Human Rights – Bitch Flicks

‘Hooligan Sparrow’ Touches on Topics of Fame and Notoriety in Activism

The documentary, from director Nanfu Wang, follows Chinese activist Ye Haiyan (aka Hooligan Sparrow) as she protests the lack of prosecution in a child sexual abuse case and suffers retaliatory harassment, surveillance, and imprisonment. … ‘Hooligan Sparrow’ is, both intentionally and unintentionally, about the legends that activists build for themselves.

Written by Katherine Murray. | Hooligan Sparrow is screening at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival.

[Trigger warning: discussion of rape and sexual assault]

There’s a lot going on in Hooligan Sparrow. The documentary, from director Nanfu Wang, follows Chinese activist Ye Haiyan (aka Hooligan Sparrow) as she protests the lack of prosecution in a child sexual abuse case and suffers retaliatory harassment, surveillance, and imprisonment. The film is full of scenes where strangers who may be plain-clothes police officers threaten to break Wang’s camera, or where the footage shows her running feet, the ground, or the stairs while people shout threatening things in the background. She breathlessly explains to us that she’s had to go into hiding, that she can’t use any form of travel requiring an ID or credit card and that her friends have warned her that the police are asking questions about her.

The issues that Sparrow and her associates (including lawyer Wang Yu, who has been indefinitely detained as of the film’s release), protest are important and well-explained. Sparrow first came to prominence when she began protesting the criminalization of sex work through a stunt where she publically declared that she would prostitute herself for free. In the film, she protests a high-profile sexual abuse case, in which a school principal allegedly abducted several of his female students and forced them to have sex with government officials. After first denying that any sex took place, the defence begins to argue that the girls accepted money in exchange for sex, which would reduce the charge to child prostitution rather than rape, and carry a much lighter sentence. Sparrow and Yu explain that this is a common tactic in Chinese courts – to cover up rape by claiming it was prostitution instead.

Although their cause is just, Sparrow and Wang, who becomes increasingly involved in the action even as she documents it, also carry a certain cloud of ego and drama into their work. It’s the same cloud of ego and drama that follows many full-time activists all over the world, and there have been very few explorations of what it means. It’s entirely possible to both try to make the world a better place and like being the center of attention, but there’s definitely a tension that plays out between those two things.

For example, there’s a scene late in the film where Wang is finally able to interview the father of one of the sexual abuse victims. He reveals that he avoided engaging with them earlier because the only thing he knew about Sparrow was that she’d done a stunt where she said she’d have sex for free. It seems like he doesn’t know or understand what she was trying protest – the protest didn’t draw his attention to the dangers faced by sex workers due to criminalization; it just drew attention to Sparrow. And it actually made him less interested in seeing her as a potential ally, even though they were on the same side.

As Wang narrates the film, after the fact, she also seems to take a certain amount of pleasure in how people were always trying to shut down her film. I don’t doubt at all that she was scared when she was running from violent mobs, or thought she was about to be arrested and detained by the police. But it’s telling that the story, which is supposedly about the persecution that Sparrow is facing, is framed by an incident where someone wrestled Wang’s camera away from her. Definitely scary. Definitely uncool. Kind of throwing the attention on herself rather than either the sexual abuse trial or the activist she’s been profiling.

Hooligan Sparrow is, both intentionally and unintentionally, about the legends that activists build for themselves. It’s about the notoriety that Sparrow receives, the unfair persecution, the harassment, the shunning – being left on the side of the road with her daughter and all their belongings – an incident that later becomes the subject of an art exhibit from Ai Weiwei. But it’s also about why she’s called Hooligan Sparrow. It’s about fame. It’s about glory. It’s about yelling really loud in front of a bunch of other people, and then congratulating yourself and kind of forgetting about it.

It’s not clear from the film whether Sparrow’s protest actually had much impact on the outcome of the trial – it’s not clear whether it made the victims feel supported; it’s not clear whether it changed anyone’s mind. I think it’s important for activists to publicly demonstrate that there are people who don’t agree with what’s going on, even if it doesn’t change anyone’s mind, but the film isn’t focused on whether Sparrow’s work has any impact on anyone else. It also doesn’t delve into the kind of investigative journalism that would uncover what’s happening in China’s rape and sexual assault trials, how systemic government corruption has become, or how the government (allegedly) tries to silence protesters.

