Riding high after the successful Women’s Voices from the Muslim World: A Short-Film Festival held in Hollywood, CA last month, Women’s Voices Now made their way back to to the East Coast with two exciting events this May. WVN partnered with The Paley Center for Media and The Rubin Museum of Art to bring the Festival films and women’s issues to the forefront.

The Doha Film Institute interviews WVN Director of Festival Operations Cassandra Schaffa.

Doha Film Institute People in Film: Cassandra Schaffa

Cassandra Schaffa is a graduate of New York University’s Cinema Studies Masters program. While attending NYU, Cassandra was awestruck by films highlighting the challenges faced by women around the globe, and was inspired by the strength of these women to build a better future. Cassandra firmly believes that women are the key to social change and she hopes to use film as an essential tool to further the progress that has already been made. Cassandra also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Broadcast Communication and Spanish from Flagler College in St. Augustine, FL and is an avid Ultimate Frisbee player. She currently resides in New York City.

Filmmakers Depict Women in Muslim World
A Los Angeles screening samples contributions to an online film festival.

The [WVN] festival has been in the works for about a year but is playing out against the backdrop of revolution in Tunisia and Egypt, civil war in Libya and unrest across the Arab world, its theme of examining women’s lives and rights in the Muslim world is especially timely. And, just as much of the recent uprising in the Middle East has been facilitated and powered by social media and the Internet, the festival is largely Web-based.

“There are risks associated with making these types of films, notes [Executive Director Catinca] Tabacaru.” We actually met a film critic who went into Kabul and brought out the films in a suitcase, literally, for us.”  One of those films was Sadat’s documentary “Half Value Life,” about a female lawyer representing a woman who was abused by her husband. Sadat and her sister run a production company out of their home in Kabul, partly because it’s cost effective not to rent office space and partly because it’s safer to avoid commuting daily, as a working woman, in the city’s streets. Sadat does work for a local TV company and puts her earnings toward personal projects that she shows only abroad.  “Sometimes, you can get money to do your work” she says, referring to her local TV work. “But sometimes it’s dangerous. Most of my friends, people don’t see [my personal projects]. It’s not for television, it’s not for website. This is first time I send them to online film festival.”

Remarkable Gathering of Femme Filmmakers Becoming Film Itself

The Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith

A remarkable gathering of female filmmakers from the Muslim world that took place in Los Angeles last week may have concluded, but its impact is bound to live on. Not only was the event itself filmed, reports Women’s Voices Now Short-Film Festival Executive Director, Catinca Tabacaru. There was also a film team on hand at the house where 10 of the international women auteurs stayed together, documenting their interactions, their trips out to Rodeo Drive and Hollywood, their appearances at parties and panels, their personal accounts.

Uprising Radio, based in Southern California, emphasizes connecting global issues with local ones, and to motivate listeners to take an active role in their communities.

The week of the WVN Film Festival in Los Angeles, Uprising host Sonali Kolhatkar spoke with Catinca Tabacaru, Executive Director of Women’s Voices Now, Alka Sadat, Afghan film maker, and Laila Hotait Salas, Spanish-Lebanese filmmaker.
Watch a video of the interview here:

The event, which will shine a spotlight on women in the Muslim world, also will fete Iranian political martyr Neda Agha-Soltan and author and former political prisoner Roxana Saberi.

The spotlight will shine on women in the Muslim world at a film festival that kicks off Thursday night in Hollywood.

Produced by the New York-based nonprofit Women’s Voices Now, the fest is officially titled Women’s Voices From the Muslin World: A Short-Film Festival and will run through Sunday at the Los Angeles Film School.

The opening night will honor actress Shoreh Agdashloo, journalist Lara Logan, Iranian political martyr Neda Agha-Soltan and author and former political prisoner Roxana Saberi.

Doniphan Blair, from Cinesource Magazine, conducted a candid and poignant interview with WVN winning filmmaker, Alka Sadat, who travelled to the Festival from Afghanistan.

CineSource: I am sure you have told it many times—do you get tired of telling your story?

Alka Sadat: [laughs] You want [that] I tell you how I start to make films? When I was young, I want to be a journalist. In that time, Taliban was in Afghanistan—it was very bad time for us. After Taliban, I started to make films with my sister [Roya, 3 years older, also an accomplished filmmaker,], in 2004.

Women’s Voices from the Muslim World

The second day of the [WVN] festival began with Crossroads: The Intersection of Cultural and Religious Norms, a collection of films that explored common issues and conflicts within the Muslim world. Some of topics addressed were divorce, sexuality and the place of niqab in Islam. One of the panelists at the discussion, Alysse Stepanian, spoke about her experimental film “Roghieh” and how her own life inspired her to create this film.

“I moved to the U.S. after the Iranian Revolution. The first couple of years I was in the States I was having dreams that related to my experiences of the Revolution,” she said. “So I was keeping a dream journal, and years later I started making videos from these journals.”

“Roghieh” is based almost verbatim on one of Stepanian’s early dreams. It depicts the power of the lower-class during Iran’s Islamic Revolution by symbolizing a cleaning lady’s broom as a weapon of power and confidence.

The Doha Film Institute, dedicated to building a dynamic film industry in Qatar, featured several articles about the winning WVN filmmakers from Northwestern University Qatar during the course of the Festival.

Qatar students WIN at ‘Women’s Voices from the Muslim World: A Short-Film Festival’ in Los Angeles

“Going to the festival is definitely a great opportunity for my colleagues and I” says [WVN Filmmaker] Ola. “For me, taking part in a positive representation of Islam, when there are a lot of misconceptions about Muslim people, was the greatest thing. It was also great to meet filmmakers from around the world who aren’t necessarily Muslims but presented a positive image of the Muslim world that’s often viewed so negatively.

Most importantly, through the festival I realized that there’s a greater presence of women making films and in media. These women are not only addressing women’s issues, but also discussing issues about men and children in Muslim societies. I feel that ‘Women’s Voices Now’ acts as a bridge between the Muslim world and the Western world, and that films and media are a great way to bring these worlds closer together. I’m proud that ‘The Unveiled’ helped, even if only a little, in building that bridge”.

Doniphan Blair, from Cinesource, the film, video, and moving image magazine of northern California, interviews Executive Director Catinca Tabacaru about the inception of Women’s Voices Now, and what to expect at the upcoming Women’s Voices Now Festival.

When talking about the Women’s Voices Now Festival selections, Catinca states “We achieved a very balanced take on the situation. We stayed away from extreme views. We focused on talking about women’s rights without falling into the political or religious argument, which is the traditional blueprint for discussing these issues in the media. There are lot of political issues being explored in our film but only when they are directly effecting women’s rights.”