Film: Innocence of Muslims – The plot thickens
God and Politics today looks at responses to the protests and riots taking place as a result of the anti-Islamic film Innocence of Muslims.
The English Defence League have not missed the opportunity to leap upon the bandwagon and have announced that they will be screening the film.
In the meantime, the background to the film becomes ever more dodgy.
Firstly, Richard Bartholomew points out that Joseph Nassralla – Way TV and Media for Christ – has published a statement on Pamela Geller’s blog distancing himself from the film and effectively declaring he was duped by the producer Nakoula – aka Sam Bacile – into using his filming facilities.
I Tweeted about this and received this response:
@echurchblog You saw the letter allegedly from an actress in the film saying she was deceived over film – supposed to be action-adventure.
— Cathy (@cathyby) September 18, 2012
I didn’t know anything about this letter and so cathyby followed up with this:
@echurchblog RT @neilhimself scared actress who’d been in the film that’s caused all the recent problems just wrotebit.ly/PrMY8E
— Cathy (@cathyby) September 18, 2012
And so it appears that actress Anna Gurji involved in the film was herself duped:
I don’t know how to start writing this letter. It’s crazy, the world is.. life.. I’m so shattered right now, I don’t know.. I feel very dead inside.
Last summer I auditioned for an indie low budget feature movie and I landed a supporting role. The movie was about a comet falling into a desert and ancient tribes fighting over it for they thought that the comet had some magical powers.
A year later, the movie was dubbed (without the actors’ permission), the lines were changed drastically and the movie was morphed into an Anti-Islam film. Even the names of the characters were changed. And the character I had scenes with GEORGE became MUHAMMAD.
I really need your advice right now? How can I have my voice shown to the world so that I can tell them the real story.
All these media people that keep calling me are using my real story and then chopping or manipulating the interview the way they want to.
I don’t know what to do. It’s very scary, Neil.
Neil asked her to write the story of exactly what happened and I encourage you to hop over even though it’s grim reading.
I’m sure you’ll agree this is a very strange state of affairs indeed….
Tags: Christianity, Media, News, Religion Society
September 18th, 2012 at 3:03 pm
Yes, I read her letter with growing incredulity: quite shocking! Still, the good thing is that most people on the project weren’t complicit, apparently.
September 18th, 2012 at 5:16 pm
In hoc signo vinces†
So is this post criticism of Hollywood’s dubious practices and production etiquette or a veiled attack on the producer for making a low budget agitprop film exposing Islam.
When respectable academics are silenced and mainstream media is (self)-censored, then crude agitprop maybe the only medium open and the last battle line in the defence of Western freedom of expression against Islam.