On the flip side, the film also doesn’t fully commit to a narrative about Nanfu Wang’s journey as documentarian, even though she becomes a more and more active participant as the story goes on. There’s no strong sense of how this experience changed her, or what the role of gonzo journalism is in helping to bring freedom of speech and expression to China. There’s an interesting subplot in the film, where one of Sparrow’s followers seems to become interested in journalism after meeting Wang and takes up the mantle of “documenting the atrocities” on camera after she’s gone – it’s a subplot I would have like to have seen explored more.

I also wish the film had delved deeper into the subplot about how technology has made it harder for the government to make people disappear. The protesters in Hooligan Sparrow tape messages whenever they fear they’re about to be arrested, explaining that, if they die in custody it will not be because they killed themselves, imploring people to look for them if they go missing, and explaining how their disappearance may be linked to participation in political protests. It’s the same principle that led Ai Weiwei to tweet a photo of himself being arrested, and a form of action that may hold real promise for political change.

Wang’s adrenaline-fueled attempt to get through the summer without losing her camera makes for an engaging story, but it isn’t always clear that what she’s captured on the camera exposes new information or reveals the path to increased human rights in China.

Sparrow’s fellow activist, Wang Yu was arrested along with several other human rights lawyers in 2015 and, as of the film’s release, had been held without trial since. The filmmakers have set up a page with information on Wang Yu’s detention by Chinese authorities as well as suggestions for how to take action. Yu is also one of the women identified in the US government’s #freethe20 campaign.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies, TV and video games on her blog.

‘Ovarian Psycos’ Highlights the Reasons We Still Need to Take Back the Night

The Ovarian Psycos is a cycling club for women of color in East Lost Angeles that’s a lot like Take Back the Night. Its purpose is to build a sense of community between local women, but also to draw attention to the fact that women aren’t safe unless they travel in packs. … [Directed by Kate Trumbull-LaValle and Johanna Sokolowski] the film captures something true and beautiful about the power of grassroots organizing, and the idea that regular people can band together and try to create change.

Written by Katherine Murray. | Ovarian Psycos is screening at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival.

A few years ago, I went to a Take Back the Night rally and experienced the joy of walking down a street after dark without feeling afraid. I’ve come to understand how that sounds weird to some men, but almost every woman I know, including me, has at least one story about trying to walk from point A to point B after sundown and being harassed by a stranger. Even in cases where the stranger didn’t do anything violent, we had no way of knowing whether or not he would. It’s not a good sign when someone starts chasing you and won’t back off when you tell him to leave you alone. It makes you scared, and it makes you angry. It makes you think, “Why don’t I have the right to walk two blocks in peace, without having to worry that you’re going to rape me or kill me?”

The Ovarian Psycos is a cycling club for women of color in East Lost Angeles that’s a lot like Take Back the Night. Its purpose is to build a sense of community between local women, but also to draw attention to the fact that women aren’t safe unless they travel in packs. The club hosts several different events, but the ones that get the most attention are the ones where women meet to ride through LA streets at night.

A new documentary from Kate Trumbull-LaValle and Johanna Sokolowski follows the club during a transition in leadership, when one of the founders, Xela, abruptly drops out. Although focus is split between three club members, Xela is arguably the principle character, and the filmmakers spend time uncovering her back story and motivations for starting the club. We learn that she experienced violence and abuse growing up, and felt alone with no one to confide in except a mother who rejected her feelings. Xela wants her daughter to feel like she’s part of a community, with other women in her life who she can turn to, so she started to Ovas, but it seems like engaging with violence against women on a regular basis stirs up memories that are, at times, overwhelming.

The other two members profiled in the film are Andi, who steps up as leader after Xela drops out, and Evie, a new recruit whose mother disapproves of her joining a bike club. Each of them struggles separately with how to make their families understand why this is important and how to make a difference in the community.

As events play out, it’s interesting to watch the internal dynamics of the club – the meetings where they make decisions about recruitment strategies and events are extremely democratic and sometimes emotionally charged – and the filmmakers do a good job of capturing the hard-to-articulate truth that we need to support and protect each other, and that being able to move freely through the streets is a right that’s been stolen from us.

