by Brad Balfour

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NEW YORK, NY, USA - With images of post-Saddam Iraq's descent into chaos and destruction (a biological lab was broken into and refrigerators with viral samples were stolen) overwhelming the news as if part of some indie director's cinematic nightmare, several newly released films by directors of Muslim origins offer fresh perspectives.

Bahman Gohbadi's "Marooned in Iraq" sets the tone with a story that happens around the time of the first Gulf War. An older Kurdish man tries to find his ex-wife in Iraqi Kurdistan and enlists his two sons to do so. Despite it being a journey fraught with the danger, the three tangle with those they meet - and themselves - as if they were the Three Stooges in "Apocalypse Now."

In Bangladeshi director Tareque Masud's feature debut "The Clay Bird" (it premiered at this year's New Directors series) a nice middle-class pre-teen boy copes with life in the madrasa (the Islamic religious school usually for orphans and the poor) where he was sent by his newly Islamic fundamentalist father. Though it starts introspectively, the film's scope widens to include the growing tension that leads the more moderate Bangladesh to secede from the more purist militarist Pakistan in 1971. The slaughter of Bengali-speaking Bangladeshis by the Urdu speaking Pakistanis ensues; we experience frustration with the Muslim father's absurd denial of the slaughter of the one community by the other.

Saad Salman's "Baghdad On/Off" ­ debuting at this year's Tribeca Film Festival - offers up the anguish and frustrations of the many Iraqis met by the director in this semi-documentary of his long-winded, difficult drive to Baghdad to see his mother before she dies. From his surreptitious entry into Iraq on, he meets many survivors of Saddam's murderous regime (especially Kurds) and records to cathartic effect their tales of anger and oppression.

Two other films coming up at Tribeca - "The Lost Film" by Khalil Joreige and Joanna Hadjithomas and "The Trial" by Moslem Mansouri - also detail the frustrations of living and surviving in the Islamic world, as well. All of these films and the many others that have been appearing over the last year present insider views of these countries and the daily lives of the people that none of the usual news footage really exposes.

So when both Gohbadi and Masud came to town they offered their third-stream viewpoints first hand. Neither are fans of repressive dictators like Saddam or of fundamentalist Islam. Yet they reflect the discontent felt by the Islamic world towards "The Coalition" invasion of Iraq. Said the Iranian-Kurdish director, "Yes the Kurdish people are the troops who really did join forces with American soldiersŠthough my story is set in 1989, I think it has greater relevance now."

Through his Farsi translator he said, "The date is not the issue. Look at history of the Kurdish people - nothing has changed over the last few decades, whether it was 11 year ago or 20 years ago or today. All is relevant and contemporary."

While his film allows people to get a better sense of their personal struggle and the nuances of friend and foe, Gohbadi said unstintingly, "I am not ambivalent, the Kurdish people are not ambivalent about this warŠthey have a very negative view of America's presence in the region and America's true reasons for wanting to conduct this war. They don't believes it is in name of humanity or the Kurdish people or for humanitarian reasons but for self interest and interests of America."

He added, having just returned from Iraqi Kurdistan, "The Kurds are the unknown soldiers dying off in this war. This war is like a movie and it's happening in front of the Kurdish people's eyes. For them it is not entertainment, it is reality and they are very much opposed to it. If America had really wanted to do something good for the Kurdish people in Iraq it would have gotten involved during the Irani-Iraq war and done something to prevent the death and destruction of the Kurdish people that was happening in 1989 and '88."

Bangladeshi Masud wondered about the American perceptions of Islamic people in general. "It's important to be sensitive and understand or appreciate the nuances, complexities and diversities to Islamic people. They are not one; you can't make a blanket comment over the whole spectrum of the religious believer[s]. They are so many diversities in Islam - there are 74 sects. There are so many conflictsŠthey're always ready to kill each other. The secularists have to understand the diversity if only to use one against the other."

After having endured the catastrophe of Muslim killing Muslim on the South Asian sub-continent, and having made a film about it, Masud felt strongly about his role in his society: "Each country has its filmmakers who are there to critique their own society. It is my job to critique my society as an insider not outsider, and for those countries that want to support democracy they should be helping the liberal inside each country. But what's happened and what's being done now [by the West] is making the liberal voices smaller and more mute."

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