Women Without Men: Rape, Rebellion And Radio In Iran

...Rape, resistance and rebel radio in Iran, and a tormented girl forced into prostitution whose ravaged, anorexic body symbolizes women and a nation alike, plundered and depleted by avaricious forces feeding upon it, both foreign and conspiring from within...

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Interview With Director Shirin Nashat about Women Without Men:

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

Prairie Miller

Women Without Men will debut at New Directors, New Films on 3/30 and 3/31. The film series runs 3/24 through 4/4 in NYC. More information is at: Newdirectors.org. Women Without Men will open theatrically in LA beginning April 9th, and in NYC in May.

Iran and The Global Struggle for Women

By Sikivu Hutchinson

...As many Middle Eastern activists have noted, U.S. occupation has been a major catalyst for the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. However, Gol cautioned, “Islamic fundamentalism hangs on its ‘death to America’” rhetoric as a means of legitimizing and reinforcing nationalism. In some regards, poor people in the region see no other viable alternative to Western imperialism besides Islamic fundamentalism. Tragically, some Iranian feminists and intellectuals also buy into this line. And it is for this reason that Gol faults the activists of the Iranian Green Movement for their failure to challenge its leaders on the issue of nationalism and women’s rights. Global women’s liberation is undermined by cultural binaries that weave a narrative of Western enlightenment versus Middle Eastern fundamentalism... I

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Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of blackfemlens.org, a journal of progressive commentary and literature, and the author of the forthcoming book Mortal Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics and Secular America. She is member of the Women Film Critics Circle, a commentator on Pacifica's Some Of Us Are Brave on KPFK 90.7FM, and a reporter for the LA Women's Desk of the WBAI Radio Women's Collective in NY.
Listen to blackfemlens commentaries on Fridays, 6:25pm LA Time, at http://kpfk.org.

Director Fay Ann Lee Talks Falling For Grace

Screening Room. Cinderella In Chinatown: The roots of class consciousness in female folklore, and neighborhood sweatshops in confrontation with divisive step-sisterhood. Director Fay Ann Lee talks the politics and economics of identity in Falling For Grace.

LISTEN TO INTERVIEW HERE

Children Of Invention: A Conversation With Director Tze Chun

Screening Room: Children Of Invention. While the Oscars heaped accolades on the eve of International Women's Day, on movies like Precious and The Blind Side that demonize ghetto mothers living in poverty, Asian American filmmaker Tze Chun in contrast conveys a candid yet compassionate dramatic portrait based on his own childhood with a struggling single undocumented immigrant working mother, under the impact of a brutal social system that could care less. And, while surviving foreclosure, homelessness, worker exploitation and the INS. A conversation with Tze Chun.

LISTEN TO INTERVIEW WITH TZE CHUN HERE

Hitchcock, Nixon And The Taliban

Screening Room: Documentary Fortnight at the Museum of Modern Art. Locating Hitchcock within the volatile historical currents his day, from the Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis, spectacle sparring between Nixon, JFK and Khrushchev, television versus radio, cinema versus television, consumerism, and suspect coffee commercials as sinister metaphor, to finally 'fear as commodity' in a catastrophe culture, within what seems like the ultimate reality film noir. And, whose Taliban? In Miscreants Of Talliwood. And more...

LISTEN TO THE FILMMAKER INTERVIEWS HERE

All About Her Mother

Cindy Kleine's Phyllis and Harold, And Actress Jean Simmons: Leading Lady in Her Final Film

By Penelope Andrew
The Huffington Post

Born nine years after Phyllis, the actress Jean Simmons shares some things in common with her....It's another film that tries to make sense of Friedan's feminine mystique--that awful, nagging sense that something in life is missing....

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Penelope Andrew, a NYC-based writer who contributes to The Huffington Post and Critical Women on Film, is a member of the Women Film Critics Circle. A certified psychoanalytic psychotherapist and licensed clinical social worker, she maintains a private psychotherapy practice in NYC.