Ovarian Psycos is structured so that we learn about the purpose and mission of the club before finding out how people on the street react to it, and it’s a little disappointing to learn that the group gets slammed with hateful, ignorant comments on a regular basis. The filmmakers interview a handful of people outside the club, some of whom are completely okay with a bike club for women of color, but they also find one man who works at a bike shop and manages to whitesplain why their club shouldn’t exist (it’s discrimination and not actually in the tradition of the Chicano movement). This is later challenged by a scene where Xela concisely explains intersectionality and how, as a woman of color, it’s hard to find a place in either white feminist or patriarchal Chicano contexts. And, while I’m bummed out that I wouldn’t be able to join this club, I can’t really argue with her logic about why it needs to exist.

What’s frustrating, as ever, is the realization that some people have been able to live their whole lives without realizing that this is a problem. Either because they’ve always been able to walk from point A to point B, or because they’re used to the idea that men attack women like jackals whenever they find us alone. That isn’t a mindset that’s helping anyone – it reduces men to predatory animals and implies that there’s no way to make gender-based violence stop – but it’s the mindset you find whenever someone says, “Why do you need a bike club for women at all?”

Ovarian Psycos answers the question of why you need a bike club for women, and specifically, in East LA, why you need a bike club for women of color. One of the less-explored, but very interesting aspects of the club is that Xela and some of the other members seem to have a desire to reconnect with pre-colonial indigenous Mexican traditions. I’ll confess my own ignorance and say that it never occurred to me that would be an important part of Latinx identity, but it makes complete sense, and I would happily watch another documentary just about that.

All together, the film captures something true and beautiful about the power of grassroots organizing, and the idea that regular people can band together and try to create change. The frustration of being misunderstood and misrepresented in media is part of the package, but there is a real sense that these women have found something meaningful in this club and formed strong connections. They have the opportunity to be leaders, and it’s an opportunity that they created for themselves out of virtually nothing.

There are still people who’ll say, “How is riding your bike at night supposed to do anything for women’s rights?” but it does a lot if it reminds you what it feels like to be free, and how far we have to go before we get there.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies, TV and video games on her blog.

‘Inside the Chinese Closet’ Highlights the Need for Social Acceptance of LGBTQ People in China and Globally

Often, when we talk about LGBTQ rights, we focus on legal battles – criminalization, marriage equality, adoption, and civil rights – but Sophia Luvara’s new documentary reminds us that social acceptance and cultural attitudes are just as important. ‘Inside the Chinese Closet’ follows Andy and Cherry, a gay man and a lesbian woman who struggle to reconcile their desire to live truthfully with their families’ expectations of them.

Written by Katherine Murray. | Inside the Chinese Closet is screening at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival.

Editor’s note: We have used LGBTQ to be inclusive but the documentary only addresses the issues facing gay men and lesbian women.

Often, when we talk about LGBTQ rights, we focus on legal battles – criminalization, marriage equality, adoption, and civil rights – but Sophia Luvara’s new documentary reminds us that social acceptance and cultural attitudes are just as important. Inside the Chinese Closet follows Andy and Cherry, a gay man and a lesbian woman who struggle to reconcile their desire to live truthfully with their families’ expectations of them.

Andy spends time trying to arrange a “fake” heterosexual marriage for himself through an LGBTQ dating service designed for that purpose. When asked what he’s looking for in a fake wife, he says that he wants someone who can be a best friend and that, in the long run, they’ll have to have some kind of love between them if they’re going to live together and raise children. During his conversations with potential matches, they have business-like discussions about who will be expected to do what in the relationship, whether they’re willing to adopt or have children through artificial insemination, and what their parents will want from a potential son or daughter-in-law. In between these exchanges, Andy takes phone calls from his father, who urges him to work harder at finding a wife, and to make more demands of potential candidates.

Cherry is in the process of ending her own fake marriage, and feels pressure from her parents to adopt a child. In China, there’s no legal way for her to adopt as a single parent or as a lesbian woman or lesbian couple, and her mother and father propose an outlandish scheme to buy unwanted babies from the hospital. Cherry says that the only time her father beat her was when he found out she was gay, and we learn from her mother that the neighbors make her feel ashamed for having a child-free daughter. They also contemplate the practical problem of who will take care of Cherry when she’s older, if she doesn’t have any children.

