Women’s Cinema from Tangiers to Tehran
Director and actress Niki Karimi joins us on March 1 to present her films One Night and A Few Days Later . . . . Well known for her portrayals of forceful, independent women in such films as Sara (1993), Two Women (1999), and The Hidden Half (2001), she also assisted Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami on The Wind Will Carry Us and ABC Africa before going on to direct her own films. In advocating for what she calls “the kind of cinema which describes reality and which gets close to people’s daily lives without making compromises,” she speaks for many of the courageous women whose works are presented here.
A celebration of women filmmakers from North Africa and the Middle East, as well as the diaspora in Europe, this series represents a remarkable geographic, cultural, and stylistic range. In documentaries, features, and experimental works, the directors depict urban attitudes and rural traditions, the dream of escape and the isolation of exile, and the comforts and entrapments of family. But as James Neil, co-curator of the British series that inspired this one, has said, a common theme runs through the films: “They are about women who struggle and strive against their surroundings, and they’re directed by women who have had those experiences themselves.”
http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/womens_cinema_tangiers_tehran
