Looking at Muslim women in the media and pop culture
The late submission deadline for the Women’s Voices Now “Women’s Voices from the Muslim World” film festival closed last week. We thought it would be a great time to highlight some of the films submitted–we’ll be featuring a new film every day this week.
This one, titled “Sunglasses,” was submitted by Mustafa Kia in Afghanistan:
What do you think, readers?
Check out the rest of the submissions at the Women’s Voices Now website.
Angelina Jolie is known more for being the sexier half of Brangelina and her patchwork family, but her luscious lips and film projects are a close second. The latest controversy regarding the actress’s directorial debut flick in Bosnia is about a Muslim woman.
The yet-to-be-titled film is set in Bosnia on the eve of the 1992 Bosnian war, where war crimes and ethnic cleansing left more than 100,000 dead and thousands missing. Many Bosnian-Muslim women were raped by Serbian soldiers; rape was used as a strategic weapon of war. You can find a timeline of Bosnia’s recent and tumultuous history in this Telegraph article.
Photo Credit: Ken Regan, GK Films LLC. All rights reserved.
A focal point in Jolie’s film is a love affair between a Bosnian woman and a Serbian man. Jolie has asked critics to “hold judgment” until the film is released, but rumors have been spreading like wildfire. One claims there is an inter-ethnic rape scene, and there have been objections from women who were sexually assaulted during the conflict: According to the article in Telegraph, “Jolie was accused by two victims’ associations of attempting to ‘falsify the historic truth about the crimes of mass gang rapes of Bosnian women’ by Serbian forces during the war.” Bakira Hasecic, President of the Bosnian Women Victims of War Association, has criticized the subject matter claiming that the plot of the film focuses on the lead female character is essentially “falling in love with her torturer.”
Women Without Men, directed by Shirin Neshat, looks at the visually evocative and at times interspersing lives of four women in Iran in the early 1950s. It is a time of political unrest, as Prime Minister Mossadegh faced increasing opposition from US and British-backed movements. The film explores the women’s relationships with men and their understanding of sexuality, friendship, faith, and political involvement. It is based on Shahrnush Parsipur’s Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran, first published in 1989.
The film is beautifully shot. Neshat’s background in photography is clearly apparent, as each scene could easily exist as a series of photographs. The colors of the film are rich. At times I was reminded of Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, not only for the beautiful cinematography, but also for its similar (albeit far more understated) use of magical realism during a time of stark political change. I found myself wondering about how both films use female protagonists and the setting of a natural space to drive their narrative, leaving male characters in the background of their experience.
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