Women's Voices Now Film Festival
Jan. 4th, 2011 07:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ajnabiehWhy, yes, I am still here!
As you can guess by the fact that I made precisely zero posts between the first week of November and the first week of January, it was a bit of a mad dash to the end of the semester. Much of that busyness was productive. I served on a search committee making three senior hires in my field, and we had all the job talks in five weeks. That was followed by a full-barrelled attempt to finish a draft of my last dissertation chapter before I got final papers to grade, and then a total hard drive failure (Extended AppleCare: It works, bitches), and then the arrival of all those papers, timed perfectly to coincide with the first Christmas where my kid really understood what was going on. And then what happened? Oh, yeah, a blizzard. That.
So, it was a good semester, but a chaotic one. I'll admit, I'm very much looking forward to this semester "off," by which I mean that I have no teaching (or committee) responsibilities, and just four solid months to revise my dissertation and schedule a defense. It sounds blissful, and I'll probably do a post at some point soon about the process of planning for such a thing, which I'm thinking about a lot right now.
Before we get there, however, I wanted to share a cool project that I discovered with my students this semester. Women's Voices Now is a new international feminist group, in the process of organizing a film festival called Women’s Voices from the Muslim World, to be held in Los Angeles in March. All the films were submitted online and are available for viewing. While some of the messaging around the festival and the project made bitter-old-me roll my eyes, many of the films were fascinating, moving, and really engaging. We spent about half a class in my Gender and Politics in the Middle East class watching them and talking about them, and I found that it was a useful exercise for the students, one that got them involved in the material.
Another thing about this festival is that they're choosing (in part, I think) who to bring to LA based on the votes by viewers through the site. I'm enthusiastic about getting more viewers involved in the process, even if this does inject a tiny bit of popularity-contest into the mix.
Not all the videos we watched in class are still on the site; I think that low-ranking films must be getting eliminated. (At least one of the films I wanted to post was awful, so this is at least my hope.) But here are five short films from the Middle East which I think are worth watching.
(Caveat: I literally haven't watched any of the ones from outside the Middle East world, or any of the ones recently posted; see note above about my semester. If you're looking for more about the festival, or more recs, check out Muslimah Media Watch's coverage; they're now a sponsor of the festival, and posted a whole bunch of videos with discussions. Or if you've got favorites, feel free to rec in the comments! I do want to watch more of them.)
Sittana
This is my tied for my favorite of the documentary options. It's the story of a Sudanese woman, in her eighties, and her history in political and artistic life in Sudan and the US. I like two things about this one: first, Sittana is awesome, and reminds me of all the incredible older women I've ever encountered in my life and family. (My great-aunt, who passed away a year ago, sprang to mind repeatedly.) Watching Sittana's granddaughters talk about her, I also saw myself; of a different generation, and in possession of different goals and purposes, but profoundly respectful of everything their elders fought to achieve. Second, I really love the way language works in this. The subtitles are not so good in this one--I hope they get retranslated and edited before it makes it to the LA festival!--but I love the way English and Arabic interweave for both Sittana and her granddaughters. (Er, I don't know if that'll be apparent to non-Arabic speakers, but it jumped out at me.)
The Unveiled
This is the other of my favorite documentaries (though it's actually in the "student" division). It's a series of interviews with men and women in Qatar about the wearing of the niqab (face covering) and hijab (head covering). The men they interview are both "Islamic scholars," and neither is ethnically Qatari (I'm guessing the one is Sudanese by accent, and the other Pakistani, but I'm not necessarily right on this). There are some politics here that I'm not fully prepared to figure out, but it's worth flagging. The women are all Qatari, and very much a mix; there's one who wears hijab, one who wears niqab, and one who doesn't cover at all in the video (though she talks about covering her hair elsewhere). I like that the women are given the majority of the room to talk; I also like that the niqabi is given a lot of space to talk about her reasons, but that the voices of the two women who don't wear niqab are given equal time. I also kind of like that the woman who is most against the niqab is the hijabi!
(Note: I should have been proper and used "muhajjaba" and "munaqqaba" in this post, but it's so standard in American-Muslim usage to say "hijabi" and "niqabi" that I did it by instinct.)
