mine have taught at them so it wasn’t something out of the ordinary. But then I turned on CNN one day and was shocked to see that the school had become the center of this massive controversy and that people were saying it would teach Islam and could create terrorists. What compelled me to pick up my camera was the way the news media treated the issue. When the attacks on the school were made, most of the media didn’t do any real investigative reporting. If they had, they would have found that the school was clearly a regular public school that also focussed on teaching a foreign language. Instead, the issue was shrilly presented as a “he said / she said” fight as if whether the school was going to be a terrorist incubator was a valid debate. So I wanted to make a film that provided a journalistic, extremely factual account as an antidote to how CNN, Fox News, and others handled it.

KK: Many Americans were opposed to the idea of opening the school, as they believed that the teaching of Arabic culture is a façade for encouraging terrorism… What are your thoughts on the American Islamophobia?

DT: After an event as traumatic as 9/11, stereotypes and prejudices can become more prevalent and pernicious. There are certainly parts of the US where the only experience people have with Islam comes from movies or the internet where stereotypes and gross misconceptions are rampant. In popular culture, people are used to seeing Arabs with bombs strapped to them, and most people who speak Arabic in movies and TV are plotting to assassinate the president or blow up Los Angeles. People start to conflate the actions of a specific group like Al-Qaeda with an entire religious or ethnic group. In the film, one young Muslim woman talks about how after 9/11 someone on the street yelled to her: “Go back to your country, Osama bin Laden!” To combat this perception, I think that persuasive argument is a start but personal experience has the strongest impact. The more Muslims and non-Muslims work together, live together, learn together and learn from each other, the more we will see prejudices fade over time. Education and experience have the potential to change attitudes, but the reality is that this is a very slow, gradual, even generational process.

KK: The whole film exposes a high degree of racism and xenophobia in the US and it seems to be more about the state of mind of the Americans’ than anything else. Was that your intention?

DT: It’s important to keep in mind that the film is about the state of mind of some Americans, and how those views were taken seriously and amplified by the media. The film does not argue that Americans in general are xenophobic, and in fact argues that the varying reactions to the school show that Americans are far more diverse and complicated than that. While the school provoked hostile attacks from some people, it was welcomed and embraced by others. The bigger issue is that the establishment media in the United States does not reflect this diversity and complexity at all. Most of our news outlets, especially cable TV news, are dangerously irresponsible. For many people who don’t have the time, interest, or ability to seek out news beyond channels like CNN or Fox News, the information about the world that informs their opinions is simplistic, often wrong, and sensationalized. This in turn spreads rumors, untruths, and fear. After something like 9/11, this fear can easily find an outlet in prejudice. I think the film captures this process at a particularly raw moment in our history.

KK: There is a brilliant moment in the film, when a TV presenter says that America indeed needs Arabic schools because Americans need to know the language of the people they fight with…Is this a commonly shared view?

DT: This is Glenn Beck, who is a very successful conservative TV and radio personality in the US. He’s a very polarizing figure, and while he has programs on “news” channels like CNN Headline News, I would classify him more as an influential entertainer in the style of Ann Coulter. But even outside of the extremism of his rhetoric, I do think that with the US’s bigger footprint in the Middle East over the last eight years, much of it military, the idea of learning Arabic is suddenly more popular. Because the US is a strongly monolingual culture, language learning is usually thought of in terms of a particular need, often for a career choice. I interviewed a number of parents who wanted to send their children to the Khalil Gibran school because they felt learning Arabic would help their children get a higher paying job, for example, as a military translator. So our foreign policy in the Middle East has certainly made learning Arabic more attractive to people.

KK: Your film also highlights the power of media manipulation and people’s lack of resistance towards being brainwashed. Why do you think this happens in America to such a degree?