While Chinese laws criminalizing same-sex relationships have relaxed in the past 15 years, and Andy and Cherry are each out to at least one of their parents as well as their friend groups, they struggle with pressure to live up to their parents’ expectations, and to lead their lives as they wish. Even though it’s legal to be LGBTQ now, heteronormative cultural expectations still pathologize and stigmatize queer people by creating the sense that they aren’t living up to their adult responsibilities. It feels like Andy and Cherry are treated and viewed as the Chinese equivalent of American adults who live in their parents’ basements playing video games all day, while their parents urge them to find a job. The question of marriage equality or adoption by LGBTQ couples is so far off the table in China that the only way for Andy and Cherry to start a family, as they’re expected to do as adults, is to pretend to be straight.

Inside the Chinese Closet is an uneven film. The subject matter is interesting – and it certainly made me more aware of the nuances of LGBTQ identity in China – but it isn’t always clear why Luvara has chosen to follow these particular individuals. The press materials make it seem as if Andy’s major problem is finding a wife and Cherry’s major problem is finding a child, but it seems like the reverse is really true. As the film goes on, it seems as if Cherry is emotionally isolated, in love with a straight friend who doesn’t love her, and doesn’t actually want to have a child. Her struggle is in getting up the nerve to tell her mother to stop coming up with ridiculous schemes to buy a kid, because she doesn’t want one.

Andy, on the other hand, seems to really want a child. He blames it on his father when he discusses it with potential partners, but, from the way he talks, it sounds like he really would like to be a father. Andy’s biggest problem is that there’s no legal way for a gay man or gay couple to adopt a child in China – his dates with potential wives keep falling through, in part, because he’s afraid that they either won’t agree to have children, or will take the children when they break up with him or move abroad to live with a woman.

Many LGBTQ rights advocates in the U.S. and Canada would agree that the key changes in the last few decades have come not only from legislation but also from a growing acceptance in society of LGBTQ people. Homophobic hate groups have that right – we are promoting the message that it’s okay to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, pansexual, asexual, genderqueer, etc.; having more and more people accept that message has allowed many LGBTQ people to live fuller, more authentic lives. Inside the Chinese Closet is a reminder that, without that kind of social change – which comes slowly, and takes a lot of work – having the legal right to exist is only a small step forward. Andy and Cherry are still blocked from participating in the traditions and social structures they want to be a part of – they’re bombarded with messages that they should have families, but excluded from the joy of building families of their own with the people they love.

Compulsory heterosexuality and heteronormativity are still alive and well, and LGBTQ people still face stigmatization, even in countries with marriage equality. But Luvara’s film shines a light on how heteronormativity operates in an era where gay and lesbian people have enough savvy and technology to arrange fake marriages and cross-border adoptions from the comfort of their own apartments. It makes me wonder whether that’s going to speed up the march of LGBTQ rights in China or slow it even more.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies, TV and video games on her blog.

‘Starless Dreams’ Offers an Intimate Look at Iran Through Its Juvenile Detention Centers

In ‘Starless Dreams,’ we learn about the lives of teenage girls inside Iran’s juvenile detention centers, but we also learn how director Mehrdad Oskouei attempts to change hearts and minds in his own country. It’s an attempt that’s packaged for his fellow citizens rather than foreigners and, watching the film as an outsider is a complicated, multilayered experience.

Written by Katherine Murray. | Starless Dreams is screening at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival.

You can learn a lot about a culture by listening to the way its inhabitants discuss their disagreements – what they do and don’t say; how they couch their arguments; which topics are tacitly understood to be out of bounds. In Starless Dreams, we learn about the lives of teenage girls inside Iran’s juvenile detention centers, but we also learn how director Mehrdad Oskouei attempts to change hearts and minds in his own country. It’s an attempt that’s packaged for his fellow citizens rather than foreigners and, watching the film as an outsider is a complicated, multilayered experience.

The documentary, which has won multiple awards since its release, including the Amnesty International Film Prize, follows a group of girls who live in a correctional center outside Tehran. For the most part, the girls who appear in Starless Dreams could just as well be living in many other parts of the world. The stories they tell are all too familiar – they come from poor families where there faced violence and substance abuse; they got into crime through their husbands or boyfriends; they were molested, raped, or assaulted at some point; their futures look bleak and “pain drips from the walls.”