It is Written
And this is my favorite of the non-narrative films! One of my students suggested it while we were watching the films in class, and we all fell instantly in love. In it, a female dancer in a modified chador performs a soft-shoe ballet dance, while cradling a pomegranate. The ballet is beautiful; I particularly love the way the dancer's lines are both preserved and complicated by her costuming. (Why, yes, I do live with a former professional ballet dancer, why do you ask?) We talked a lot, while we watched the dancing, about the pomegranate, and what it means. My two thoughts where this: first, pomegranates as symbolic of Iranian identity and cuisine, particularly in diaspora. (The film is from the Netherlands.) Second, the pomegranate as signifying Eve, the precious yet dangerous fruit. Now, in the Qur'anic version of the story, Eve does not eat the forbidden fruit, and is not responsible for the Fall; however, again, this is a diasporic project, so it's possible that crept over. One of my students summarized the dance as, "I has a pomegranate! OH NOES, they be taking my pomegranate!" (I encourage a casual demeanor in class.) But I think the fact that someone else picks up the fallen fruit at the end is more hopeful: the dropped pomegranate continues on, and is not lost.
The Nonsense
This is a four channel video with no (or ambient) sound. In one panel, a woman walks with a long stick; in another, two young women perform mirrored actions on either side of a picture frame; in a third, the same young women scoop sand into water bottles, and then pour it over their (covered) heads; in the last, we see the shadow of the woman with the stick. The videos play on loops, not perfectly synced, throughout the two minute video. This one reminds me of the film installation show I took my brother to at MoMA a bunch of years back. It's fascinating, and beautiful. I am not a Serious Art Person, but so I don't have much to say about What It All Means, but I think beautiful things stand on their own. (This is another one where the English text could benefit seriously from some editing by a native English speaker, but I think the meaning is easily convayed. Bonus points for Chomsky reference.
Laila and the Garbage Man
This is a brief story about a young adolescent girl, and the way that a random encounter with the garbage man on her street makes her feel like a person, like she exists. I didn't show this one to my students, so I don't have their take on it. I think it's a bit over-the-top and melodramatic, but I still am drawn to it; it has a sweetness that I appreciate, and Laila's teen angst is very convincing. I also like that it's not precisely explained why she feels so alienated from life; it's not, say, that she's missing a father figure, and therefore relies on the garbage man for that role, or something that obvious. It's just that she needs to feel seen, and the garbage man sees her. Like I said: sweet.
As you can guess by the fact that I made precisely zero posts between the first week of November and the first week of January, it was a bit of a mad dash to the end of the semester. Much of that busyness was productive. I served on a search committee making three senior hires in my field, and we had all the job talks in five weeks. That was followed by a full-barrelled attempt to finish a draft of my last dissertation chapter before I got final papers to grade, and then a total hard drive failure (Extended AppleCare: It works, bitches), and then the arrival of all those papers, timed perfectly to coincide with the first Christmas where my kid really understood what was going on. And then what happened? Oh, yeah, a blizzard. That.
So, it was a good semester, but a chaotic one. I'll admit, I'm very much looking forward to this semester "off," by which I mean that I have no teaching (or committee) responsibilities, and just four solid months to revise my dissertation and schedule a defense. It sounds blissful, and I'll probably do a post at some point soon about the process of planning for such a thing, which I'm thinking about a lot right now.
Before we get there, however, I wanted to share a cool project that I discovered with my students this semester. Women's Voices Now is a new international feminist group, in the process of organizing a film festival called Women’s Voices from the Muslim World, to be held in Los Angeles in March. All the films were submitted online and are available for viewing. While some of the messaging around the festival and the project made bitter-old-me roll my eyes, many of the films were fascinating, moving, and really engaging. We spent about half a class in my Gender and Politics in the Middle East class watching them and talking about them, and I found that it was a useful exercise for the students, one that got them involved in the material.
Another thing about this festival is that they're choosing (in part, I think) who to bring to LA based on the votes by viewers through the site. I'm enthusiastic about getting more viewers involved in the process, even if this does inject a tiny bit of popularity-contest into the mix.
Not all the videos we watched in class are still on the site; I think that low-ranking films must be getting eliminated. (At least one of the films I wanted to post was awful, so this is at least my hope.) But here are five short films from the Middle East which I think are worth watching.
(Caveat: I literally haven't watched any of the ones from outside the Middle East world, or any of the ones recently posted; see note above about my semester. If you're looking for more about the festival, or more recs, check out Muslimah Media Watch's coverage; they're now a sponsor of the festival, and posted a whole bunch of videos with discussions. Or if you've got favorites, feel free to rec in the comments! I do want to watch more of them.)
