Weapons of Mass Instruction: Activist Filmmakers Team with Queen Noor

In the latest turn of brilliant, socially-conscious filmmaking, production house Participant Media (An Inconvenient Truth, Food Inc.,Good Night and Good Luck) engaged Jordan’s Queen Noor for her input on its most recent project Countdown to Zero, a film about the global threat of nuclear arms proliferation. The Queen’s insight was particularly useful in enhancing the movie’s global appeal, so that it spoke not just to Americans or Western audiences, but to Arab and Muslim audiences as well.

The filmmakers likened the Queen’s significance toward the project as that of a producer, saying “Queen Noor’s perspective became important in the tweaking of this movie…She brought a global perspective and gave the film a more international feel.” As the founder of Global Zero, an organization aimed at eliminating nuclear weapons, the Queen served as a special consultant to the film, which is set to release in select cities on July 23rd.

Playing the international diplomat, a human bridge between Arab and American, is a specialty of Queen Noor’s, herself an American-born woman of mixed Arab and European descent, educated at Princeton University, who later converted to Islam upon marrying the late King Hussein of Jordan. She is well matched with the socially-conscious and international-minded production house.

Participant Media, many of whose recent films have been among the most balanced and unprejudiced when it comes to subjects that deal with and impact Muslims : Syriana, The Kite Runner, and Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains, an entertaining, enthralling film that follows ex-President Jimmy Carter in his campaign to end “Apartheid” in Palestine. As an aside, featured in the latter film’s soundtrack are Muslim artists, such as rapper Brother Ali and Amir AlSaffar. Director Jonathan Demme (Philadelphia, The Silence of the Lambs) told me at an intimate screening of Jimmy Carter in 2007 (as he generously gave me a copy of the soundtrack) that he personally selected the music for the film, deliberately mixing Muslim and Jewish artists to create the film’s unique sound. Clearly, Participant Media has filled its ranks on each project with balanced, brilliant filmmakers interested in voicing the truth in every aspect, down to the minute details.

Countdown’s partnership with Queen Noor is case-in-point. The fact that Participant producers sought out Queen Noor further shows their unique valuation of the Muslim and Arab perspectives in their efforts to show many “inconvenient truths” about the world in which we live, with characteristic poignancy, diligence, and top-class entertainment (just watch The Cove, this year’s Oscar-winner for Best Documentary).

Muslim audiences everywhere should take note of this media house, whose motto is “Entertainment that inspires and compels social change.” Among its unique projects impacting the Muslim world was a 2005 version of the 1982 film (and Best Picture) Gandhi, voiced-over in Arabic and intended for Palestinian audiences specifically, to promote the use of non-violence and civil disobedience.

Activists interested in presenting a new view of the Muslim world will do well to turn the cameras on.

As Queen Noor shared: “I’ve given a million speeches, but it’s the visual images, the storytelling [that can impact mass audiences].”

With media influencing and often dictating popular attitudes more than any other force, the lesson is clear:

The camera is the greatest weapon the Muslim world has ever encountered. The survival of the Muslim world depends on how that weapon, more than any other, is used.

Source: Maktoob