DT: I think it happens everywhere, but there is an especially strong urge in American media to entertain more than to present factual news or thorough analysis. Much of this is due to the profit motive of the news corporations, so sensational stories that create and embellish conflicts to keep an audience’s attention rule the airwaves. In this case, the film looks at how ratings-hungry news outlets exploited post-9/11 fears by running stories like “a terrorist public school.” Instead of reporting, the media created a culture war and fashioned two sides to fight it out for the viewers’ outrage and amusement. I wanted the documentary to look this head on, to examine the way it works and to show the consequences. I think one reason the Khalil Gibran controversy got so out of hand is that a story about a taxpayer funded terrorist school for sixth graders is really going to grab people’s attention. So as marketing for your TV show, it’s a slam dunk. It’s unfortunately this kind of criteria that decides what gets air time and how the stories are told. I’ll add that it is no accident that our publicly funded TV channel, PBS, provides the most thoughtful and serious news of any major outlet on television.

KK: Interestingly, Intifada NYC highlights conflict between Arabs and Jews – the issue which constitutes the subject of many films at this year’s LIDF. You portray a few Jews who supported opening of the school and who encourage multiculturalism. How were they perceived by other Jews? Has this caused any tension among them?

DT: I think the film demonstrates something very important here –  that the real divisions between people are not ethnic or even religious, but are political. So in the film you have Jews who support Palestinian causes, you have right wing Jews who argue for an American “national existence” based on “Western values”, you have Jews who support Zionism AND the Arabic language school. So indeed, there is certainly tension between different Jews in this documentary, because the lines are drawn politically right though identity. There is a moment in the film where one of the school’s critics condemns what he calls “Jews who claim to be Jews”. I think what he is saying is that to be truly Jewish requires allegiance to a certain ideology. I think what we see in the film questions this notion.

KK: Intifada NYC follows a battle of the school’s principal, Debbie Almontaser, who after being accused of promoting terrorism (through printing T-shirts ‘Intifada NYC’) was forced to resign. Needless to say, she did not print these shirts or know about them before the controversy…She refused to give up and the battle still continues…What do you think it is going to happen?

DT: Debbie Almontaser’s ‘freedom of speech’ court case has not been finally decided yet, so everyone is waiting for that decision. Her case is as interesting as it is complicated: a tabloid newspaper in New York published a misleading article that connected her with a T-shirt reading “Intifada NYC” even though she had actually never seen the shirts and had nothing to do with their creation. Almontaser was forced to resign as principal because of this and the outrage it provoked. After that, she filed a ‘freedom of speech’ lawsuit against the Department of Education and attempted to get her job back. The Court of Appeals denied the request for her to become principal again, but did say that the ‘freedom of speech’ claim should be re-examined by the lower court. As of now, that case is still pending. There’s no way to know when or how the lower court will rule, but Almontaser has continued on by speaking out frequently at events, conferences and schools about her experience.

KK: Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media organisation depicted in the film was painted as an extremist Muslim organisation…Intifada NYC exposes a lot  of insecurities and paranoia in America in general, especially after the 9/11. Many Americans told me that the city has changed ever since the attack. Would you agree? And what do you think has changed the most?

DT: Even though it has been almost eight years since the shock of the attacks, it’s very hard to say what the long-term effects will be. I’ll just say this– New York City is constantly and rapidly evolving, a place that somehow, remarkably, keeps working and sputtering forward. The city’s incredible diversity of peoples and cultures is a big reason for this. Right after the attacks, the city did feel different and displayed traits it usually doesn’t: fearful, weary, sobered. But I don’t think this was a permanent condition and honestly not something the city dwells on too much now.

KK: Can you tell us more about the music you used in the film?

DT: For the music, I worked with composer Richard Marriott, who beautifully scored my last film “Love Suicides”. Richard has an incredible musical vocabulary and can shift effortlessly from Western classical to Middle Eastern and Asian styles. Besides his own compositions, mostly performed by a string quartet, he also brought in Amir ElSaffar, a fantastic Iraqi-American trumpeter, and his Two Rivers ensemble, to riff on some of their own pieces under Richard’s direction. We wanted the score to reflect the cross-cultural themes of the film, as well as the diversity of Brooklyn, and the mix of jazz, classical strings, and Middle Eastern rhythms brought this out.