Live True Life or Die Trying

Two Chris Marker films that are decades apart in tone and political exhaustion, Grin Without A Cat (Left grand disillusion with 1960s) and Case of the Grinning Cat (French anti-war movement with foretold conclusion), These polarities appear, also, in a single day in January 2009, when we follow two political rallies that happen in two parts of Dhaka. The first by a new group of young Islamists-- an event where he finds no familiar faces, "except among the photographers". Yet you also note the energy: "These are not the Islamists we lazily lampooned in the 1980s. Now their rhetoric has a sharp edge and reality tint. When they argue that gangster capitalism has failed and is dragging down the world, that the global compact is imploding, it's a resonant message for many."

The second rally, later in the afternoon, organized by a group of Leftists on the university campus. In this one, back in the comfort zone, meeting familiar friends, joining in enthusiastically, sometimes marching and chanting, sometimes walking backwards trying to capture a "dramatic" photo. Through it all though, a queasy feeling: of the awareness that this second rally is so much smaller, of the inevitability of Left decline, of recognizing his own desire to zoom in for a close shot. The better to inflate the size of the crowd. My camera can lie, soaked in bias and sympathy.

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