(y 8 FILMS Humanity shines on the festival’s screen at Tashkent MOSCOW — In the USSR all roads lead to peace. Tashkent this month has been an international highway. The ceremonial opening of the 7th Tashkent Film festival was an impressive demonstration of delegates from more than 90 countries against the danger of nuclear war and for peace. A Soviet artist led this mini UN in singing: **We can, we can stop nuclear war. We can, we can preserve peace.’’ The audience rose spontaneously and clapped hands to emphasize ‘‘We can.”’ : R.N. Abdullaeva, an Uzbek woman who is Deputy Chairper- son of the Uzbek Council of Ministers and heads the festival committee, presided. She stressed the significant role films can and must play in the struggle for the survival of the human race. The first film screened, Leningraders Our Children, an Uzbek entry, was a powertul plea for peace. Tashkent was a vital sector of the Soviet rear during the great patriotic war. It was the home of key defence industries and the guardian of the priceless art of many museums. Above all, it was the foster home of thousands of orphaned children and many whom the war had separated from their families. This moving film tells the story of the children and their adopted mothers, many of whom were yet in their early teens, and looks back on those grim days from the present. A group of middle aged men and women arrive at Tashkent Airport. They are greeted with hugs and tears by old Tashkent friends. You soon realize that these men and women are return- ing to the scene of their war-wounded childhood and that the welcoming committee is their foster parents. Each character is developed in flashbacks on two levels, almost like a play within a play. How Tashkent took them to its great heart is the story. News reels of Leningrad under seige are dramatically woven into the process of healing in their Tashkent home. A little boy clutches to his breast a lifeless bundle and refuses to surrender his sister. The beautiful girl who becomes ‘‘mother”’ to him opens the blanket. The baby had obviously died on the train trip to Tashkent. An old Uzbek woman adopts a terrified, starved little girl. Another looks on enviously. ‘‘Grandmother,”’ she pleads, *‘I eat very little."’ The poor old woman who has little enough for herself can’t resist the appeal. Another child is asked her name. ‘I can’t remember. | lost the paper. My mother wrote it,’ the child replies. There are the boys driven by hunger and disorientation to stealing bread and clothes from their foster home. There is the thief, the young Uzbek ‘‘mother™’ who never before had harmed a human being breaks his leg with an axe. There is the heart- rending scene of the dazed little girl who plays a game of death with her dolls. She wraps one in rags (as she had seen her dead sisters wrapped) and places the dead doll on a book (a sled in her childish mind) and carts the body as was done so often in Len- ingrad. Four of the many hundred of the films shown at the festival will be coming to Canada. Jean Roch Chapleau, a distributor of Soviet films in Quebec was especially impressed with *‘Men without Women’’. The story of a rescuer’s brigade it is based on real life events surrounding the earthquake in Khirgizia. Moun- tain rockslides which knocked out electricity, heat and water, endangered the lives of victims and rescuers alike. The acute danger brought people closer together as they think about loved ones. Tashkent itself was rebuilt by men and women from all the republics in the USSR after it was devastated by an earthquake in 1966. Many of those who rebuilt it were its foster children. — Mike Davidow John Weir Mansbek Masaev in Men without Women, an entry at the Seventh Beouoaeme Film Festival at Tashkent, soon to come to canna.) PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JUNE 25, 1982—Page 10 Members of the Palestinian communi Israeli troops from Lebanon. Sanctions on Israel protesters demand © By JAMES LEECH TORONTO — More than 800 people marched the perimeter of City Hall Square, June 12, protest- ing the Israeli aggression in Lebanon, its genocide against the Palestinian people, and demanding Canadian and UN action to put a stop to Israel’s military and political crimes against the Arab people. Banners, placards and speakers in the square denounced the mass murder committed by Israel in Lebanon, before parading along the city’s busy Yonge and College streets and on University Ave., to the U.S. Consulate, where speakers attacked the U.S. backing which underwrites Israel’s mili- tary aggressions. The angry crowd, made up of Arabs, including Palestinians, people from various ethnic back- grounds, and Jews, who support the right of the Palestinian Arabs to their own state, and who con- demn the genocidal war against Lebanon, called . for sanctions against the Zionist state. In an interview as the march began, Abdullah Abdulalh, chief representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Canada told the Tribune: “‘It’s the responsibility of the Canadian Government to stand up to this holocaust, to help stop the slaughter of Palestinians and Lebanese by the disciples of the nazis, who have outdone their masters in their vicious attacks on their victims. Should Impose Sanctions **Canada, which was eager to impose economic sanctions on various occasions because of what she called aggression or foreign intervention, should now impose sanctions on Israel,’ Abdullah said. “Canada should show its disapproval of this mass murder by recognizing the reality of the Palestinian factor and by recognizing the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people,’’ he said. ‘‘Canada should support the basic rights of the Palestinian people.”’ This attack showed the need to destroy Zionism and Zionist structures, just as naziism and the nazi structures had to be destroyed, he said. “Canada, which sent its forces thousands of miles in the Second World War to fight naziism, fascism and aggression, should keep this in mind,” Abdullah said, ‘‘when it is taking a position on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. *‘People have been torturing themselves be- cause they were silent at the time of Jewish perse- cution; they should speak out now, so they won’t feel sorry again tomorrow," he said. The chairman of the meetings both at the city hall and after picketing of the U.S. Consulate, Khalid Muaamar, past president and currently an execu- tive member of the Canadian Arab Federation, ty in Toronto march on the U.S. consulate to demand the withdrawal 0! . called on all those present to continue their action. Ask Red Cross Aid He urged pressure on Members of Parliament t0 have Canada impose sanctions on ‘‘this crimin state — Israel.’’ Canadians should also ask the | Canadian Red Cross to send medicines, and needed medical supplies. He said the Israelis had bombed hospitals, and people are dying for lack of | supplies Canada could send. Dan Goldstick, speaking for the Alliance of Non-Zionist Jews, said that the Israeli leaders seem to think they can solve their problems by attacking and bombing their neighbors. ‘They say they are doing it inmy name — as 4 Jew. I can tell you they're not doing it in my name!”’ j He said that after each attempt of Israel to elim! nate the. Palestinians, the Palestinians come back stronger. ‘‘It is inevitable they will be able to retur? to their homeland and regain their rights,’’ he said. Referring to the imminent danger of nucleal world war, Goldstick said that the latest escapades of Israel heightened the danger of a world con’ flagration. Speakers for the Moslem Student Association: who said we ‘‘have to survive so that our next generation can live in peace,’’ and for the Canadia® Lebanese Community in Toronto, who spoke 0 " the ‘‘barbaric actions of the Israeli army in Leba non,”’ also received sustained applause. : Shouts of — We support the PLO! — and — Israel out of Lebanon! — punctuated the speeches: Appeal for Lebanon ‘The invading Israeli army is shelling and level ling schools, hospitals and houses and turning them — into burial grounds for innocent women, childre® and aged people — resulting in more than 10,000 casualties,”’ said the Lebanese spokesman. : _ Astatement issued by the Lebanese Communit Stated: “The recent Israeli incursion into Lebano# reflects the true nature of the Zionist state, which was established on the ruins of Palestine and has rendered hundreds of thousands of Palestinians homeless and propertyless. This same state con- tinues now to thrive on expansionism, militaris™ _ and violence. : “We, as Canadians, should refuse to contribute from our tax dollars to subsidize the Israeli wa! machine and thus participate indirectly in thé State-organized Israeli terrorism. Due to extensive coverage in this issue from ‘New York and across Canada on the rallies for peace, Jack Phillips’ series on Poland will not appear this week but will be carried in future issues.