The second day of the IFP's new United Nations co-sponsored
Envision welcomed Academy Award winning director
Jonathan Demme, who in a morning session discussed his long time engagement with Haiti, the Western Hemisphere's poorest country. The director spoke at length about the pair of documentaries he's made in the country, 1988's
Haiti: Dreams of Democracy and 2003's
The Agronomist. Clips were shown from the latter film, which chronicles the deceased Haitian radio journalist and human rights activist
Jean Dominique, who was assassinated in April of 2000.
One of the recurring topics over the course of the two days was the challenge involved in representing the issues of developing countries through local perspectives and not those originating in developed countries. One moment of particular interest occurred late in the chat, when Demme suggested that the United Nations would do well by directly supporting filmmakers who are documenting the most pressing socio-political issues in far flung corners of the world. The UN's
Eric Falt, Director's of the Department of Public Information's Outreach Division, quickly and comically rebuffed the idea. Claiming that it was hard enough for the UN to convince its member states that projects like Envision were worthwhile, he suggested that the funding for such initiatives is simply too hard to come by at the moment.
Hamid Rahmanian and
Melissa Hibbard's
The Glass House screened in the early afternoon. The film, which played at Sundance this year, chronicles a quartet of troubled young Iranian women's involvement with Tehran's
Omid e Mehr Center, a center for young women who've been marginalized by their families. As they struggle against the excesses of a patriarchal culture, the subjects are almost all involved in emotionally violent relationships with their families. Their problems are diverse: some struggle with drug abuse while others simply want to cut a rap album in a country where women are not legally allowed to sing publicly or even record. It's a brisk and affecting portrait of a country where tradition and modernity are only slowly negotiating a reconciliation.
# posted by Brandon Harris @ 5/16/2009 10:32:00 AM
Comments (1)
Just saw The Glass House and reviewed it - so moving: http://fashionableearth.org/blog/2009/11/03/the-glass-house/
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posted by Fashionable Earth @ 11/03/2009 10:55 AM
