WUNRN
THE DOCUMENTARY - THE FACE, THE
FEELINGS - WOMEN'S ISSUES ON THE FRONTLINES
Most of us will never ride an
immigrant train to cross a border, see a revolution grab our children that we
will search for the rest of our lives. We may not see with our own eyes, the
courtroom discrimination of poor women, the threats to indigenous women's
rallies and demonstrations, the disappearances of young women leaving late
night jobs in the maquiladoras. We may not experience the loss of escaping
violence, with children in arms and only the items we are wearing and walking
for days with the hope of some safety - only to end up in a refugee or
displacement camp.
BUT THE DOCUMENTARY FILM CAN BE
WOMEN'S LENS TO REALITIES.
The documentary enables us to see
the tears, feel the pain, know the trauma through the eyes of women victims and
survivors, courageous enough to share their life crises, and through the films
of sensitive filmmakers. They enable us to "be there" on this
journey of women's hardships, hopeful recovery, and yet quite invisible
dimension of women in history, and assuredly in today's complex world.
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WUNRN
http://www.wunrn.com
Women Make Movies - WMM
DANGEROUS JOURNEY FOR ILLEGAL
MIGRANT WOMEN - EL SALVADOR-MEXICO-US - FILM
Film Segment:
Maria in Nobody's Land
A film by Marcela
Zamora Chamorro
Spanish, Subtitled
MARIA IN NOBODY’S LAND is an
unprecedented and intimate look at the illegal and extremely dangerous journey
of three Salvadoran women to the United States, through Mexican territory. Doña
Inés, a 60 year old woman, has been looking for her daughter for five years and
is following the same route her daughter took while crossing Mexico en route to
the United States. Marta and Sandra, tired of the violence from their husbands
and wanting to overcome poverty, decide to leave their families behind to
travel to America - with only thirty dollars in their pockets. During their
harrowing journey, the three women encounter prostitution, slave trade, rape,
kidnap and even death, all in an unwavering quest for a better life.
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WUNRN
Film Trailer Segment on Website.
Justice
for My Sister - Guatemala - Film
About the Film
Adela, 27,
left home for work one day and never returned. Her ex-boyfriend beat her until
she was unrecognizable and left her at the side of the road. Her story is all
too familiar in Guatemala, where 6,000 women have been murdered in the last
decade. Only 2% of those killers have been sentenced. Adela's sister Rebeca,
34, is determined to see that Adela's killer is held accountable. She makes
tortillas at home and sells them in order to raise her five children, as well
as the three children Adela left behind.
The
challenges Rebeca encounters in her search for justice are illustrative of the
thousands of other cases like this one in Guatemala. However, her willingness
to practically take on the role of investigator while she is still mourning is
exceptional. She encounters many setbacks during her three-year battle: a
missing police report, a judge accused of killing his own wife, and witnesses
who are too afraid to testify. Completely transformed by her struggle, Rebeca
emerges as a feminist leader in her rural community with a message for others:
justice is possible.
In the past
decade, nearly 6,000 women were brutally beaten, raped, and killed in
Guatemala. While violence against women is a global issue, it is particularly
alarming in Guatemala, where abuse is rarely punished or even investigated.
This Central American country, comparable in size to the state of Tennessee, is
just south of Mexico. Guatemala has one of the highest per capita rates of
murdered women in the western hemisphere. These murders–carried out by
partners, family members, or gang members–are all marked by one thing:
misogyny. Human rights advocates in the country call this gender-based violence
“femicide.”
Some
activists blame the rise of femicide on the destabilization of the state and
rise of impunity during the 36-year civil war that ended in 1996. Often, cultural
stigma, media hype, and societal justification of violence against women–the
mentality that “she must have been looking for it”–enable the lack of
investigation and impunity. Public investigators and the police blame the women
for the violence and accuse them of being sex workers or gang members, as if
that were justification to close an unsolved case. DNA evidence is rarely taken
from the scene of the crime hardly ever preserved properly, forcing the case to
hinge on witness testimony. Many witnesses and their families are threatened by
the killer or their accomplices and intimidated to the point that they prefer
not to testify.
In April
2008, Guatemalan feminists pushed Congress to ratify a law against femicide.
However, activists and victims’ families struggle to assure that the laws are
implemented. One such family member is Rebeca Eunece Peréz. This extraordinary
woman’s story shows that justice is possible when laws are actually put into
practice. However, this only happened because Rebeca put herself on the line to
make her sister’s murder case move through the courts. Had Rebeca not carried
out an investigation and brought the witnesses to trial, the killer would have
very likely gone unpunished, like thousands of aggressors in Guatemala. In Rebeca’s
words, referring to a judge who was sleeping on the bench, “Justice is asleep
in Guatemala.” As local activist Rosario Escobedo exclaims in an interview,
“The family shouldn’t have to be the investigators – that’s the state’s role!”
Kimberly
Bautista - Director/Producer, Justice for my Sister bautista.kimberly@gmail.com
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WUNRN
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Within Every Woman Film - Ageing Comfort Women of Asia - Sexual Slaves of the
Japanese Military during World War II, Break Their Silence and Share Their
Continuing Pain.
Film by Tiffany
Hsiung
Film Segment: http://vimeo.com/24182194
Comfort
Women Film - "Within Every Woman, There Is a Story"
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WUNRN
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Women's Rights Without
Frontiers
China - Video Reality of Forced Abortions & One-Child Policy
China's One Child Policy
is enforced through forced abortion, forced sterilization and infanticide.
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