Anonymous Comrade writes:

Coming Up Short:
Young Women & Global Women

New York City, Nov. 5 & 13, 2005

Tickets are almost gone for these two film events so get them while you can!

November 5th 6:30PM

COMING UP SHORT: Young Women
Featuring...

GROWING UP FAST (Joanna Lipper)
This documentary follows a group of teen parents through their last months of high school, as they share their personal stories and discuss the difficult decisions, challenges and responsibilities they face. While highlighting the difficulties of teen pregnancy and parenthood, this film also shows the strength, courage, resilience, spirit and self-awareness of these adolescents, and charts their rise to meet the challenge of
supporting their families while simultaneously working to graduate from high school with the help of tutoring and daycare. Filmmaker will be in attendance.

WHY GET MARRIED? (Anne Stirling)
This documentary is evocative and thought-provoking, taking a look at the institution of marriage, how it differs in Canada and the US, and whether it is our nature to want to be in couples or in marriage. The film evolved from a series of interviews spanning three years and two widely flung and disparate settings. Singles, gays, marrieds, divorced, never-marrieds, wedding planners and marriage experts - no one was safe from the
provocative interrogator determined to find the answers to her questions.

November 13th 6:30PM

COMING UP SHORT: Global Women
Featuring...

WHEN THE STORM CAME (Shilpi Gupta)
When the Storm Came is a short documentary profiling Kunnan Pushpora, a village in Indian-Administered Kashmir. Through evocative interviews, the film reconstructs the night of February 23, 1991, when villagers say they were victims of a mass rape at the hands of Indian security forces. When the Storm Came tells the intimate story of a few of the victims and depicts the impact the rape continues to have on the community over a decade later. The film culminates with a stark reminder of the
universality of rape as a 'weapon' in conflict across the globe,
persisting throughout time.

SADAA E ZAN (Renee Bergan)
Filmed in March 2002, Sadaa E Zan collects the voices of several Afghan women living in Kabul, Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan. In a land where 50% of women are widows and nearly everyone has lost a family member, these brave women of all ages, recount their struggles and victories from living under twenty three years of war. From the Soviet invasion to the Civil War to the extremist Taliban, women were always the first victims. With the Taliban now gone, Afghanistan finally finds itself with the possibility of peace. But will it last? This, they believe, is in the hands of the international community. Finally, these women have a way to voice their concerns.

These film screenings will be held at the Pioneer Theater (155 E. 3rd St at Avenue A). Tickets are $9 and everyone who attends will receive a gift bag full of prizes from our sponsors worth over $50. Space is limited. To buy tickets, go to:
November 5th: http://www.tix.com/Event.asp?Event=38405
November 13th: http://www.tix.com/Event.asp?Event=37528

Mr and Mr and Mrs and Mrs

James Davidson, London Review of Books

Reviewing:

The Friend by Alan Bray

Chicago, 380 pp, £28.00

In 1913, Turkish workmen restoring the Mosque of the Arabs in Istanbul uncovered the floor of a Dominican church. Among the gravestones was a particularly striking one in grey-white marble with pink and blue veins. Two helmets with slits for eyes faced each other, like a pair of beaky dolphins about, clangingly, to kiss: ‘Tomb Slab of an English Couple’, the label in Istanbul’s Archaeological Museum says.

The couple were illustrious knights of the royal chamber of Richard II, Sir William Neville and Sir John Clanvowe, ‘the Castor and Pollux of the Lollard movement’, as the medieval historian Bruce McFarlane called them. Neville died just four days after Clanvowe, the inscription records, in October 1391. The Westminster Chronicle fills in the details. Following the death of Clanvowe, ‘for whom his love was no less than for himself’, Neville starved himself to death. Beneath the helmets their shields lean on each other, indicating the position of the bodies beneath. Their coats-of-arms are identical, half-Neville, half-Clanvowe, a blend called ‘impalement’, used to show the arms of a married couple, with Neville’s saltire on the husband’s half, Clanvowe’s bearing on that of the wife. Well, not quite. There are two impaled shields rather than the usual one, indicating a mutual exchange of arms, a double dubbing, so to speak.