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Monday, 12 August, 2002, 14:46 GMT 15:46 UK
'Suicide bomber' cartoon airs at festival
![]() Promise Land is unlikely to get a Middle East screening
An animated film deemed too controversial to be shown in the Middle East is to be screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
Israeli director Gili Dolev's film Promise Land features a Palestinian suicide bomber rapping on a bus about the rewards that await him in heaven.
Other vignettes within the 15-minute film include Eitan, a racist thug who attacks elderly Arabs, and Gaddi, an Israeli soldier who shrugs his soldiers when a child is killed in crossfire. The film, with a number of voices recorded by British comedian Omid Djalili, is considered too controversial to show in the Middle East, but is being exhibited at festivals in the West. Morality
He told the Sunday Herald newspaper: "I know films don't change the world and I know no-one is willing to listen both in Palestine and Israel. "It might be shown in Israel or Palestine one day when everything calms down." Meanwhile, bestselling author Philip Pullman has insisted novels must discuss morality or they will slip into the "trivial and worthless", as the Edinburgh book festival starts. His comments came as fellow author and speaker Fay Weldon dismissed the "chick lit" genre as "done out" and "instantly forgettable" in a serious start to the literary festival.
Atheist Pullman said English novels had veered away from discussions of morality, death and religion. Zeitgeist "Fantasy and fiction in general is failing to do what it might be doing," he was reported as saying in The Guardian. "It has unlimited potential to explore all sorts of metaphysical and moral questions, but it is not doing that. "You can't leave morality out unless your work is so stupid and trivial, and so worthless that no-one would want to read it anyway."
Weldon also contributed to the serious tone of the start to the book festival by telling her audience that "chick lit" books had had their time.
Helen Fielding's best-seller Bridget Jones' Diary is credited with starting a wave of books from young female authors, claiming to portray the relationships and philosophy of modern women. Natural growth "Bridget Jones's Diary was one of a kind. What's followed has been more calculated and doesn't spring from the same zeitgeist," said Weldon. "Most of them are instantly forgettable but perfectly pleasant to read, like magazine articles. "By their very nature they are anonymous because there is nothing there to grab you. In a way they're not a natural literary growth."
At the rest of the festival, bad weather dramatically reduced attendance at Edinburgh's Fringe Sunday, a free event featuring a selection of acts from around the Fringe. The torrential downpour helped reduce attendance to an estimated 40,000, with most cramming themselves inside comedy, dance and other performance marquees to avoid the rain. This was a major drop from the previous year's event, held in brilliant sunshine, which organisers said had attracted 150,000.
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