DAY ONE: "You can cut the flower, but you cannot stop the coming of Spring"

You can cut the flower, but you cannot stop the coming of Spring, Malalai Joya of Afghanistan,


Review by Joyce Marcel


Women were whirling around in my head when I went to sleep last night, iron women and fearless women and funny women and intense women and sardonic, down-to-earth women and definitely holy women. They were the women I met in the three films that opened last night's Women's Film Festival.

It's the 17th year of the festival, which supports the Women's Crisis Center, which is now in its 30th year - and I'll say this again, damn it to hell, that that after all these years we still have men beating up, controlling and abusing women and children, and we still need safe houses for their victims.

Victim is the word that always terrifies me about these festivals. How many abused women are we going to see in these documentaries, how much outrage are we going to be asked to feel, how badly will our emotions be manipulated?

The other question I go in with is will there be a balance between the art of film - physical beauty, arresting images, spectacular shots - and the boring hand-held-camera shoot. Is it all going to be documentaries, or will this be the year the selection committee goes for art as well as outrage?

Stay tuned and we'll find the answers to these questions - as well as the answers to a number of questions we're not even thinking of yet.

The best film opened the show. "Iron Ladies of Liberia" is a riot, a lesson in good government, an introduction to a number of remarkable women, and an object lesson in female leadership done right.

At the center of this film, by Daniel Junge and Saitta Scott Johnson, is Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who won a national election and took over the country of Liberia after the dictator and troublemaker Charles Taylor was arrested and removed for trial in an international court.

At the time, Liberia was just coming out of 14 years of civil war and chaos - "It stole my childhood," said filmmaker Johnson. The country's waters were all polluted. No one had electricity. The infrastructure was trashed. Ninety percent of the people were unemployed. Corruption in high places was rampant. The international debt to the IMF was in the millions of dollars.

And into this mess of man-made messes comes a divorced 70-year-old grandmother to try and clean it up. A divorced 70-year-old grandmother with, among other things, a Master's from Harvard, a lot of government experience, and a little jail time.

She installed a number of women to run the government - the finance minister, the chief of police. (The chief was my favorite character. A big woman with a sense of humor, she inherited a police force without uniforms, telephones or even guns. When the first shipment of small arms came in from Nigeria, she said, "They make me feel like a natural woman.")
The film follows Old Ma, or Oh Ma, or Ma, as she is variously called, during her first year in office. The best scene came when the dispersed army took to the streets to demand back pay. These men, killers all, were agitating in front of the government house when Johnson came down.

She pushed aside her security and met one-on-one with the leader. Then she invited most of the men inside, to talk.
She disarmed them by agreeing that they deserved whatever back pay they were due. She wryly admitted that the government didn't have the money to pay them their pensions. And then she turned the tables on them. "The people you displaced in the villages, the people you killed or left homeless or beat up - the government has to think about caring for them, too. Don't you agree?"

The ex-soldiers, properly cowed, agreed to moderate their demands and eschew violence in the future.
Respecting your opponent, closely listening to him, agreeing to the rightness of some of his demands, then hitting him with the other side - Old Ma illustrated a new way in which a woman can lead through truth and communication. It was a lovely scene.

The next best scenes - and they're not "scenes" in the usual sense, because they really happened - were the ones in which Johnson tries to ameliorate the country's unspeakable foreign debt. Getting nowhere with the Americans. the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank, lo and behold, Old Ma invites in the Chinese. After a formal visit from China's president, the U.S. is a little more eager to listen.

Johnson has her makeup artist do her up for the big meeting at the White House with George W. Bush. At first Bush is excited to be with her, but when she tells him she wants him to lift the debt, he stutters and retreats into babble about "helping you fulfill your dreams." The look Ma gives him is priceless.

But a little later, Condi Rice announces that America is forgiving the country's entire debt. Now Liberia can get down to business. In the last scene, as the people are celebrating Johnson's first year in office, we see her dancing in the street.
Great woman. Great movie.

Lerna, who was sitting next to me knitting socks before the films began, turned when the film ended and said, "We need her here to clean everything up."
Amen, sister!

After the film, Windham County Senator Jeanette White spoke. She said that the country that has the most women in power is - wait for it - Rwanda. Part of that is because a lot of the men are dead. But it's also because women got involved out of a felt need to "take care of the children." Not by wiping their bottoms, necessarily, but by preparing a humane future for them.