Sittana
This is my tied for my favorite of the documentary options. It's the story of a Sudanese woman, in her eighties, and her history in political and artistic life in Sudan and the US. I like two things about this one: first, Sittana is awesome, and reminds me of all the incredible older women I've ever encountered in my life and family. (My great-aunt, who passed away a year ago, sprang to mind repeatedly.) Watching Sittana's granddaughters talk about her, I also saw myself; of a different generation, and in possession of different goals and purposes, but profoundly respectful of everything their elders fought to achieve. Second, I really love the way language works in this. The subtitles are not so good in this one--I hope they get retranslated and edited before it makes it to the LA festival!--but I love the way English and Arabic interweave for both Sittana and her granddaughters. (Er, I don't know if that'll be apparent to non-Arabic speakers, but it jumped out at me.)
The Unveiled
This is the other of my favorite documentaries (though it's actually in the "student" division). It's a series of interviews with men and women in Qatar about the wearing of the niqab (face covering) and hijab (head covering). The men they interview are both "Islamic scholars," and neither is ethnically Qatari (I'm guessing the one is Sudanese by accent, and the other Pakistani, but I'm not necessarily right on this). There are some politics here that I'm not fully prepared to figure out, but it's worth flagging. The women are all Qatari, and very much a mix; there's one who wears hijab, one who wears niqab, and one who doesn't cover at all in the video (though she talks about covering her hair elsewhere). I like that the women are given the majority of the room to talk; I also like that the niqabi is given a lot of space to talk about her reasons, but that the voices of the two women who don't wear niqab are given equal time. I also kind of like that the woman who is most against the niqab is the hijabi!
(Note: I should have been proper and used "muhajjaba" and "munaqqaba" in this post, but it's so standard in American-Muslim usage to say "hijabi" and "niqabi" that I did it by instinct.)
It is Written
And this is my favorite of the non-narrative films! One of my students suggested it while we were watching the films in class, and we all fell instantly in love. In it, a female dancer in a modified chador performs a soft-shoe ballet dance, while cradling a pomegranate. The ballet is beautiful; I particularly love the way the dancer's lines are both preserved and complicated by her costuming. (Why, yes, I do live with a former professional ballet dancer, why do you ask?) We talked a lot, while we watched the dancing, about the pomegranate, and what it means. My two thoughts where this: first, pomegranates as symbolic of Iranian identity and cuisine, particularly in diaspora. (The film is from the Netherlands.) Second, the pomegranate as signifying Eve, the precious yet dangerous fruit. Now, in the Qur'anic version of the story, Eve does not eat the forbidden fruit, and is not responsible for the Fall; however, again, this is a diasporic project, so it's possible that crept over. One of my students summarized the dance as, "I has a pomegranate! OH NOES, they be taking my pomegranate!" (I encourage a casual demeanor in class.) But I think the fact that someone else picks up the fallen fruit at the end is more hopeful: the dropped pomegranate continues on, and is not lost.
The Nonsense
This is a four channel video with no (or ambient) sound. In one panel, a woman walks with a long stick; in another, two young women perform mirrored actions on either side of a picture frame; in a third, the same young women scoop sand into water bottles, and then pour it over their (covered) heads; in the last, we see the shadow of the woman with the stick. The videos play on loops, not perfectly synced, throughout the two minute video. This one reminds me of the film installation show I took my brother to at MoMA a bunch of years back. It's fascinating, and beautiful. I am not a Serious Art Person, but so I don't have much to say about What It All Means, but I think beautiful things stand on their own. (This is another one where the English text could benefit seriously from some editing by a native English speaker, but I think the meaning is easily convayed. Bonus points for Chomsky reference.
Laila and the Garbage Man
This is a brief story about a young adolescent girl, and the way that a random encounter with the garbage man on her street makes her feel like a person, like she exists. I didn't show this one to my students, so I don't have their take on it. I think it's a bit over-the-top and melodramatic, but I still am drawn to it; it has a sweetness that I appreciate, and Laila's teen angst is very convincing. I also like that it's not precisely explained why she feels so alienated from life; it's not, say, that she's missing a father figure, and therefore relies on the garbage man for that role, or something that obvious. It's just that she needs to feel seen, and the garbage man sees her. Like I said: sweet.
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-05 01:27 am (UTC)-J
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-05 09:14 pm (UTC)I wish you the best of luck with the final revisions and defense planning. If you want any commiseration or, as the case may be, schadenfreude, feel free to read my archives from the first half of 2010 to see what I went through.
Dr. Koshary