The detention center is, in some ways, an oasis from a world they don’t want to return to. Living communally in a dormitory-style room, the girls Oskouei interviews laugh, sing, and build snowmen together. They comfort each other and bond over their shared experiences, good and bad. Most are afraid to go back to their families or back to the street when they’re finally released. All of them harbor a dark, painful story about how they got to this place.

One by one, they open up to Oskouei with incredible candor, revealing that the brave face they put on masks a terrible loneliness and pain. They regret what they’ve done and what’s happened to them – what they’ve become because of what’s happened to them – and they speak to the camera as if this is the first time anyone has asked how they feel. Based on what we hear, it may very well be.

Oskouei doesn’t interview the guards or correctional workers, but we occasionally hear them speak off-camera, or see them drift across the screen. In one scene, one of the girls who’s just been released, tells a female guard that she’s afraid to go outside and see her father – afraid of what he’ll do, afraid she’ll have to run away again, afraid she’ll get back into drugs. The guard tells her, in a frustrated, exasperated tone, that she’s no longer their responsibility, even if she kills herself.

It’s not a very nice thing to say, but it’s reflective of the way prison systems work in many countries, including Canada and the United States. Prisons aren’t built to address the social, systemic factors that lead people to commit crimes in the first place – they’re just meant to punish criminals and send them on their way. The transition plan we see in Starless Dreams could be described as “putting child abuse victims back in the hands of child abusers,” since the rules require that someone from the detainee’s family come to retrieve her. One of Oskouei’s subjects initially refuses to identify herself because she doesn’t want her family to find her again – she says that she ran away because her uncle molested her and that, when she told her mother, her mother called her a liar and beat her. When she eventually relents and the guards contact her family, an off-camera voice says, “I’ll tell them they have to be nice to you,” which is the kind of intervention that doesn’t help at all.

It’s clear that most of these girls need a social worker more than they need a detention center, but that’s not what the system is equipped to provide them. I understand the guards’ frustration – they can’t be everything to everyone; it’s not their job – but there’s something heartbreaking about the way these girls hope the adults in their lives will help them, only to be disappointed each time. There’s a sense in which Oskouei, who they call “Uncle Mehrdad,” may be the only adult to take a genuine interest in their welfare. While he’s doing important work with this documentary, he also packs up his camera and departs after a few weeks, leaving us with the question of what happens after.

There’s a strange scene in the latter half of the film, where the girls are visited by an unidentified religious official. He leads them in prayer and then begins a discussion about “human rights.” We don’t see the whole discussion, but the girls ask him very politely – considering the circumstances – why it is that women have so few rights in Iran. He seems to respond by saying that we can’t do whatever we want in life and need to do what society expects of us. But the record scratch moment for me is when one of the girls, who’s been sentenced to death for killing her abusive father, asks why, if a child kills her father, the child is sentenced to death but, if a father kills his children, it isn’t even a crime.

Starless Dreams doesn’t explain or debate Sharia – or any part of Iran’s judicial system – directly. The problems faced by the girls Oskouei profiles seem – and on some levels, are – universal, but, for a foreign audience, there are occasional reminders that these universal experiences take place in a different social and political context. According to Amnesty International, Iran’s criminal justice system is a terrifying web of torture, mutilation, and execution – sometimes of minors – and women and minorities have few protections under law. Oskouei asked the government to let him make this documentary for seven years, and his stated aim is not to overthrow the judicial system, but to generate a greater feeling of compassion for the girls inside of it. This is how you couch an argument about the prison system in Iran.

One of the truths I’ve learned over the years is that you can’t change someone’s culture from the outside. You can’t do it without speaking the language – not just the literal, actual language of words and sentences and conjugations, but the tacit language; the language where you know how to talk about things within a certain political context. Mehrdad Oskouei speaks Persian better than I do, but I trust that he speaks Iran better than I do, too. Starless Dreams is a much more gentle, and gently melancholy film than I’d expect to see in this context, but maybe it’s the film we need. Maybe it’s one that will actually change the way Iranians see women and girls.

