** "I think we can learn from this movie, how not to deal with conflict..."

Renate Reinsve Talks Armand, A Different Man. The actress is on the line from Norway to delve into the Cannes and Berlin award winners in release. And in no way 'The Worst Person In The World' for which she won Best Actress at Cannes, Renate discusses being directed by the grandson of Ingmar Bergman for Armand - and including the creative influence on her of the filmmaker's grandmother as well, Liv Ullmann.

Along with Renate's other current awards season dramatic feature, A Different Man, in which she has a romantic encounter with no less than two versions of a physically deformed character, played by Sebastian Stan. Plus, the implications of the allegorical Armand, centering on a grade school tribunal's psychological descent into unresolvable accusations - and what it intimates about the current turmoil and confusion surrounding the seeming endless war in Europe.

** "We don't have a rational political system, they're just two angry parties - a wet match in a dark cave..."

Shedding Light On The Chaos. Pacifica Host Garland Nixon sorts out poor folks taking a haircut, the USAID regime change monster, election deniers, football, arguments among ourselves like roaches scurrying around when the lights come on, pies, inflation - and slaves fighting over which master has the biggest house...

** "I speak with the rage of angels, them that be with Marx - I speak with the clarity and inferno of the necessary..."

Fashion This, From The Irony Of The World. The late, eminent revolutionary preacher prophet of the political apocalypse, Amiri Baraka in performance - about the state of the world where pretty much nothing has changed...

** "I first read No Longer Human, I remember, sitting on my bed - and the vague smell of existential dread..."

UK Desk. Reflections on the writing of the late melancholy Japanese novelist, Osamu Dazai. And his profound alienation, a product as well of his persecution as a communist in both pre and then post-WWII US occupied colonialist Japan. And with the atomic bombing of an already surrendering Japan, by the US intent of both crushing the rising Japanese left, while preempting the Soviet Union poised to enter the country.

And Dazai expressing his communism in his memoir, Almanac Of Pain - beliefs that led Dazai's family to disown him, while forcing him to renounce communism in writing publicly to salvage the family's reputation - by turning himself into the police to sign a confession. 

ANUJA REVIEW: Charity, Class, Mythmaking And Mass Consciousness

Not unlike the homeless Delhi ten year old illegal sweatshop worker of the title caught between a rock and a hard place of survival and controversy - the Salaam Baalak Trust NGO, like USAID, has released this Oscar contender short film at a problematic moment in time. As this bottom feeder Netflix fairy tale seeks elusive middle ground between socio-economic tragedy and triumph - but settling on an embrace of a charity over social change segue into the real world surrounding the story.

Portrayed by Sajda Pathan,an orphaned street child in real life supported by the NGO production team in question, Anuja works side by side with her likewise homeless teenage sister Palak (Ananya Shanbhag) at the garment sweatshop - but has been singled out by the brutal, possibly child sexual predator owner, as exceptional enough in her math skills to be promoted to his office assistant - which she's astute enough to decline.

While at the same time, Anuja is visited at the factory by a local teacher offering her the chance to win a boarding school scholarship, if she shows up at the school for an admissions exam. And while she appears to reject this offer as well, presumably to remain in her culturally familiar surroundings however impoverished, such a turn of events would never transpire in similar US scripted narratives - even though this film is penned by US writer/director Adam J. Graves.

In other words, American films with a similar, all too familiar story, feature ghetto youth protagonists grasping the option of fleeing the inner city for such an opportunity to improve their lives. And not likely to ever look back to consider embracing an allegiance with their roots, and uniting in protest with the community to promote social change.

While in the case of Anuja, she opts for neither activism nor the opportunity to ascend to the middle class, instead appearing to remain within her surroundings - though engaged in an individual aspiration hawking handbags her sister has secretly created at the sweatshop from scraps of clothing. Which brings into question, is this film financed by the local NGO (the Trust backed as well by UK and Australia financing) implicitly imposing upon the story an ideology of acceptance no matter how dire the reality, as opposed to middle class aspiration or collective rebellion.

And which implies a further notion about the functioning of NGOs, especially at this moment of their increased public scrutiny. Namely, how they may function, in a similar fashion to the medical industrial complex, as corporate entities dependent on the status quo, no matter how dismal, to perpetuate themselves. That is, as with medical business empires promoting endless treatment over the development of permanent cures in order to sustain their existence - so do NGOs require the existence of poverty to themselves remain in existence.

While the politics of linguistics further clouds the reality at hand, whether on or off screen. In other words, with India 'officially' designated as one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and currently on the rise to replace Japan's place as the fourth largest global economy. Yet, as so evident in the extreme poverty depicted in Anuja, and across India, a glaring invisible statistic in that regard, when it comes to the state of the masses.

Prairie Miller