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ARTS/REVIEW

A ‘dissident!

@ t é

‘*True, it’s a question of reclaiming a
right to see the summer through the
brushwood, of requesting permission to
accompany a father during his last days,
of asking for enough time to put love —
no less — in order.

But it’s also a hard-fought struggle for
an identity regained, a phenomenon one
knows in these times does not involve
just one person.

‘Fm not struggling simply for a per-
sonal right. If I'm being excluded be-
cause of my ideas, because I disagree
with the government on a series of
domestic and foreign policy issues, then
what’s going to happen from here on
in?”

The words are not quoted from a Chi-
cano, or a Puerto Rican or a Navajo chief
asking for an end to the age-old oppres-
sion to which his people have been sub-
jected. It was the reply of Margaret Ran-
dall to her prosecutors in the trial against
her in her own country for her “‘perni-
cious ideas.”

Margaret Randall, age 51, U.S. writer,
poet and photographer has to her credit
40 titles of verse, narrative and so-
ciological research on women in the
developing world. For 23 years she lived
in Latin America, where she found
human beings who were able to preserve
their tenderness and warmth even in the
most difficult situations.

the U.S.

The fact is that since 1984 Margaret
Randall has been back in the United
States, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in
the beautiful setting of her own child-
hood. There the immigration officials
went, armed with a law that goes back to
McCarthyism, demanding that she leave
the country immediately since her re-
quest to be given back her citizenship
had been turned down.

The McCarran-Walter Act denies
entry and stay in the United States to all
foreigners with communist ideas. Sucha
formula is known to be elastic enough to
apply to writers like Pablo Neruda, Gra-
ham. Greene, Farley Mowat and more
recently Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Logically, the Reagan administration
does not look favourably on Randall’s
return, much less so now that she is
teaching at New Mexico State Univer-
sity. In the sinister records of the FBI she
has attributed to her many crimes that
cannot be overlooked: youth activist in
the Spanish Refugee Aid organization of-
fering shelter to anti-Franco exiles;
founder, along with Sergio Mondragon,
of the bilingual El Corno Enplumado,
one of the best Latin American journals
of the ’60s; resident in socialist Cuba and
Nicaragua without Somoza, countries
that could always count on her solidarity,
intellect and great work capacity; guest
of Vietnam in 1970, to see the effects of

Fantasy & violence

in The Untouchables

THE UNTOUCHABLES. With Kevin
Costner, Sean Connery, Robert De
Niro. Directed by Brian De Palma. At
local theatres.

Those looking for historical accu-
racy or social substance would do bet-
ter than to immerse themselves in the
THX sounds and moody pictorial
tones of The Untouchables. For direc-
tor Brian De Palma’s latest offering has
more of the wisp of fantasy than the
stuff of real life.

In The Untouchables, federal law -

enforcement agents run straight into
the line of fire and emerge unscathed.

a
Margaret Randall: Fighting persecution
from the Reagan administration.

the war and denounce such criminal im-
perialist irrationality. . .

At the March 1986 hearing against
Randall in El Paso, Texas, immigration
officials Guadelupe Gonzalez and Penny
Smith came up with some ridiculous
arguments, many of which were dis-
missed by the judge. She was accused of
attacking the notion of private property
and was even asked what her position
would be should Cuba attack the United
States.

To date, Margaret Randall’s legal bat-
tle has cost some $86-thousand, a sum
she has been able to raise by giving talks
and readings across the country. It is
estimated that successive appeals will
cost as much again. But Margaret Ran-
dall is not alone. Names such as Norman
Mailer, William Styron and Arthur Miller
have asked the federal authorities to stop
considering her ‘‘an undesirable alien;”’
defence committees have been set up for
her in every state; and singer Holly Near
has been doing benefit concerts on Ran-
dall’s behalf.

The poet who asks how many times
the red flowers of the cactus will open
outside her door, is under attack for re-
plying honestly to the lies and falsehoods
of the distorted information that is alien-
ating her people.

— Alex Fleites
(Granma magazine)

Jobs not charity
tours Island

‘ Customs seizes book

A book retelling Indian legends has
been seized by Canada Customs on the
grounds it ‘‘contains obscene material

Dzelarhorns, by Canadian author Anne
Cameron, contains a story based on In-
dian legend of a woman who is forced to

¥ live with a bear. The story is similar to

Greek and Roman legends. Cultural ac-
tivists have voiced concern that the

increased focus by Canada Customs on
persecuting literature while real por-
nography remains untot:ched.

