Women without borders film festival

Women Without Borders Film Festival
UWM Union Theater
March 11 – 15



In celebration of Women’s History Month, the fourth annual Women Without Borders Film Festival offers five nights of stories exploring the nature of feminine identity in diverse environments – some beautiful, some more brutal than imaginable. Screening at the UWM Union Theater from March 11 through 15, this year’s festival is more concise than last. It opens with an experimental splash on Tuesday, March 11 with the MadCat Women’s Touring Film Festival Program, a series of short documentaries by female filmmakers that peers into the definition of identity from divergent perspectives.

Kylie Grey’s short documentary My Home — Your War screens on Wednesday; in it, Grey follows Layla Hassahn, a woman from Baghdad, showing the story of her life before, during and after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. This evocative and edifying film presents the complexity of Iraq under Saddam Hussein and captures a fascinating culture on an intimate level as Layla struggles for a sense of identity in her arranged marriage and in a world coming unhinged around her. Her family provides another keen perspective, especially Layla’s son, who personifies the lost generation of Iraqi youth. Before the invasion he idolizes the military machismo of Saddam Hussein as well as Western pop icons like Britney Spears; after the invasion he embodies the systemic dissatisfaction taking root, with a rifle under his arm and a deep resentment of the United States. The filmmaker was unable to return to Baghdad to visit her subjects, so the last footage we see is Layla’s own, taken on a camera Grey sent to her. It’s a powerful moment in a powerful film.

March 13 brings Lisa F. Jackson’s The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo, the eye-opening winner of the Special Jury Prize at Sundance in 2008. Jackson’s unflinching look into the culturally accepted brutality of gang rape in Central Africa is relentless. Women speak of their experiences with weary listlessness as the overwhelming tragedy of their memories plays out in simple English subtitles. Raped by groups of men (usually Congolese military) and mutilated with sticks and guns, the barbarity of the violence is shown from the hospitals where the women are treated. Jackson presents their plight with personal resonance; she was raped by a pair of men in America decades ago.



The final two days of the festival are given over to Jennifer Fox’s exhaustive, six-episode epic Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman. From New York to Wyoming to places as diverse as South Africa, France, India, Germany, Pakistan and Cambodia, Flying documents the stories of individual women all over the world as they struggle to define their lives in an era of unprecedented autonomy. Fox’s filmmaking style cuts with the jagged edge of contemporary documentary filmmaking, resulting in a work that is far from perfect or polished, but not easily dismissed. Jennifer Fox will appear at the UWM Theater for both screenings. VS

All screenings are free of admission. For more information, visit the Union Theatre online.