Thought this might be of interest for some :
Source:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/04/arts/04kite.php
From left, Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada and Zekiria Ebrahimi portray lifelong
friends from rival Afghan ethnic groups in "The Kite Runner." (Phil Bray/Paramount Classics)
'The Kite Runner' is delayed to protect child stars
LOSANGELES:
The studio distributing "The Kite Runner," a tale of childhood
betrayal, sexual predation and ethnic tension in Afghanistan, is
delaying the film's release to get its three schoolboy stars out of
Kabul — perhaps permanently — in response to fears that they could be
attacked for their enactment of a culturally inflammatory rape scene.
Executives
at the distributor, Paramount Vantage, are contending with issues
stemming from the rising lawlessness in Kabul in the year since the
boys were cast.
The boys and their relatives are now accusing
the filmmakers of mistreatment, and warnings have been relayed to the
studio from Afghan and American officials and aid workers that the
movie could aggravate simmering enmities between the politically
dominant Pashtun and the long-oppressed Hazara.
In an effort
to prevent not only a public-relations disaster but also possible
violence, studio lawyers and marketing bosses have employed a
stranger-than-fiction team of consultants. In August they sent a
retired Central Intelligence Agency counterterrorism operative in the
region to Kabul to assess the dangers facing the child actors. And on
Sunday a Washington-based political adviser flew to the United Arab
Emirates to arrange a safe haven for the boys and their relatives.
"If we're being overly cautious, that's O.K.," Karen Magid, a lawyer for Paramount, said. "We're in uncharted territory."
In interviews, more than a dozen people involved in the studio's
response described grappling with vexing questions: testing the limits
of corporate responsibility, wondering who was exploiting whom and
pondering the price of on-screen authenticity.
"The Kite
Runner," like the best-selling 2003 novel by Khaled Hosseini on which
it is based, spans three decades of Afghan strife, from before the
Soviet invasion through the rise of the Taliban. At its heart is a
friendship between Amir, a wealthy Pashtun boy played by Zekiria
Ebrahimi, and Hassan, the Hazara son of Amir's father's servant. In a
pivotal scene Hassan is raped in an alley by a Pashtun bully. Later,
Sohrab, a Hazara boy played by Ali Danish Bakhty Ari, is preyed on by a
corrupt Taliban official.
Though the book is admired in
Afghanistan by many in the elite, its narrative remains unfamiliar to
the broader population, for whom oral storytelling and rumor
communication carry far greater weight.
The Taliban destroyed
nearly all movie theaters in Afghanistan, but pirated DVDs often arrive
soon after a major film's release in the West. As a result, Paramount
Vantage, the art-house and specialty label of Paramount Pictures, has
pushed back the release of the $18 million movie by six weeks, to Dec.
14, when the young stars' school year will have ended.
In
January in Afghanistan, DVDs of "Kabul Express" — an Indian film in
which a character hurls insults at Hazara — led to protests, government
denunciations and calls for the execution of the offending actor, who
fled the country.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the "Kite
Runner" actor who plays Hassan, Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada, 12, told
reporters at that time that he feared for his life because his fellow
Hazara might feel humiliated by his rape scene. His father said he
himself was misled by the film's producers, insisting that they never
told him of the scene until it was about to be shot and that they had
promised to cut it.
Hangama Anwari, the child-rights
commissioner for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission,
said on Monday that she had urged Paramount's counterterrorism
consultant to get Ahmad Khan out of the country, at least until after
the movie is released. "They should not play around with the lives and
security of people," she said of the filmmakers. "The Hazara people
will take it as an insult."
The film's director, Marc
Forster, whose credits include "Finding Neverland" (2004), another film
starring child actors, said he saw "The Kite Runner" as "giving a voice
and a face to people who've been voiceless and faceless for the last 30
years." Striving for authenticity, he said, he chose to make the film
in Dari, an Afghan language, and his casting agent, Kate Dowd, held
open calls in cities with sizable Afghan communities, including
Fremont, California, Toronto and The Hague. But to no avail: Forster
said he "just wasn't connecting with anybody."
Finally, when
Dowd went to Kabul in May 2006, she discovered her stars. "There was
such innocence to them, despite all they'd lived through," she said.
Forster
emphasized that casting Afghan boys did not seem risky at the time;
local filmmakers even encouraged him, he said: "You really felt it was
safe there, a democratic process was happening, and stability, and a
new beginning."
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Last edited: 04-Oct-07 01:07 PM
Last edited: 04-Oct-07 01:08 PM