Dzelarhorns, which is readily avail-
able in public libraries and bookstores,
was ordered by the Little Sisters Book
and Art Emporium in Vancouver.
Owners of the store believe they were
singled out because the store special-
izes in gay literature.

CBC turns down show

The CBC has announced that a film
dealing with aboriginal rights in Canada
cannot be shown. The program entitled

rected by Canadian filmmaker Hugh
Brody for Channel 4 television in Eng-
land. On Indian Land deals with the
intense efforts of Indians in Canada to
explain their view of the world and their
need for control over their own des-
tinies. The film — which received prime
time exposure in England — was turned
down by the CBC on the grounds the
film would violate the CBC’s policy of
“balanced broadcasting.”

Tory cuts hit films

Tory tax reforms may sound the
death-knell for the Canadian film indus-
try. Part of the tax reforms announced
by the Conservative government calls
for a reduction in the tax write-offs on
investment in Canadian film and televl-
sion to 30 per cent from 100 per cent. In
a press release Telefilm Canada stated
the proposals will ‘‘have a significant

facing enormous difficulties in finding

Americanization of Canadian films.

depicting bestiality..’ The book |

seizure of the Cameron book marks an

On Indian Land was produced and di-

impact on an industry which is already |

private financing.’ Critics point out
that the tax cuts will lead to further”

——

People’s
Co-op

“Jobs, not charity” is the name and
theme of a tour of B.C. musicians taking
their message to audiences on Vancouver
Island this month.

The tour, to play Victoria, Campbell
River and Ladysmith, features Tom
Hawken of the On-to-Ottawa Trek show,
labour singer-songwriter Phil Vernon, and
the five-member a cappella women’s group,
Aya.

Produced by the Vancouver-based Slim
Evans Records and Tapes, the tour is
funded by the B.C. Federation of Labour.
All proceeds go to local unemployed action
centres or anti-poverty groups. :

B.C. Fed secretary-treasurer Cliff And-
stein said the fight against Bills 19 and 20
should not obscure the struggle for jobs.

“Big business and the Socreds benefit
from unemployment. They get a large pool
of unemployed workers to drive down
wages, and to recruit as scabs, as in the
current letters carriers dispute.”

The tour artists are featured on two
recent Slim Evans releases, the music
cassettes Watch Over Liberty and Hold The
Fort.

The concert plays Victoria on July 10,
Campbell River on July 11, and Ladysmith
on July 12.

Ness catches a gun thrown by his
cohort in a climactic shootout and con-
tinues dispatching Al Capone’s hoods.
The RCMP rides horses in the 1930s to
intercept liquor smugglers.

What the movie version of the
former television series offers is some
breathtaking, almost three-dimensional
cinematography, the latest in theatre
sound systems, and violence — lots of
it. There are enough shootouts to
satisfy the most jaded, and the blood
spilled would keep the average local
Red Cross functioning for a week.

“Suggested,” as the film’s producers
state it, by the television series of the
same name — itself based on reminis-
cences of real-life federal Treasury
agent Eliot Ness — The Untoucha-
bles features Kevin Costner in a con-
vincing portrayal of the lead character.
His gung-ho attitude — he cares less
about the effectiveness of Prohibition
than his devotion to enforcing the
law — is effectively combined with the
naivety of a newcomer facing the for-
midable task of putting Chicago’s most
notorious underworld crimelord behind

Bookstore

New Titles

TOWARD A BETTER
WORLD: By Mikhail
Gorbachev
Contains a special chapter
addressed to all Americans.
$26.95

(hardcover)

Kevin Costner as Eliot Ness

bars and ending his bootlegging
empire.

Ness’ task is formidable not only
because of the viciousness of Capone
— played with the usual workmanlike
competence one expects of Robert De
Niro — but also because almost every
law enforcement official in Chicago is
on the take.

Plot features like that could have
made The Untouchables a better film.
But we really get little in the way of
explanation as to how judges and police
are bought. We learn little of the struc-
ture of crime syndicates such as
Capone’s or the kind of people it
recruits. And the essence of the
Thirties — its unemployment and bread
lines — is completely absent.

The Untouchables is a standard Hol-
lywood thriller — unbelievable hero-
ics, almost unending violence and
enough plot to string the sequences
together. For mature violence freaks
only.

FROM THE MISSIONARY
DAYS TO REAGAN: An
analysis of U.S.A. and Chi-
nese policies in the Pacific
By V. Vorontsov

$6.50

(hardcover)
1391 Commercial Drive
Vancouver, B.C. V5L 3X5
Telephone: 253-6442

— Dan Keeton

6 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JULY 1, 1987