Cherchez la femme...
San Diego is home to a lot of neat stuff, and one of them is the San Diego Women's Film Festival. Run by the imaginative and able Jennifer Hsu and Renee Herrell, this year's festival promises an eccletic and global look at work by women filmmakers.
Zazou's picks:
As part of the Motherlode Program-
Tes cheveux noirs Ihsan/Your black hair, Ihsan
Tala Hadid, Morocco/USA, 14 min
A young man who has lived most of his life in Europe, returns to Morocco and confronts the memory of his mother whom he lost at an early age.
This is Hadid's first short and has won recognition from festivals in Europe, Morocco, and the US.
This is Hadid's first short and has won recognition from festivals in Europe, Morocco, and the US.
Motherlode shows at the Centro Cultural de la Raza(*) in Balboa Park at 2 pm.
like 20 impossiblesAnneMarie Jacir, USA/Palestine, 17 min.
The incomparable Annemarie Jacir is represented by her award-wnning film, like 20 impossibles, a wry yet penetrating look at how Israeli checkpoints have fragmented Palestinian society. When a Palestinian film crew averts a closed checkpoint by taking a remote side road, the political landscape unravels, and the passengers are slowly taken apart by the mundane brutality of military occupation. Both a visual poem and a narrative, like twenty impossibles wryly questions artistic responsibility and the politics of filmmaking, while speaking to the fragmentation of a people.
The incomparable Annemarie Jacir is represented by her award-wnning film, like 20 impossibles, a wry yet penetrating look at how Israeli checkpoints have fragmented Palestinian society. When a Palestinian film crew averts a closed checkpoint by taking a remote side road, the political landscape unravels, and the passengers are slowly taken apart by the mundane brutality of military occupation. Both a visual poem and a narrative, like twenty impossibles wryly questions artistic responsibility and the politics of filmmaking, while speaking to the fragmentation of a people.
Checkpoints shows at the Museum of Photography in Balboa Park on Sunday at 1 pm. There will also be a panel discussion with several filmmakers.
Palabra de Mujer: A Woman's Word Silvia Garcia Ponzoda, 52 min
Janata Bennuna is Moroccan; Hanan Al Shaykh, Lebanese and Nawal Al Saadawi, Egyptian. The three of them write in their mother tongue, the Arabic language, and they are all committed intellectuals who show through their books the complexity of the social reality in the Arab world.
All three are brilliant, often controversial writers in the Middle East. Of the three, only Al Shaykh and Al Saadawi are translated into English. Bennuna seems to be mostly translated into Spanish.
Palabra de mujer is showing as part of the Crafts-Fem-Ship program on Sunday at 5:30 pm at the Museum of Photographic Arts.
(* I am not going to the screenings at the Centro Cultural de la Raza because I am part of the Save Our Centro Coalition (SOCC) which is negotiating with the current adminstration of the Centro on behalf of various Chicano artists and others, including the founders and original curators of the Centro who feel that the current adminsitration has shut out much of the local Chicano arts community, aligned themselves with questionable sponors such as the independent military contractor SAIC, and generally not used the Centro for its original purpose as a community and Chicano-centered artspace.
That said, I hope you support the SDWFF, but please be aware of the controversy surrounding the Centro.)
That said, I hope you support the SDWFF, but please be aware of the controversy surrounding the Centro.)
