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Social Justice Cinema

A conversation about The Apology, Airing October 22 on POV

By Bijan Tehrani on 10/21/2018 CinéEqual, Videos

The Apology depicts the personal journey of three women whose lives were upended when they were forced into sexual slavery during World War II. United Nations researchers report that between 1931 and 1945, the Japanese military forced an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 women and girls into institutionalized sexual slavery. Euphemistically referred to as “comfort women,” they typically ranged in age from 11 to 33 and were taken from Japanese colonies from Korea to Indonesia. Mobilized through forced recruitment, kidnapping, false employment offers or sale by family members and employers, they served in brothels supervised by the Japanese military. Seventy years…

Pariyerum Perumal: Civility in an Uncivil, Casteist Society

By World Cinema Reports' Editors on 10/13/2018 CinéEqual, Videos

Among other things, the film showcases how the campuses in Tamil Nadu are widely demarcated among the student population based on caste. Pariyerum Perumal (God Who Mounts a Horse) is a very strong film. It invites a society, which is entrenched with casteist prejudices, for a debate and asks people to rethink these extreme forms of incivility. It takes us through the highly emotional struggles of a scheduled-caste youth who aspires to become a spokesperson of dignity and human rights for his community. He thus wishes to become like his role model, Dr B.R. Ambedkar, an unparalleled revolutionary leader of modern…

Medea Benjamin talks about her book, Inside Iran

By Bijan Tehrani on 10/08/2018 CinéEqual

Social-justice filmmakers are in constant search for important and crucial sources for subjects for their films. The new book by Medea Benjamin, Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran, opens new horizons for those in search of captivating and pertinent issues. Inside Iran is a very honest and precise look into the relationship between Iran and the USA. The current U.S. administration’s policy of imposing unfair sanctions and beating the war drum by leaving the Iran Nuclear deal puts the lives of millions of Iranians at risk. Iran is among the nations listed in…

Border Among Los Angeles Film Festival Winners

By World Cinema Reports' Editors on 09/30/2018 CinéEqual

The newest of the fall festivals wraps up today, and the Los Angeles Film Festival has announced Tom Shadyac’s powerful and inspiring true story Brian Banks as winner of its Audience Award for Fiction Feature Film and the acclaimed Stuntman as Audience Award choice winner for Best Documentary Feature. As the Toronto Film Festival annually proves, it is the Audience Award that often gets the most attention and is most representative of a particular film’s success at many of these fests. At its world premiere screening Saturday afternoon, Brian Banks received five standing ovations by my count as the key creative team and actors were brought up on stage…

Alex Moratto talks about Socrates

By Bijan Tehrani on 09/29/2018 CinéEqual, Videos

After his mother’s sudden death, Socrates, a 15-year-old living on the margins of São Paulo’s coast, must survive on his own while coming to terms with his grief. Socrates was produced by a crew of 16-20-year-olds from the Querô Institute, a UNICEF-supported project that provides social inclusion through filmmaking to underrepresented youths in the Baixada Santista region of São Paulo, Brazil. Produced by Ramin Bahrani (99 HOMES) and filmed with a micro budget of under twenty thousand dollars, Socrates is the debut feature film from 29-year-old Brazilian-American director Alex Moratto. Bijan Tehrani: Could we call Socrates a social justice film?…

Kenya Lifts Ban on Rafiki, a Bridging The Borders Award nominee

By World Cinema Reports' Editors on 09/26/2018 CinéEqual, Videos

The director of Rafiki, Wanuri Kahiu, sued the Kenyan government to lift a national censorship that rendered the film ineligible for the Academy Award’s Best Foreign Language Film accolade. Kenya’s LGBTQ community is celebrating after the Kenyan High Court temporarily lifted the ban on the queer drama Rafiki. The critically acclaimed film, based in Nairobi, navigates the romance between two women in a country where homosexuality is illegal, punishable by up to 14 years in prison. After months of protesting the strict criminalization and censorship of the film, hundreds attended its initial, celebratory screening. In April 2018, the Kenya Film Classification Board banned the…

The Dangers of Conflating Minority Casts with Social Justice

By World Cinema Reports' Editors on 09/25/2018 CinéEqual

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past nine months, chances are you’re probably familiar with the films Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians. It’s equally likely that you’ve read and heard all about how these two films are transforming Hollywood and the movie industry, breaking down racial boundaries for actors and actresses, combating the hateful tides of racism, and empowering minority youths all around the world. That certainly sounds impressive, but the impact that these films have had is severely over hyped. Now don’t get me wrong: both movies were engaging and fun to watch, and they both have excellent…

Nandita Das: Manto is very relevant today

By World Cinema Reports' Editors on 09/23/2018 CinéEqual, Videos

In this interview with indianexpress.com, Nandita Das talks about her globally acclaimed film Manto and tells us why the writer is so relevant even today. Das also shares her thoughts on why it is important for her to own the tag of being a ‘woman director’. Q. What made you take up this biopic? I had read Manto in college, but it was only in 2012 that I started reading his essays when the centenary celebrations started and a lot more came out about him. That’s when I realized that he is so relevant today. Whether it was about identity,…

Independent African-American Filmmakers Shape the Future

By World Cinema Reports' Editors on 09/16/2018 CinéEqual

Two upcoming film festivals, one new and one established, highlight independent black filmmakers who amplify black narratives that are often untold, forgotten, or simply ignored. While Afrofuturism is widely associated with George Clinton and his Parliament-Funkadelic collective, its connection to music can be traced back to Sun Ra, an American jazz visionary, and found in today’s hip-hop and pop. The ancestral relationship of Afrofuturism and multiple genres of music is examined in Aural Futures, a new film festival at Duke University. Aural Futures started with Ingrid LaFleur, a recent Afrofuturist mayoral candidate in Detroit. Beginning September 12, the festival consists of…

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Latest Stories
- 10/21/2018 0
  Me and My Dad wins GoE Bridging The Borders Award at Polish FF
- 10/21/2018 0
  A conversation about The Apology, Airing October 22 on POV
- 10/13/2018 0
  Pariyerum Perumal: Civility in an Uncivil, Casteist Society
- 10/12/2018 0
  THROUGH HER LENS: The Tribeca Chanel Women’s Filmmaker Program
Bridging The Border Award

At a time when physical, religious, racial, cultural, and economic borders divide the population of our planet, efforts to bridge those borders should be appreciated. In that spirit, Cinema Without Borders presents Bridging the Borders Award to the films that are most successful in bridging and connecting the people of
CineEqual

CinéEqual represents filmmakers, institutions, and community members with a focus on social justice cinema. As an integrated unit of CWB, it promotes a diverse, inclusive, and equitable democratic society that values the worth of all humans. The purpose is to educate our audience about concepts, theories, and methods related to social justice and to integrate ethical practices for solving social inequities through our online networks and resources. From studio productions like To Kill a Mockingbird to low budget films like Hotel Rwanda, I am not Your Negro, cinema has a venerable record of putting the spotlight on social injustice.