Don't let the men of the Vienna Philharmonic keep playing with themselves

Duly resuming two decades of tradition, I woke up on 1 January 2012 and switched on the TV to tune into the annual New Year's Concert by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Televised live from the Musikverein into more than 70 countries world-wide, the concert is attended by some 2000 people who are willing to pay up to 940 € a pop in a ticket lottery and thereby ensure a sold out show by end of January twelve (!) months in advance (penny pinchers might be interested in the fact that the cheapest tickets sell for merely 25-350 €!).

Different concert masters from around the world salivate every year over who gets the chance to conduct the concert which traditionally features three essential musical pieces (Donauwalzer, Radetzkymarsch and Wiener Blut) accompanied by the Vienna State Opera ballet and for those that can stomach 1.5 hours of classical music (like me!), an annually changing variety of other classical pieces.

© Alfred Weidinger

So what's the deal with the Vienna Philharmonic? Why is everyone crazed up about it? What makes it so special?

It is considered one of the best orchestras in the world and an important 'brand' in the historicist image Austria exports as classical music capital of the world (as I call it, the 'Hollywood' of classical music, if perhaps less bold) thanks to big names like Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn and various Italian and Hungarian composers from the former Austrian empire - that for a time ruled half of Europe - synergising their talents in Vienna. Just like fine arts students flock to Paris for a formation, young people from around the world seek musical training in Austria's conservatories today.

Given this image, "the Vienna Philharmonic not only commands the highest concert fees of any orchestra - as much as $200 000 a night, and sometimes more, on standing-room-only international tours - it sells more recordings and earns more money for its members than any other orchestra, except perhaps for the Metropolitan Opera orchestra. Its reported annual income amounts to about $15 million after expenses, income divided among the 150 players. In addition, Philharmonic members earn large government salaries for their jobs in the Vienna State Opera orchestra, and a significant minority earn yet a third salary, also government-paid, to teach at the Vienna Music Academy." (MSNBC)

Nevertheless, the prestigious image of the orchestra is not as squeaky-clean as it appears to convey

As three ballet fairies in blue designer dresses are whirled through the air and land half a turn later in a fourth position démi-plié, I wonder why it is that such an internationally renown and acclaimed institution as the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (hereafter abbreviated as VPO) has virtually no female performers in its ranks. Given the time I spent away from Austria and my relatively consistent disinterest in Austrian current affairs and by proxy, perusing Austrian dailies, I assumed that the more-obvious-than-obvious gender imbalance in the VPO has gone virtually unchallenged in a (transitioning) patriarchal society whose organised women's groups are not lobbying on the same scale as say, their counterparts in the US where they have considerable leverage in national public discourse (partly due to the different democratic system). Being accused by a women's group in the US can create considerable discomfort to the organisation or individual whose image is put into question. In Austria, where political correctness is one of the 'American concepts' Austrians generally prefer to reject by principle, arguments brought forward by women's groups often just evoke a smirk by members of the public.

As for the VPO, a brief internet research confirms that a strong campaign against gender discrimination in the ensemble has been fought for almost a decade now on the cyber front – led prominently by a guy from New Mexico, William Osborne.

"Part composer, social historian and musicologist, Osborne [60] came to the issue of gender bias through long and bitter experience. For many years, he and his wife, Abbie Conant, a classical trombonist, fought sexism in the Munich Philharmonic. Their court battles with that orchestra, following Conant's arbitrary demotion from solo to second trombone, ultimately ended in a precedent-setting legal victory [after she had to have her lung volume measured in a hospital (!) by court order in order to prove that she had the same physical capability as a man to play a wind instrument]." (MSNBC)

"We would have been powerless without the internet"

Launching an online campaign in the early days of the internet (we are talking 1995, Facebook and Twitter had not even been conceived yet, let alone Windows XP!), he successfully generated debate and support through sending emails, posting in (IRC!) chat rooms and websites and sharing his scientifically-based arguments on the issue of gender bias. I quote,

"More than three years ago, in 'Art Is Just an Excuse', the first of several seminal essays, Osborne contended that the Vienna Philharmonic's belief in male supremacy was gender bias of the worst sort, rooted in a historical rationale of national identity and cultural purity, and that its exclusionary policy was part of an intolerable racist heritage. [...]