Starless Dreams is screening internationally as part of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. If you miss the festival, this is a documentary to keep on your list in the upcoming months. It’s isn’t an easy thing to sit with, but it provides a rich entry point into some very complex questions about the state of human rights in Iran and the state of correctional systems internationally.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies, TV and video games on her blog.

‘Alias Ruby Blade’: A Story of Love and Revolution, With Not Quite Enough Ruby Blade

Alias Ruby Blade poster

Written by Leigh Kolb

Alias Ruby Blade, which makes its North American debut this week at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival, is a documentary about “love and revolution.”

The subject of the film, Kirsty Sword Gusmão, grew up in Australia. She had an “ordinary childhood,” but she says her “parents were very special in that they had their eyes open to the world.”

When she was 4, her father studied Indonesian, and she would study the language with him. She studied Indonesian and began reading Inside Indonesia, which inspired her to get involved in political activism, especially in regard to East Timor.

Watch the trailer here

Sword Gusmão’s story is remarkable, and her life’s work has been driven by her passion for human rights. When she started reading Inside Indonesia, she says “I tried to find out where it was published–how I could get involved.” So she did. She wrote and edited for the publication and met political leaders.

Sword Gusmão, alias Ruby Blade, looks out over East Timor.

She traveled to East Timor, posing as a tourist, and she worked to get messages sent abroad, translating texts into English, taking documentary footage and collecting photographs from the Timorese people. It was then that she was first given photographs of Kay Rala “Xanana” Gusmão, a rebel leader in East Timor who had a jungle hideout and who was “worshipped” by many Timorese people, including her friends. Sword Gusmão next traveled to East Timor as part of a documentary filmmaking team. The team’s footage was the first time worldwide media broadcasted the violence and human rights abuses in East Timor at the hands of their Indonesian occupiers.

Sword Gusmão eventually became a spy and courier in Indonesia between freedom fighters and Timorese political prisoners.

Xanana Gusmão was captured and sentenced to life in prison. “All of a sudden the leader was in the hands of the enemies,” Sword Gusmão remembers. Her alias through all of her covert work? Ruby Blade.

She began playing an active role in taking documents and interviews in and out of the prison. Xanana was still directing the resistance from prison. Sword Gusmão was a “critical link” during this time.

Eventually a relationship between the two grew. She says there was “a sense of shared life together,” although they were clearly in “unorthodox circumstances.” When they finally met face-to-face, she recalls a strong bond.

Through all of this, Sword Gusmão was risking her life for the sake of revolution and, eventually, love.

The film captures these early days of resistance in East Timor and the relationship between Xanana and Sword Gusmão while he was in prison. Sword Gusmão herself had taken a great deal of documentary footage during her work, which provided a backdrop for the chronology of her story.

Sword Gusmão received bonsai trees and tropical fish from Gusmão when he was a prisoner.

The film does an incredible job at documenting the East Timor’s fight for independence from Indonesia. The human rights abuses (almost 200,000 Timorese people died of famine or murder during Indonesia’s rule from 1975 – 1999) and struggle for independence happened just in the last few decades, yet this isn’t a story that is as well-known as it should be.

But Kirsty Sword Gusmão doesn’t seem to be the protagonist in the film, even though her alias is the title, and her photo is on the poster. Of course, director Alex Meillier acknowledged this: “We’re playing with genres in the film, spy story, love story, three-act structure. This isn’t about one hero coming to save the day, but people coming together and throwing their lot in together. There’s a lot to celebrate.”

This is true–there is a lot to celebrate in this story. East Timor votes for independence. The UN helps them transition to be an independent state. Xanana Gusmão is elected president. He and Kirsty Sword get married and have three sons.

There is a happy ending, and the audience sees it all through collected and pieced-together footage.

However, it feels as if there is more to Sword Gusmão’s story. While much of the footage is hers, it makes sense that she reads letters aloud that she received from Xanana, and that she has pictures of herself over the years. Too often, it seems as if her beauty is the subject of her story. Male activists and leaders note how they “used” her for covert operations (they say she was “pretty” and “proper in her manners”; she was “very refined, elegant–who would think she can be mischievous?”). Film footage of her swimming doesn’t seem to fit, except in concert with commentary on her beauty.

Her beauty and femininity likely were key in allowing her access to some of the situations she was able to navigate. True.