People in the audience seemed to want to discuss why America is so far behind in having women in power. Some of the possible reasons offered: we're a capitalist society, and women aren't leaders of corporations (see Sister Jane below); women are infantalized; women are turned into sex symbols; we haven't yet felt a need to "take care of the children"; women wait to be asked while men just go for it; you lose your privacy when you're in politics; women aren't good at raising money for themselves...


White said we have to begin creating a culture where women can be seen as doing anything they want. Again in my humble opinion, I thought we started doing that in 1976. But what do I know? White mentioned Gaye Symington as Speaker of the Vermont House, Nancy Polosi in Washington, and good old Hillary Clinton as women starting to make women in power visible.
Then she mentioned something about too much testosterone floating around, which just about sums up the whole point of the film festival, doesn't it?


The evening showing was packed. Two films were on the agenda. The first, "Enemies of Happiness" by Eva Mulvad and Vores Lykkes Fjender, was a Danish film with subtitles about Afghanistan's "most famous woman," the outspoken 27-year-old Malalai Joya. It follows her as she runs for a seat in parliament, troubleshoots for families in her neighborhood, and avoids being killed. Being an outspoken woman demanding rights for all women in Afghanistan might make your shelf life timed in minutes, and I admit I kept expecting the bomb to go off. But in the end, Joya takes her place in the legislature.
After the film, which was definitely one of those dark, hand-held numbers where not even the spectacular beauty of the countryside could make visually interesting what was on the screen, it was announced that Joya has once again been thrown out of the legislature.

Joya is brave beyond belief, and anyone who thinks wearing a burka or selling women into marriage for dowry is a righteous way of living is, in my humble opinion, brain dead. That may not be politically correct or culturally diverse, but let's face it, a lot of cultures leave a lot to be desired, and Afghanistan is about as macho as you can get. More power to Joya, but it's going to be a long haul.

And yet, and yet...

The New York Times this week ran a letter to the editor that quoted two things from Kipling, who knew a thing or two about the region. In a poem, Kipling said, "When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,/And the women come out to cut up what remains,/Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains/An' go to your Gawd like a soldier." OK, not the most pleasant imagery, but notice the part where "the women come out to cut up what remains." Burka schmurka, the women of Afghanistan have always been known as the fiercest of fighters. Joya stands in a long line of poet-soldiers, and it was a pleasure to know her and to wish her well.

The other thing Kipling said about Afghanistan? And remember, he wrote it in the last half of the 19th Century - "Asia is not going to be civilized after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old."

Listen and learn, George Bush. Listen and learn.

After the first film, a lot of women got up to stretch and take a break. After all, the seats in the Hooker-Dunham Theater are hard, hard, hard. Hard. Did I mention hard?

Someone asked if we needed a break. Then a strong male voice shouted out, "Keep them moving along." And damn if the woman who asked the question didn't tell the projectionist to start the second movie.
"Where the hell are we?" I said. "What's the point of this festival?"

Then I left for a bathroom break, but someone else must have caught the irony of it, because when I came back they had not yet started the next film.

The third movie of the night was just pure fun. "The Sermons of Sister Jane: Believing the Unbelievable" by Allie Light and Irving Saraf, introduced us to Sister Jane Kelly, a nun for 55 years who blew the whistle on a sex and robbery scandal in her parish. Witty, smart and nobody's fool, she then reexamined the Catholic Church and came to some interesting conclusions. The most important was that the church was exactly like a corporation - hierarchical, with men in charge, after only money and power, protecting its own, keeping all secrets and scandals hidden.

About abortion: Jesus wouldn't have wanted women turned into baby machines. And he would have approved of sex, the most intimate way people can be together and support each other. Homosexuality is just a fact of life, not a chosen lifestyle, so get on with it. Even some popes have been gay. And priests don't have to be celibate - celibacy was just a Middle Ages dodge to keep married priests from leaving their property to their families instead of the church. She even found one pope who ordered all the wives of priests to be captured and sold into slavery. Nice guy.

Sister Jane believes that women should be ordained, and -she was only half-kidding here - that she should be pope. She's got a point.

In 2003, Sister Jane wrote a book: "Taught to Believe the Unbelievable: A New Vision of Hope for the Catholic Church and Society." It's out now in paperback.

She works now with Plowshares, serving the poor.


And that was the first night. Stay tuned for more. And for God's sake, comment and discuss.