Advertisement
I saw Anna Broinowski’s Forbidden Lie$ at True/False in 2008 and was blown away by the filmmaker’s fearless experimentation with construction and story structure. The film is a portrait of Norma Khouri, a Jordanian living in exile in Australia who became a literary star when she published a purported memoir of her best friend’s honor killing. The book was eventually revealed as mostly or entirely fabricated; Khouri admitted to embellishment but insisted that the core of the story was true. Broinowski followed the disgraced author back to Jordan in the name of clearing her name, but inevitably uncovered a massive web of lies. Khouri reveals herself as a con artist for whom publishing a fake memoir (and the year of adulation and celebrity that ensued) waas jsut one act in a life-long performance; Broinowski reveals just what makes that performance work, and how Norma gets away with it.
I named Forbidden Lie$ as one of the Best Undistributed Films of last year; now, thanks to Roxie Releasing, the film is opening at the Cinema Village in New York this Friday, and in Los Angeles on April 10. Via email, I talked to Broinowski about her ongoing relationship with her subject, the inherently artificial tropes of documentary, and the natural symbiosis between a filmmaker and a con artist.
How did you discover Norma’s story, and how many of its twists and turns were you aware of when you started working on the film?
I was aware of Norma when her book first came out and she was a Jordanian celebrity in Australia, having chosen to live in exile here with the help of the Australian government, who gave her a special protection visa to help her escape the blood-thirsty Muslim terrorists who had supposedly put a fatwah on her head. But I had no interest in buying Norma’s book because the whole thing stank of anti-Arab propaganda, at a time when we were being encouraged to support the illegal invasion of Iraq.
I became keenly interested in Norma about a year later, when journalist Malcolm Knox exposed her as a hoax and a Chicago fraudster on the run from the FBI. I was hooked: what kind of woman could be so brilliant that while on the run from the FBI she could reinvent herself as a 32 year old virgin from Jordan, write a “true story” that became a best-seller around the world, and go on a book promotion tour pretending to be seeing the West for the first time, convincing the best minds in publishing and the media that she was telling the truth?
That’s when I emailed her. I said I am a filmmaker and I want to hear your side of the story. Obviously she agreed.
Festival hopping, from True/False to SXSW. To help kick off our South by Southwest coverage, Paul and Kevin reflect on Medicine for Melancholy, and talk with writer/director Barry Jenkins about race, identity, and San Fransisco. Between festivals, Karina manages to find time to share some stories about the True/False Film Festival. The small town Missouri fest is fast becoming a premiere destination for non-fiction film. Karina offers her thoughts on Forbidden Lies.
Transcript of the Barry Jenkins interview after the jump…
After seven hours in the St. Louis airport, I have returned from my long, wonderful weekend at the True/False Film Festival. Below, you’ll find a recap of the films I covered whilst in Columbia, MO. But first, I want to give a shout-out to Satin and Chenille.
Before each screening at True/False, “buskers” culled from all over the country take the stage to perform while the audience is filing in. At some of the larger True/False venues, the buskers sort of fade into the background, but at an intimate space like the new Little Ragtag, the performers really get a chance to take over the room. That’s where I saw Satin and Chenille, a girl and boy (I came late, so I’m not sure which one is Satin and which one is Chenille) who did a tongue-in-cheek set of standards and love songs before the Friday night screening of Carny.
“I hope you guys love each other as much as we love love songs,” said the boy, before they launched into an acoustic guitar-fueled version of “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” They followed that up with an epic, partially-accapella version on “I’ve Had The Time of My Life,” which turned into a mass sing-a-long. It was a great moment, and maybe an audience of 50 or so moviegoers united by a Dirty Dancing reference is a little thing compared to the achievement of such a well-curated program of films, but it’s also one of the many things that sets True/False apart from larger, more impersonal festivals, and it’s definitely a reason to go back next year.
Anyway. Check out a guide to my True/False reviews after the jump.
On Friday, True/False seemed to explode all over the city of Columbia, beginning with the annual March into March parade through downtown’s main drag, and continuing through a night of packed screenings and parties. I ate buffet-style kangaroo carpaccio at an event called Reality Bites. I saw a live, partially acapella performance of “I’ve Had The Time Of My Life,” from Dirty Dancing. And I got a chance to confirm that the film that’s probably attracting the most “buzz” at this festival definitely deserves it.
Let’s start with that last one. Anna Broinowski’s Forbidden Lies tracks the almost too fascinating to be believed story of Norma Khouri, the author of Forbudden Love, a bestselling purported memoir about the honor killing of Kouri’s best friend Dalia, a Jordanian Muslim who fell in love with a Christian soldier. The book was published in 2003, (with the support of the Cheney family, who latched onto Forbidden Love as the right piece of anti-Arab propaganda at the right time, it was translated into 18 languages), and Kouri promptly became a literary rock star and a controversial spokeswoman for Muslim women’s rights. A year later, an Australian journalist published a story revealing that many details of Forbidden Love were plainly inaccurate and/or apparently made up.
Khouri, calling the book “not fact, not fiction, [but] faction” and comparing it to The Da Vinci Code, claimed she had altered specifics in order to protect her friend’s family, but maintained that Dalia’s honor killing was very real. In an effort to clear her name, Khouri tells Broinowski that if they go to Jordon together, she’ll prove it. The ensuing trip devolves into a magnificent farce, and it forms the core of a portrait of Khouri––who has the charisma of a movie star and the spin talent of a grade-A publicist––as a con woman too clumsy to evade detection, but somehow so charming and clever that even those who have been hurt by her lies and crimes feel compelled to defend her.
AJ Schnack has some notes on the lineup for the 2008 True/False Film Festival, which I’m super excited to be attending for the first time this year. While the line-up features several holdovers from previous festivals (including Sundance hits American Teen and The Order of Myths, and Cat Dancers and Audience of One, both of which screened at SXSW in 2007), and a “Secret Screening” that sounds suspiciously like one of my favorite films from last year, there’s also, according to AJ, “more than a dozen” films having their US premiere at the festival. Some of the titles that caught my eye after the jump. True/False begins on February 28 in Columbia, MO.
Kevin Buist
FLAME + CITRON Review
Christopher Campbell
Happy Halloween Links. Today in Film...
Brandon Harris
5 80s Literary Adaptations Worse Than...
Kevin Kelly
John Krasinski, Brief Interviews With...
Karina Longworth
SpoutBlog, Now Available in Book Form
Paul Moore
October 31, Karina’s Last Day
Lauren Wissot
Sasha Grey Interview
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
filmcouch-114