But she got there herself. Sword Gusmão begins the documentary speaking about how she’s taken opportunities in her life that have been risky, and how she wants to act with her conscience and truth–she enjoys the risks. This Kirsty seems to be swept away, though, by the revolution and Xanana, so that she’s absorbed by something much larger, and her agency and power in the story fades. The risk that drives her is muted.

Perhaps the filmmakers were trying to celebrate too much and lost some of Ruby Blade in the process.

Sword Gusmão’s activism didn’t end when she became the first lady. She started and runs Alola, a foundation to help women and children in the country, and is active in the educational system. The risks on her and her family’s lives have not ended. Her struggles and her triumphs were not as highlighted as they could have been.

Alias Ruby Blade is a stunning documentary that will do great work in educating people about not only the revolution in East Timor but also the powerful effect that individuals can have when they work toward justice–this, it seems, is definitely the filmmakers’ goal (husband and wife team Alex Meillier and Tanya Ager Meillier say, “… we are even more interested in the power of ordinary people to change the course of history. That’s what this film is really about”).

The film was featured in the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in March and the IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam). Tribeca granted it the 2012 Spotlighting Women Documentary Award.

As a feminist film viewer, I would have loved to see “Ruby Blade” herself more–and perhaps this story has the potential to inspire a Hollywood blockbuster with a powerful female protagonist. Let’s hope, at least. It could be Eat, Pray, Love: Bitches Get Shit Done Edition. We need to see what we’re capable of, and Kirsty Sword Gusmão is one strong example.

———-

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

Women in Politics Week: ‘The Lady’ Makes the Personal Political

The Lady (2012)

This post by Jarrah Hodge previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on May 2, 2012, and is cross-posted with permission from Gender Focus.

French Director Luc Besson’s new biopic The Lady is a moving portrait of the life of Burmese activist and political leader Aung San Suu Kyi. However, for a movie that clearly has a political goal (to raise awareness of the situation in Burma*), it focuses mainly on Suu Kyi’s family and personal life. As a result, while I enjoyed the movie overall it still left me feeling unsatisfied.

The movie opens in 1947 with the assassination of General Aung San, Suu Kyi’s father, who had just negotiated Burma’s independence from Britain. While it’s a poignant scene and crucial historical event it’s really all we see of Suu Kyi’s early life.

From there we go forward to meet the main characters in the movie’s romance, Suu Kyi (played by Michelle Yeoh) and her professor husband Dr. Michael Aris (David Thewlis). They and their two sons are living in Oxford when she receives the news that her mother has had a stroke. When she returns to Burma she witnesses the military-run government massacring protesting students in the streets. When she is then approached to lead a pro-democracy movement she decides to stay.

From this point the film becomes a bit plodding, seeming a bit like a visual representation of an encyclopedia article. It moves through every interaction Syu Kii has with the military junta and their attempts to intimidate and imprison her and her followers, leading to her 15-year house arrest and years of separation from Aris and their children. While we also see Syu Kii touring the country and speaking to locals about democracy, for the most part her Burmese allies and followers in the film remain nameless and voiceless.

Ultimately while the film brings the audience to tears more than once, it’s not over the plight of Burma or ordinary Burmese citizens, but over Suu Kyi and her husband’s drawn-out separation.

That’s where I thought the focus did the subject an injustice. Interestingly, The Lady could be said to suffer from some of the same issues as The Iron Lady, which was also a movie about a woman politician that was criticized for being more concerned with sentimentality than political substance.

In some ways, though, The Lady has less excuse for this. Thatcher is elderly and ailing now but Suu Kyi is still fighting a crucial fight. It’s clear from the rallying cry at the end of the movie that one of the film’s goals is to get Westerners more involved in aiding the continuing fight for true democracy in Burma (Aung San Suu Kyi will finally take the oath of office to sit in the parliament this year, though the current structure still ensures the military maintains majority control and human rights violations continue). However, this could have been further advanced by giving voices to the Burmese non-military characters other than Suu Kyi: the students being massacred in the streets, the villagers in rural areas, and the monks who joined the protest.

As Yeoh’s Suu Kyi says in the film, she dislikes the cult of personality around her, and yet that’s what the movie reinforces by failing to broaden the depiction of the struggle. At the same time, it also in some ways diminishes her strength by tieing her identity so strongly to her family. At a couple points in the film people mention a lack of experience before coming to Burma, saying she was just an “Oxford housewife and mother of two”, not mentioning she also had a PhD, extensive academic honours, and had worked at the UN.