Chief among Osborne's allies were Monique Buzzarte [whose slogan I chose as title for this post], a New York freelance musician and writer who put up a Zap the VPO Web site to encourage and track the protest, influencing the National Organization of Women to get involved and Varda Ullman Novick, a Los Angeles media researcher and pollster who acted as a traffic catalyst, instigating debate by forwarding e-mail messages to key music list servers." (MSNBC)

By revealing how the VPO is governed and the employment policies surrounding the orchestra, Osborne shed light on the systematic sexist discrimination.

Kurier: "US Womens' Groups Threaten Boycott of the Philharmonic / Massive Pressure on the Orchestra to Take Women Musicians"

Repeatedly threatened with boycots during their concerts abroad and finally giving in to rising international pressure, the first woman admitted into the VPO was harpist Anna Lelkes who by historic vote on 27 February 1997 publicly 'joined' the orchestra conveniently on the same day the VPO flew to the US to play in New York (in its only other US stop on that tour, the Vienna Philharmonic played three concerts at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in California, where about 150 protestors demonstrated). I put the 'joined' in apostrophes here because Lelkes had in fact been playing with the orchestra for 26 years as a permanent substitute prior to her 'upgrade'. So for nearly three decades, "[s]he earned less pay and her name never appeared in the programs. She was a non-person". Osborne further adds that, "hiring women harpists is nothing new. Male harpists are rare." (MSNBC)

In disgust at Lelke being voted into the VPO, its then-chairman Werner Resel resigned and Austrian conductor Hans Swarowsky allegedly shouted at her, "Your place is in the kitchen!"

As the Los Angeles Times reported on the same day of the vote, the orchestra had declined on another occasion to "audition a highly qualified female candidate for solo viola, namely Vienna Academy-trained violist Gertrude Rossbacher who had played for 10 years in the Berlin Philharmonic, where she had been hired by its legendary conductor Herbert von Karajan. The Vienna orchestra filled the solo viola position with a male second violinist, not a regular viola player, from the Vienna State Opera."

At this point, I should probably mention that "The Vienna Philharmonic is the private band of the State Opera Orchestra, which holds the auditions. After three years, a State Opera musician is eligible for the Philharmonic. Thereafter, musicians work for both." (The Independent)

"Three women are already too many. By the time we have twenty percent, the orchestra will be ruined" (statement of a male VPO member in Austrian weekly magazine, Profil).

Of course, the question whether satisfying the notion of human rights would should be pursued for its own sake without regard for the performer's ability and skill is justified. Musicians should be awarded membership to the VPO based on merit, not on gender. I don't believe though that there are not enough equally qualified female musicians who would like to join the orchestra.

In March 2010, Francesca Jackes from the Independent wonders why "[t]here are still no women outside the string section even when women comprise 62 per cent of students at the Viennese University of Music and Performing Arts, and have done for 20 years with better graduation results than men, so why does the VPO hire 20 times more men and why is the firing rate for women higher? (another Austrian orchestra, the Bruckner, has 35 per cent women)."

Is female to male as nature is to culture?

The introduction of re-audition requirements for musicians returning from maternity leave based on the fear that the long absence would threaten the 'artistic continuity' of the VPO is one of the reported discriminatory employment practices.

What happened was that in response to the decision by then State Opera director Ioan Holender to automatically employ any female musician who wins an audition, the Philharmonic's leadership and officials of the Austrian government altered leave-of-absence regulations in order to provide a disincentive for maternity leave (as they openly admitted). These regulations state that,

"[i]f a woman takes a maternity leave of less than one year she must reaudition upon her return, but without competition from other candidates. If she is gone more than one year, her position will be advertised and she must compete against other applicants." (Osborne: A difficult birth)

In contrast, so Osborne elaborates, "men have long enjoyed special privileges as members of the orchestra. They are exempted from Austria's compulsory military service. And they are allowed a one time, one year sabbatical with no reaudition requirement. Reauditioning for 'men and women' was deemed necessary only when it became apparent women might enter the orchestra." (ibid)

Osborne further argues that simple financial considerations dispelled the expressed fear that women would take maternity leave for years as the compensation for maternity leave at the time was a tiny fraction of the 8000 $ a working woman in the orchestra would earn on top of the state opera salary. He also adds that women in prestigious positions tend to have fewer children or none at all as they often consider their career more important than extended maternity leave. Finally, if taken into consideration that in Austria, men can take paternity leave as well, it becomes obvious that the concern is unfounded.

