April 29 & May 3: “American Fugitive”
Sun Apr 29 12:00pm WTTS Screening Room (Landmark)
Thur May 3 2:00pm WTTS Screening Room (Landmark)
RSVP info: http://indyfilmfest.org/tickets.html
“American Fugitive: The Truth about Hassan,” may be one of the most intriguing – and for Americans – controversial films of the festival. “I went to his door as a postman…and when he came to the door for a signature, I shot him. Simple.” Or is it? The man behind this straightforward comment (as well as the trigger) is Hassan Abdulrahman, formerly David Belfield, a black nationalist, Muslim convert and the titular American fugitive of this riveting documentary. On the morning of July 22, 1980, Belfield shot and killed Ali Akbar Tabbatabi, the former press attache for the deposed Shah of Iran at his home in suburban
New Jersey. After absconding to
Canada and boarding a plane to
Geneva, Belfield fled to
Tehran and transformed himself into Abdulrahman. His case might have been forgetten were it not for the unexpected international success of Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s fiction film
Kandahar, which features Hassan in a supporting role.
Abdulrahman / Belfield’s appearance in the film provoked a renewed interest in the events surrounding the Iranian Hostage crisis of the late-1970s. And it opened more than a few old wounds. But it is simply the latest twist in one man’s crooked path that leads from the 1968 riots in Washington DC through the “October Surprise” and Iran/Contra scandals of the 1980s up to the terrorist attacks on the
World
Trade
Center and beyond. When asked why he agreed to appear in this documentary, Abdulrahman claims he doesn’t know. “There is no single truth,” he says. Audiences will no doubt agree. But they will certain find the myriad truths evident in American Fugitive fascinating.
If you like this film… You might like “Son of Man,” a South African flick with themes of dissidence.
You should know before you go…Look at this TIME article from 2001 discussing Belfield’s reemergence as an actor in an Iranian film. Check out a synopsis of film.
For more information after the film, read discussion of activism in Muslim America.
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