Synopsis
Facing the Music meets Erin Brockovich and The Castle in a moving, funny and suspenseful feature length documentary, unlocking the everyday world of Muslims in the West.
An Anglo-Australian convert to Islam and a pioneer of Muslim education in the West, Silma and her husband Baheej
re-mortgage their home to establish one of the first Muslim schools in Sydney. Their dream is to educate a generation
secure in their faith and confident in their Australian identity. But the dream turns sour when they discover the land they
have leased is contaminated.
Embroiled in a bitter legal battle the school owes AUD$2 million and is forced into Voluntary Administration. Silma faces bankruptcy. Meanwhile there is a school to run and students and teachers to manage…… Silma wants to prove that
Muslims can get a fair go in Australia but can her school survive while its principal
pursues her day in court?
Character-driven and largely observational in style, Silma’s School explores the experience of a minority Muslim community living in a post 9/11 Western society. It provides the microcosm for some of the major issues faced by young Muslims growing up in the West and for the big issues which author Salman Rushdie calls ‘the subject of our times’.
Impact
Lynden Barber, the Artistic Director of the Sydney Film Festival 2005, called the film “an inspiring story of an underdog’s battle to survive and a fascinating insight into Islamic culture and issues as they play out in the Australian suburbs. Eye-opening and compelling.”
Heralded as a cultural landmark, the film received a standing ovation when a first-cut screened at the Sydney Film Festival. It subsequently sold out in London, was a finalist in the New York Festivals’ Television Award, short-listed for Best International Feature length Documentary and Best Made for Television Documentary in New Zealand’s annual international documentary festival DocNZ, and received the award for Best Multicultural Film in the Australian International Film Festival 2006.
Other festival screenings include Poland (Brave Festival), Italy (Sole e Luna) and Australia (Real Life on Film).
Non-festival screenings include Q&A screenings at the New South Wales Parliament and a Harmony Day 2007 Q&A screening at the New England Regional Art Museum, plus screenings at local cinemas and churches in Sydney’s western suburbs.
The film has provided a valuable springboard for wide-ranging Q&As and has been selected for review and interview by national and local radio stations in Australia and in the UK where BBC Radio 2’s prime-time drive show felt the film provided an important focus for discussing the challenges of multiculturalism, national identity, national values, inclusivity and the problems facing disenfranchised minorities.
The film is expected to be used widely in schools. ATOM (The Australian Teachers of Media) produced a study guide and the Catholic Education Office has used the film as part of in-house training of teaching staff in identifying and combating racism in schools. Leicester City Council in the UK has asked to run a series of screenings in the Midlands city which by 2010 is expected to be the first non-white majority city in Europe.
The ABC chose to screen the film in a religious programming time slot rather than general interest strand but reported that the film attracted three times the publicity normally accorded to a documentary, including extensive coverage in Australia’s Arab and Muslim media, print and radio. A post-broadcast on-line forum attracted some 14,000 hits.
*****
The film was aimed at a general audience and intended to offer an intimate and engaging invitation into Muslim life in the West – away from the news and current affairs focus of the threat of Islamic terrorism and the War on Terror. Its primary success has probably been in taking a wide non-Muslim audience into a world many perceive to be closed and giving them the chance to identify with Muslim characters and a Muslim community and to cheer and fear with these characters in a David and Goliath battle which does not directly hinge on matters of faith or race. Equally important, the film has held a mirror up to the Muslim community and reflected an image that the community recognizes. Not demonized and ‘Other’ but human, funny, prompting laughter and tears, involved in struggles that anyone could face – Muslim or otherwise. The response from the Muslim community around the country has been phenomenal. At the time of filming many questioned why we would take interest in the school’s struggle, why we would care about Muslims. They felt betrayed by the media and wary even of those they hoped to trust. One of the teachers believed the director was an ASIO spy even until the film was finished. The response to screenings, to the standing ovation given by a huge State Theatre audience and to calls for Silma to be named Australian of the Year was one of amazement. Muslim leaders and multi-cultural Commissioners have since called the film an important landmark for reflecting a Muslim story – or a story with Muslim characters – in a mainstream style.
The media have called her ‘Erin Brockovich in a hijab’. The film is about a significant litigation case but like Erin Brocovich, it is the roller coaster story of a passionate woman risking everything for survival, justice and her dream. Less concerned with the legal minutae of the duty of care of a corporation leasing land for a school. Silma’s School is more of a colourful excuse to spend time inside the everyday world of a Muslim school where the next generation are working out who they are and where they fit in to life in the West.
In Silma’s struggle, film-maker, Jane Jeffes saw an engaging way to invite an audience into a world many had not had access to before. A lack of images of minority communities in everyday life has played a significant part in limiting public perception, reinforcing negative public attitudes, and defining the relationship between Muslim and non-Muslim in terms of defensiveness, suspicion and fear - internationally and within our own borders. Silma’s School goes some way to countering this.
The film has provided a forum to debate the relationship between Muslim and non-Muslim in a wider everyday context beyond the atmosphere of fear and suspicion engendered by the threat of terrorism, the war on terror and the refugee and crime issues that have dominated coverage of Australia’s Muslim population in recent years. It has enabled audiences to explore the experience of being Muslim in the West in a post 9/11 world, the everyday reality of the clash of cultures and growth of Islamaphobia, and the impact of world events on our Muslim community and on young Muslims growing up in the West in a way that is neither threatening nor intellectualised.
An effective springboard for the discussion of some of the most important issues of our time: from the so-called failure of multiculturalism to the role of faith schools in a democracy, from questions of identity and belonging both national and personal to the role of the individual and the power of government and big corporations.
Ultimately, Silma’s School is social documentary reflecting contemporary problems from a perspective we’re not accustomed to. Balancing differences and common humanity without undue political correctness.
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