"Children can enrich a musician enormously, give her strength, improve her expressive capabilities. One is quite quickly back at one's performance level.  It is a question of organization." - a female musician (cf. Osborne ibid)

Change of tune?

At the point of writing, there are at least five women in the Vienna Philharmonic (one harpists, two first violinists, one violist and one concert mistress). During the entire otherwise flawless 1.5 hour performance, I spotted only one.

On the bright side, I enjoyed watching the Vienna Boys Choir, an almost equally prestigious globetrotting Austrian institution that chimed in for two pieces at the New Year's Concert. Visually more ethnically diverse than the VPO, it comes closer to the kind of contemporary image I would prefer being represented by in the world. I can live with a designated boys' choir. A philharmonic orchestra however is about aspiring harmony among a diverse group of instruments far less influenced by anatomy than vocals and, by not employing qualified women, it somehow is unfaithful to its ideal. There is nothing wrong with exclusive women's orchestras or exclusive men's orchestras but as a national orchestra representing the country as a whole (and not just 49 %), the current practices are a disgrace and should be dispelled by fair auditions, i.e. 'blind' auditions where panel and auditioning person are divided by a screen to obscure the latter's identity (this is already common practice elsewhere in the world).

Then again, if in another ten years from now (and twenty years after the debate was initiated), the orchestra is still almost entirely male and if its violation of EU anti-discrimination legislation will still be endorsed by the Austrian government (which funds the VPO with millions of euros each year), perhaps it will reflect Austrian culture – and intrinsically, gender parity within it – quite accurately.

Sources for further reading:

Kurier, 15 January 1997, "US-Frauenverbände drohen mit Boykott der Philharmoniker / Massiver Druck auf Orchester, Musikerinnen aufzunehmen (US Womens' Groups Threaten Boycott of the Philharmonic / Massive Pressure on the Orchestra to Take Women Musicians)" (click HERE)

Kurier: Other related articles published in the six months preceding above article (click HERE)

William Osborne, February 1997, "A difficult birth: Re-auditioning after maternity leave in the Vienna Philharmonic" (click HERE)

Los Angeles Times, 27 February 1998, Jan Herman, "Vienna Philharmonic still under fire / A year after naming its first female member, the group continues to face criticism that it's a white male club" (click HERE)

MSNBC, 20 January 2000, Jan Herman, "Taking on the Vienna Philharmonic. Composer-activist plays the Internet for women's rights" (click HERE)

Profil, 24 February 2003, Peter Schneeberger, "Die Zwei-Prozent-Gesellschaft (The Two-Percent Society)" (click HERE)

Austrian Parliament, 7 March 2007, Reply by Federal Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer to the enquiry by Green MP Wolfgang Zinggl (click HERE)
 
Telegraph, 12 September 2009, Michael White, "Women in the Vienna Philharmonic! Shows how sensitive Austrians are these days..." (click HERE)

The Independent, 4 March 2010, Francesca Jackes, "All white on the night: Why does the world-famous Vienna Philharmonic feature so few women and ethnic minorities?" (click HERE)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra's website (click HERE)

Zap the VPO:
Old website (click HERE)

New website (click HERE)

Full list of media coverage as listed on the website of the International Alliance of Women in Music (click HERE)

Christmas in Vienna

With my wool-gloved hands I clutched the steaming mug, fingers warming to the touch while I licked the remnants of my well-spiced apple-cinnamon punch off my lips with an appreciative smile. Instead of traditional snacks such as gingerbread hearts, candied fruit, roasted almonds or Brezel, my aunt and me munched organic corn tacos and mango enchilada from the Mexican deli around the corner.

Brezel

Huddled in circles around tastefully lit punch stalls, people at the Christmas market discuss their plans for Christmas while those lining the more brightly lit stalls were ooh-ing and aah-ing at the various mostly hand-crafted items on display.

The Christmas market on Spittelberg didn't let us down this year and was as intimate as ever compared to its more commercially laid out counterparts at Rathaus (town hall) or Schönbrunn castle – both locations also highly frequented by tourists. Spittelberg is an artsy quarter behind the Museumsquartier (MQ), the eight-largest cultural complex in the world (60 000 m²), and is locally known for its shops in which artists sell their welded silver cutlery and bronze, silk paintings, mosaic and self-blown glass jewelry.

Nativity scenes and saints carved out of olive wood from Bethlehem

Klimt-inspired glassware

Hand-painted Christmas balls

Spread out on two parallel alleys on Spittelberg, the Christkindlmarkt, named after the Christkind (a mythical figure which brings the presents on Christmas eve in Austria before Coca-Cola allegedly succeeded their invented Santa Claus into saint-like status), is renown for the creativity of its vendors and I think, the most lovely of all Christmas markets in Vienna - and of those, there are plenty: Groups of stalls are spread out across town every 500m, some smaller, some larger.

Organic food gifts are also offered, in this case: Honey and wax candles

I prefer the chilled-out Christmas markets to the crowds of people buying Christmas presents in Vienna's shopping mile, Mariahilfer Straße or the large shopping malls on the outskirts of town and thus probably missed most of the subliminal Christmas prompts. So, with no visual aides to daily remind me of Christmas, no countdown calendar, minimal exposure to Christmas carols (due to refusing to immerse myself in the Christmas shopping craze), no Christmas cards in the post, not watching TV much, no cookie exchanges with the Filipino family which is not the baking type, no skiing or holiday trip abroad, mild temperatures and no snow, Christmas arrived quite suddenly for me. On top of that, it was overshadowed by the negative outcome of an internal job application I was informed of five days before Christmas - merry Christmas to me!

It is not surprising then that on Christmas eve, the desire to have some kind of 'proper' Christmas finally overpowered me. After all, it was my first Christmas in my parents' home in seven or so years and I hadn't set foot in it at all in that time. I literally made the best of what I could find and transformed a handful of green velvet hangers and some trinkets I found at home into a Christmas tree (the star on top was substituted with a yellow tissue paper), a fallen twig from one of the pine trees surrounding our house into a 'Mistletoe' and a cornflakes box and other empty gift-wrapped containers into fake presents for decoration. I made up for the usual joy of arts & crafts in the run-up to Christmas by doing some origami and teaching my aunt and my mother how to fold a crane – which involved a lot of laughter.

The improvised Christmas tree in our living room

I even created my own holiday TV programme to substitute the dreadful holiday season on Austrian TV (Sissi trilogy, Home Alone, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones and other movies everyone knows inside and out already but which are shown every year just the same) for Taiwanese movies (I can recommend Zoom Hunting, I yet have to watch The Drummer and some others), Japanese ones (Noriko's Dinner Table was a bit weird, in a creepy way), Korean ones (Old Boy! Strong narrative techniques, suspense until the last minute, impressive acting by the lead actor and the crazy long unchoreographed fighting sequence shot in one continuous shot! Next movie, once I find it: Happiness!).

On Christmas eve proper, we celebrated in my aunt's karaoke bar, shaking our booties and singing ABBA and various other classics (English and Tagalog alike). We ate pancit (noodles), chop suey and a Filipino dish of meat stewed with banana leaf strips. There also was what I shall call 'Gulasch with a twist' (an orangey Hungarian soup with pork chops and red pepper also popular in neighbouring Austria), the twist being the chili my aunt's friends had added which gave it a deep red shade.

For our second Christmas dinner, we joined an old family friend in her new home outside of Vienna near the forest, whose kids – my mischievous childhood playmates – I saw the first time in like, 15 years! It is bizarre to see two overweight kids grown into solarium-tanned, VERY built and/or liposuctioned adults hung with self-earned designer clothes and jewelry who are in a position to binge away thousands of Euros with colleagues in one night. We ate fish and a really hot, yet delicious yellow curry with (lots of!) real chili that seared my taste buds away.

On our final dinner for this year, I also had the chance to catch up with my niece who is older than me and visiting Austria with her husband and daughter. Let's hope I get to visit them in Australia one day!

 I hope you all had a merry Christmas!

Vienna's 4th Human Rights Film Festival - This Human World

In the age of giant multiplexes, it is always a pleasure to discover independent film houses where young ushers actually wish you a "wonderful projection"! Although a great fan of independent film, it is a love that sort of developed abroad and as such, it was the first time that I actually set foot in any of Vienna's indie (and actually oldest) cinemas like Topkino, Stadtkino and my personal favourite so far, the Filmhauskino which is ideally located at one of the most beautiful and intimate Christmas markets each year.

Comrade Duch [pronouced Doyk]

… is a portrait about the high-level Khmer Rouge commander who was the head of the internal security branch and in charge of torture and execution at the infamous Tuol Sleng (S-21) prison, basically the Khmer Rouge version of a concentration camp. Today, there are literally not more than 10 living survivors from that prison which is now a museum that eerily reminds me of Mauthausen.

The documentary is sort of told from the perspective of author Nic Dunlop (the author of The Lost Executioner: A Story of the Khmer Rouge) who drove from village to village in rural Cambodia to track down Duch who had been living in hiding under a different name after the regime fell. It is terrible and revolting to learn that he used to work for the ARC, the American Refugee Committee without them knowing who he really was.

The movie also shows clips from the televised UN-backed tribunal to prosecute war crimes from the genocide and also interviews with Duch's French co-defense lawyer (whom he sacked on the last day of the trial). Tearful witness accounts of Cambodian survivors who relived the worst moments in their lives, of expat witnesses whose friends were tortured for being considered 'foreign spies', and of Duch himself whose remorse is doubtful. And of course, the uproar by many people in Cambodia at the verdict which would set the now 69-year old Duch free after a reduced sentence of 19 years.

The film was a bit unevenly paced and the cutting seemed a bit disorganised to me. Since I couldn't find a trailer either, I assume this is not the final version of the movie but apart from that a quite interesting documentary.

Im Jahr des Hasen

… is a touching portrait of a bright, kind and reflective young man whose fragmented identity drifts between Cambodia (where his biological parents are from and which he visits for the first time in the course of the movie), Paris (where he grew up after he was adopted by a French couple out of a refugee camp in Thailand; he is now estranged from his adoptive mother), Finland (where he lived for a while), Oslo (where he spent several years with his girlfriend; he hates Oslo), and Vienna (where he meets his biological parents again for the first time in his twenties; they have been living here since the mid-1970s).

I definitely recommend the movie and also voted for it to get the audience prize (a cash reward of 2000€ for the winner). In the movie, there is a scene where Arnaud (the young man) watches Titanic, is caught crying on camera and is asked why. Elaborating from his actual answer, he reiterates the whole underlying question of the film about him, namely: can one be so touched by and connected to something that isn't part of one's own life?

And indeed, I thought to myself how bizarre it is that as I watch Arnaud (basically a stranger) and learn about his life, I realise I actually want to meet him in person because something about him echoes in myself, his (worse) uprootedness somehow resonating in my own deterritorialised, transnational, bicultural identity, in my own discontent in the place I am now and my own family issues.

I am not the only one. An Asian-looking woman in the audience in her early 30s perhaps with an Austrian accent who later revealed she was from Steyr (in rural Upper Austria) where she was the only foreign-looking kid in her class, agreed that she felt the movie was very accurate in displaying the identity issues and that she could relate to it very well herself.

Even more surprising was for me that the director was actually an Austrian woman who had the idea for the movie when she was on a plane back from Angkor to Vienna and befriended two Cambodians in the plane who live in Vienna and who are now her 'two best Cambodian friends'. In the cozy and insightful Q&A, she said that she initially wanted to shoot a movie about the Cambodian community in Austria, then only two people and finally it was just Arnaud. It nearly didn't happen as her sponsors preferred her to make a movie about the African or Eastern European community instead. Needless to say, I am glad she got the funding anyway and that Southeast Asians finally get represented in Austrian media – part of the reason why I tried to see many movies about Southeast Asia was to demonstrate that there is demand in the audience to see those movies and acknowledge them through royalties as much as I can (apparently, 'underpaid intern' is not a category that merits discounts for cinema tickets).

Amnesty! When they are all free


As a former volunteer for AI, it was of course very interesting for me to watch the movie. Since I had bought and read SOAS lecturer Stephen Hopgood's book about Amnesty as soon as it got out, I was a bit doubtful as to whether the film would actually tell me anything new. I didn't quite like the visual style of the movie and the narration (it seemed rather 1990s and even doomsday-like to me, like a documentary about WWII) but the historical video footage was intriguing nonetheless: Early video recordings of Amnesty's HQ back when it was still a tiny office in Covent Garden where everyone ran and assembled around the Telex (the height of technology back then) as soon as it started typing and making noise, and important markers in history where Amnesty was present: Haiti, Cairo, Pinochet.... It also showed exclusive witness accounts of the early members and volunteers that contributed to what would become the biggest human rights movement world-wide and Stephen Hopgood himself.

Great was of course that the film was followed by a discussion with the Head of Amnesty's Austria 'Section' (as the country offices around the world are referred to internally) and Manfred Nowak, Head of the University of Vienna-based Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Human Rights and former UN Special Rapporteur for Torture.

Manfred Nowak revealed that he co-founded or joined an Amnesty group in New York where he was studying at Columbia at the time. Back then, it was the Cold War and Amnesty was kind of seen or branded in the US as a Communist organisation. Therefore, most meetings and activities took place in sort of Marxist underground restaurants.

A second interesting fact I learned was that he used to call up the International Secretariat (IS) a lot when he was preparing a fact-finding mission in times when he was still Rapporteur and he was always amazed how they always compiled a very accurate list, sometimes within two hours (!) and not just any material they had but a list specifically tailored to him: Prisons or other places which he should be looking at, names of people who were missing/potentially disappeared/held incommunicado. Given that I happened to defend Amnesty's standards of research earlier this week, it was immensely gratifying to have someone like him acknowledge and praise that.

Some of the other interesting comments and questions from the audience revolved around the dangers of raising awareness (a young Iranian girl who grew up in Austria and was doing Facebook and leaflet campaigning and got into quite a bit of trouble when she visited family in Iran last time; some of her family in Iran who had been active of their own accords had been detained for days, weeks even), an elderly yet lively guy who wanted to know more about Amnesty's ways of navigating neutrality when say, commenting on Israel and Palestine. He referred to criticism against Israel often being dismissed as 'anti-Semitist', a woman in her thirties who asked about global population growth, poverty, climate change and the universal applicability of human rights. Strangely, she also conceived Amnesty as a US-American (!) organisation for some reason ("Freedom und so... das scheint mir ein amerikanisches Konzept" were here words, I believe). Finally, there was a guy who works in child protection for the UN and basically came to harass Nowak about omitting something in a report on drugs the latter wrote.

Halaw (Ways of the Sea)

Cinemalaya 2010 Winner for Best Director, Best Actor, Best Film and Best Editing and winner of several other awards, including Special Mention at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2011.

It is not everyday that a native movie about the Philippines is screened in Vienna (or any non-Asian film festival for that matter) or that my mother displays interest for movies off the popular Filino mainstream script of boy meets girl or the other popular genre featuring notions of reconciliation and forgiveness between the wayward sheep in the family and its elders.

Several characters are literally in the same boat when they pay smugglers to take them from the Southern (predominantly Muslim) Philippines to Malaysia bearing hopes for a better life abroad. A brother and his child sister who hope to reunite with their mother; an old woman; a female 'commuter' in high heels, suggestive clothes, gold jewellry and Louis Vuitton bag and a young woman who gets raped by one of the smugglers in the middle of nowhere on one of the islets along the way, to the fury of the other "What where you thinking?? You have now reduced her value!". You also see some of the common persuasion tactics to trick young girls into taking the trip which often ends in forced prostitution: Images of prosperity ("There are so many jobs in Malaysia! You're gonna get a job INSTANTLY once you arrive and can send money to your family in the Philippines!"), promising a more exciting life ("Here, you're gonna get married, have children, live in your family's house. You will grow maize and sweet potatoes and will sell that at the market every day for the rest of your life. Do you really want that?"), talking them into guilt ("Oh my, you changed your mind? The guy who was so generous and helped you pay for your trip will be angry. You're putting me in a tough spot. What am I supposed to tell him?"). The dynamics among the smugglers are also explored to some extent.

The joy of introducing my mother to another visual angle to explore her country and (sort of) my own, was a bit dampened by the fact that the screening took place at the Schikaneder which revealed itself as a dingy student bar with equally decadent clientele, the kind of which I hadn't seen in a long time. I was slightly amused yet also concerned to scare my mother off future indie film screenings by this unlucky first experience. My mother took it all with grace at first and remarked that this place looked like the kind of shady bar in the Philippines where people met for sex and that the toilet like where people exchange drugs. Once we entered the cinema, she commented loudly that the cinema smelled awful and the carpet looked all dirty. If they ever cleaned the place at all?! While I silently wished for her to relax and take it with humour instead of making a scene, she started itching all over and said that there probably were bugs and cockroaches everywhere and not even the worst Filipino cinema were that infested. She couldn't sit still and for the first 30 minutes just shook herself or shuffled with her feet. Although the place didn't look exactly like satisfying health and safety standards to me either, I thought she was overdoing it until I indeed spotted a fruit fly on her collar (I didn't tell her though). She again associated the filth with "you know, the kind of cinema where people have sex!" As if on cue, a girl in front of us jumped onto her boyfriend's lap as soon as the lights went back on after the screening and started making out with him as if it was the most natural thing in the world to have foreplay in public in front of people who could be your parents. I can only imagine what went through my mother's mind.

Aung Sang Suu Kyi – Lady of No Fear

Finally, the above is a really really promising trailer for a documentary about Burma's recently (re-)released leader. It features interviews with her, her friends from Oxford, footage from her husband and I hope, interviews with people who used to know her from her SOAS days (I've heard she used to have the reputation of being an 'ice queen'). Sadly, I was ill but I hope to get my hands on a DVD. By the way, there is a very active Facebook group for the movie.

UNHCR Director of International Protection Volker Türk in Vienna

Volker Türk

One of the great things of being an intern is that you are always in the loop about exciting events. In this case, I was over the moon when I read that Volker Türk, incumbent Director of International Protection for UNHCR who used to represent UNHCR in Malaysia before he moved to Geneva, was stopping by in his native Austria to deliver a talk at the local UN Association reflecting on the 60 years of the Geneva Convention. True, the topic is fairly vague and a 'safe' structured stub for kicking off the Q&A after. After all, there is the whole North Africa situation to talk about, the Australia-Malaysia deal* or at least the context of the Geneva Convention in Austrian and/or European law. I was therefore a bit disappointed, if not surprised as anyone who has read a lot on UNHCR's balancing act in global politics can confirm it is in line with UNHCR's typical diplomatic communication policy towards the public (he got a bit criticism from some people in the audience for that). 

Nevertheless, the debate on whether the '51 Convention is still up to date (it was drafted with the Holocaust and Communist defectors in mind) and appropriate for contemporary issues (climate change, internal displacement, statelessness, persecution because of sexual orientation or gender identity) is one that probably should be kept alive even if some scholars argue that revisiting the 1951 Convention would more likely be used as an opportunity to create a stricter migration regime rather than an impetus to adapt the Convention for the 21^st century.

The Q&A therefore was quite a lively exchange with some candid questions (the answers to which I must withhold due to the Chatham House Rules) from an audience that clearly encompassed practitioners who work in the field of asylum counselling and campaigning, students, staff from various multilateral organisations and the Austrian Press Agency (APA).

The audience at the UNA in Vienna

For weeks I had marked the date in my diary. I was even more excited to learn that Volker Türk (who by the way is from the state of Upper Austria) was not only going to talk about 'refugees' in the 'conventional' sense but would also be joining a panel on internal displacement at the Diplomatic Academy with no-one less than Walter Kälin himself!!! I must be a real geek if neither of the two names mean anything to you! 

From left to right: Kälin, Tichy-Fisslberger, Türk, Fanizadeh (Vienna Institute of International Dialogue and Cooperation, moderator) and Beyerlin

Since one of my interests in migration is the protection gap in internal displacement, meeting Walter Kälin is like meeting the Stephen Hawking of internal displacement discourse: He is a renowned Swiss legal scholar with a Doctor of Law from the University of Bern and a LL.M from Harvard Law School who has published extensively on human rights and any law regarding displacement. From 2004 to 2010, he has served as Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons. In the 'who's who' of internal displacement, he's right up there with Francis Deng (his predecessor) and Roberta Cohen (Deng's No. 2) as well as Catherine Phuong (from the University of Newcastle) and Thomas G. Weiss (from the City University of New York). He also used to consult for the UN in relation to human rights mechanisms in Indonesia in 2000 and in East Timor 2001-2002 AND, most importantly, as its chair he was an integral part of the group of legal experts who drafted the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement in Vienna, at the invitation of the Austrian government, in 1998. 

 

Walter Kälin

The talk on Internal Displacement: Nearly 30m IDPS need protection event was co-hosted by UNHCR Austria, the Austrian Ministry of European and International Affairs and the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna. According to their official figures, UNHCR estimates that there are 27.5m people internally displaced of which they say they protect some 15m. Around 16% of their annual budget is dedicated to assisting internally displaced people. 

Click on the image to enlarge

 

Kälin elaborated on possible legal protection mechanisms for IDPs based on human rights and regional instruments but also believes that a special international convention for IDPs (who are not covered by the 1951 Geneva Convention) is politically difficult to bring into being. He explained that in addition to the challenges mentioned by the other panellists, it is often hard to actually reach the dispersed IDPs in hiding when they mistake the sound of the approaching four-wheel drives of the UN jeeps for hostile militant groups that sends them running into hiding wherefrom they need to be convinced that there is no danger.

Beyerlin, the third expert on the panel, is another legal scholar with special expertise in (public) international law and environmental law, based at the University of Heidelberg (Germany) who elaborated on 'climate refugees' and those displaced through natural disasters. According to his view, the lack of consensus in defining different kinds of internal displacement in discourse is an impediment to taking effective action for the protection of internally displaced people. 

 

The final member of the panel was Ambassador Elisabeth Tichy-Fisslberger, head of the legal and consular department at the Ministry of European and International Affairs and national coordinator for the fight against human trafficking, who by now I have seen chair at nearly event there is on forced migration in Austria. Slowly but steadily, I am getting an overview of the people and organisations involved in the Austrian migration context!

*watch his interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on 25 July 2011 on the deal between the governments of Australia and Malaysia here.

Christmas Wish List 2011

Since you all know that I am a great fan of indie movies and documentaries, I decided to theme this year's requested wish list around five DVDs you would really make me happy with!


Please vote for me (2007)

"Wuhan is a city about the size of London located in central China. It is here that director Weijun Chen has conducted an experiment in democracy. A Grade 3 class at Evergreen Primary School has their first encounter with democracy by holding an election to select a Class Monitor. Eight-year-olds compete against each other for the coveted position, abetted and egged on by teachers and doting parents. Elections in China take place only within the Communist Party, but recently millions of Chinese voted in their version of Pop Idol. The purpose of Weijun Chen's experiment is to determine how democracy would be received if it came to China."

- From the official website.

The movie won numerous awards and it is amusing, yet slightly disconcerting that voter manipulation is alive and well among these eight-year-olds!


Strangers No More (2010)
Academy Award Winner for Best Documentary Short! I already blogged about the moving movie in my post on "Winning Documentaries"!

Sergio Vieira De Mello - En Route to Baghdad (2004)
Award-winning documentary about the charismatic UN diplomat.

Well-Founded Fear (2007)
Documentary about the asylum procedure in the US that was in the Sundance Official Selection and is also shown to Immigration Officers in training.

Shake Hands with the Devil (2007)
Acclaimed feature film about the failure of the UN or Western powers to act in Rwanda with Roy Dupuis (the Canadian actor from the TV-series Nikita) in the leading role as General Roméo Dallaire. Not to be confused with the 2004 documentary by the same name.

You'll probably be delighted to hear that nearly all are already available on Amazon. "Strangers no more" has not been released on DVD yet but will be screened on HBO for the first time in TV on 5 December 2011!

The guidelines are the same as last year: To let others know that you are already onto one item, post an anonymous comment or if you want to opt for surprise, post nothing at all!