Films focus-Muslim women

A fresh focus on Muslim women
New film festival seeks to challenge old stereotypes
By Leslie Brokaw
April 13, 2008

Aiming to present a "stereotype-defying tour of the Muslim world's diversity and complexity," the festival says it's chosen movies with central characters who are especially "think-different women" - people who challenge extremism and "offer rarely heard iconoclastic voices."

Irshad Manji is one of those voices. "Faith Without Fear," which opens the festival tomorrow at 6:30 p.m. in the Sargent Building at Boston University, is a look by Manji - journalist, director of the Moral Courage Project at New York University, and author of the 2004 bestseller "The Trouble With Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith" - at the risks and promises of having a conversation about reform.

"A couple of years after the family settled down, my dad discovered free baby-sitting services at Rose of Sharon Baptist Church," writes Manji, who immigrated as a child from Uganda to Canada in 1972, in her book. As her mom went out to sell Avon door-to-door, Manji settled into Bible study classes and exhibited enough curiosity to win the Most Promising Christian of the Year Award.

Thus began a lifetime of embracing, questioning, and challenging.

Raquel Evita Saraswati from Manji's Project Ijtihad, an initiative to "help build the world's most inclusive network of reform-minded Muslims and non-Muslim allies," will lead a discussion after the movie.

Other films include "Mrs. President: Women and Political Leadership in Iran," about six of the 47 Iranian women who registered as candidates for Iranian president in 2001 and were disqualified by ruling clerics. That film's producer, Shahla Haeri, is director of Boston University's Women's Studies Program and will speak after the Thursday 6:30 p.m. screening at BU.

"Shadya" is a profile of 17-year-old Shadya Zoabi: Muslim Arab, Israeli, feminist, soon-to-be-wife - and world champion in karate. It plays Wednesday. Peabody award-winning filmmaker Paul Freedman's "Sand and Sorrow" is a documentary about Darfur refugees and the Displaced Persons camps, and includes commentary from New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, with narration by George Clooney. It plays on Tuesday.

Festival curator Mohammed Harba is a 27-year-old filmmaker from Iraq now living in Massachusetts. Five years ago, he partnered with Seth Moulton, a US Marine lieutenant from Massachusetts, on a news show for Iraqi television called "Moulton and Mohammed" about the life in that country after the US-invasion. Both men became well known in Iraq for their presentation of both the good and the bad happening in the country.

The festival is presented by the American Islamic Congress in conjunction with the Women's Studies Program at Boston University, the Pathways Interfaith Initiative at Tufts University, the Global Film Initiative, and Americans for Informed Democracy. A shorter version of the program is running concurrently in Washington, D.C.

Screenings take place on seven evenings between tomorrow and April 30, on the campuses of Boston University, Tufts University, and Endicott College. The schedule is online at muslimfilm.org, or call 617-266-0080 for more information.

more stories like thisCONVERSATIONS WITH: Journalist and director Polly Devlin will be at the Harvard Film Archive tonight at 7 with her 1990 one-hour work "The Daisy Chain," a documentary about a boarding school. The project erupted into a tempest for Devlin when a subject withdrew her cooperation.

"Amid the accusations of manipulation and betrayal, the viewer can never be certain of the truth, never sure when the protagonists are performing for the camera and when they are genuinely its victims," Devlin says in a statement provided by the archive.

"Just before the screening the then-director of [my] film school refused to allow it to be shown," she says. "I was not allowed to graduate." Devlin says that she withdrew the film and has not shown it for nearly 20 years.

Jennifer Fox brings her three-hour work "Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman" to the MFA this week. The five-year project is a document of Fox's love life and those of women in 17 countries, asking questions such as whether choice equals happiness and what sexual freedom really means. It will be presented in two parts: the first half on Thursday at 7 p.m. and Saturday at 2:30 p.m., and the second half on Friday at 8 p.m. and Saturday at 7 p.m. Fox will be present at the Thursday and Friday shows.

SCREENINGS OF NOTE: The Belmont World Film series closes tonight with the New England premiere of "Irina Palm," which premiered at last year's Berlin Film Festival and stars Marianne Faithfull. That's at 7:30 p.m. at the Studio Cinema in Belmont (617-484-3980 and belmontworldfilm.org).

"Then She Found Me," starring Helen Hunt as a teacher getting over a separation from her husband (Matthew Broderick) by dating a student's parent (Colin Firth), gets a pre-release screening by the Boston Jewish Film Festival at the West Newton Cinema on Thursday at 7 p.m. Northampton-based Elinor Lipman, who wrote the book on which the movie is based, will be at the show (617-244-9899 and bjff.org).

Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com.
http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2008/04/13/a_fresh_focus_on_muslim_women/