Would I recommend the movie for someone who had only a cursory knowledge of the situation in Burma? Yes. But Do I think it featured a strong woman role model and did justice to Aung San Suu Kyi’s cause? Not as well as it could have.

*Note: In case you’re wondering why I’m using Burma instead of Myanmar, that’s because many pro-democracy groups and activists refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the name Myanmar, which was introduced by the military government. It’s also the name they used in the film.

Jarrah Hodge is the founder of Gender Focus, a Canadian feminist blog. Jarrah also writes for Vancouver Observer and Huffington Post Canada and has been a guest blogger on “feminerd” culture for Bitch Magazine Blogs. Hailing from New Westminster, BC, she’s a fan of politics, crafts, boardgames, musical theatre, and brunch.

Guest Writer Wednesday: ‘The Lady’ Makes the Personal Political

Movie poster for The Lady

This piece by Jarrah Hodge is cross-posted with permission from her blog Gender Focus.

Ultimately while the film brings the audience to tears more than once, it’s not over the plight of Burma or ordinary Burmese citizens, but over Suu Kyi and her husband’s drawn-out separation.

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Jarrah Hodge is the founder of Gender Focus, a Canadian feminist blog. Jarrah also writes for Vancouver Observer and Huffington Post Canada and has been a guest blogger on “feminerd” culture for Bitch Magazine Blogs. Hailing from New Westminster, BC, she’s a fan of politics, crafts, boardgames, musical theatre, and brunch.

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In Memoriam: Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor 1932-2011

As you all likely know by now, Elizabeth Taylor died yesterday from congestive heart failure. There’s not much I can think to say about her that others haven’t said–and likely said better. Here are some highlights of her career as an actress, successful businesswoman, and HIV/AIDS activist.

Taylor won Best Actress Academy Awards for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Butterfield 8. She was also nominated for the same award for Suddenly, Last Summer, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Raintree County. In 1993, the Academy awarded her the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Taylor is one of only five women to ever receive the honor.

Other awards Taylor won include a BAFTA, a GLAAD Media Vanguard Award, three Golden Globes–including the Cecil B. DeMille Award (one of only twelve women to win since the award’s inception in 1952), a SAG Lifetime Achievement Award, and many others–even a Razzie, for her role in 1994’s The Flintstones.

Her first film role was in the film There’s One Born Every Minute, when she was only ten years old, which led to her status as a child star. Adulthood brought her hit after hit, including Cleopatra in 1963, which was the most expensive movie to date with a budget of a million dollars. Her final feature film role was, unfortunately, in The Flintstones, though she appeared on television twice in 2001 and once on stage in 2007.

I must confess that the only film I’ve ever seen starring Elizabeth Taylor is Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (not even Cleopatra, for shame!), which was amazing. In the past few decades, she’s been more active in business ventures and activism (and, of course, she remains known not only as a classic Hollywood actress, but also for her eight marriages, celebrity friendships, and pricey jewelry collection).

Not only did Taylor collect jewelry, but she also designed a successful collection. Her perfume line, which includes Passion, White Diamonds, and Black Pearls, earns roughly 200 million dollars a year. Many celebrities followed in her footsteps, creating signature fragrances as part of their branding initiatives.

Perhaps her most lasting legacy, other than her acting, is her HIV/AIDS activism. She raised over 100 million dollars to fight the disease, helped found the American Foundation for AIDS Research, and founded The Elizabeth Taylor HIV/AIDS Foundation.

This isn’t, by any means, an exhaustive list of her accomplishments and influence. Check out her obit at the New York Times and the interactive media imbedded within, including a clip from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and leave your links to Elizabeth Taylor related pieces in the comments.

Preview: The Stoning of Soraya M.

The Stoning of Soraya M. (2008). Directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh. Screenplay by Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh & Cyrus Nowrasteh (based on the book by Freidoune Sahebjam). Starring Mozhan Marno, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and James Caviezel.

Read The Huffington Post’s laudatory review and Jezebel’s excellent coverage of this timely film, which debuted in the U.S. this past weekend.

Watch the trailer: