Tasveer Newsletter: March 18th, 2011
With only few days to go for the big opening night of Aaina2011 at SAAM, and Friday YKB Tickets almost gone (only 5 left, last time I checked), we didn't want to miss this opportunity to tell you about our films, perfomance, and book reading at Aaina. I am also delighted to share that Gardner Center's Mimi Gates and Sarah Loudon, without whose help and support this festival has been impossible, will be there on the opening night watching Yoni Ki Baat with us.
YKB being the showcase event of Aaina, some don't know we also show films, documentaries, showcase other perfomances and local artists at the festival. Please check out our Tasveer webpage.
One last appeal from the organizers of the festival-- Come to our festival and let your friends and family know about this festival. That is how we ask you to support the festival. This festival is for you, a labor of love! ok time to go play hide and go seek with my son. He has finished counting, many times over.
--- Rita Meher, Executive Director, Tasveer
A Note from Mimi Gates, Gardner Center for Asian Art and Ideas
We are pleased to collaborate with Tasveer, by sponsoring performances of Yoni Ki Baat, and hosting the Aaina Festival. For three days, the Seattle Asian Art Museum will be filled with the creative work of South Asian women. Tasveer does so much to strengthen ties within our community, and with South Asian communities across the world. To all involved as organizers, volunteers, performers, and artists, we offer our congratulations and warmest thanks!
Mimi Gardner Gates
Director Emerita,
Seattle Art Museum
Some amazing films and documentaries at Aaina 2011!!!
Did you know we are also showing some unforgetful documentaries and films at Aaina 2011? All films are suggested donation of $8-$10. The reason for making it a donation based ticketing is to make it affordable and accessible for everyone. So pay what you can afford and support us.
To reserve your seats in advance, buy the Film tickets in advance: Book your seats here.
SATURDAY 1PM
Gulabi Gang (Pink Saris)
Book your seats here.
PINK SARIS is an unflinching and often amusing look at these unlikely political activists and their charismatic leader; in extraordinary scenes, we watch Sampat launch herself into the centre of family dramas, witnessed by scores of spectators, convinced her mediation is the best path for these vulnerable girls. Her partner Babuji, who has watched Sampat change over the years, is less certain... If patriarchy is our challenge, then is man the only perpetrator?
• Reserve your seats in advance, buy the Film tickets: http://tinyurl.com/6esw8o4
I Am (formerly Out & About)
What do parents do when they find out that their child is gay? Having lost the opportunity to tell her mother that she is a lesbian, a young Indian filmmaker in search of answers, travels across India to meet with parents of other gay and lesbian South Asians. I Am is a personal and revealing feature film that journeys to a landscape where being gay is a criminal and punishable offence. Can this documentary conversation offer any resolution for either the filmmaker or the parents she meets? With courage, determination, and humor, families share untold stories that have thus far remained in the realm of secrecy and silence. This is sneak peak into the full feature we will be showing at ISAFF
• Reserve your seats in advance, buy the Film tickets: http://tinyurl.com/6esw8o4
SATURDAY 3PM
Hiding Divya
(
Rehana Mirza, US/India, 2006, 86min, Hindi/English)
Book your seats here.
A rare, realistic and poignant glimpse into the lives of three generations of women: the bipolar matriarch Divya Shah (played by revered actress Madhur Jaffrey); her estranged daughter Linny (starring former Miss USA India, Pooja Kumar); and, Linny's 16-year-old daughter, Jia (newcomer Madelaine Massey), whose emotional turmoil is buried under a veil of secrecy.
Combining the deft humor of Mirza's award-winning shorts with the philosophical twists of her acclaimed stage plays, HIDING DIVYA tells a story of denial, shame, guilt and, most of all, love. More on Hiding Divya here.
Meet Rehana Mirza at Aaina 2011, director of Hiding Divya!
Rehana Mirza is a screenwriter, playwright and director. HIDING DIVYA marks her feature film debut. Mirza, 29, is co-founder (with her sister Rohi Mirza Pandya) and Artistic Director of Desipina & Company, a South Asian and Asian-American arts company promoting cross-pollination in theatre and film.
SATURDAY 5PM
Women of Nepal: 2 Nepali films and one Nepali play on Women
Book your seats here.
Girlworld Project
(Amy Benson , US, 2010, 20min, work-in-progress, Nepali/English)
Director Amy Benson, a West Seattle native, will be present.
GirlWorld Project is made up of intimate, in-depth portraits of three Nepali girls struggling to go to and stay in school. The final documentary will be told in three 90-minute films spanning a five-year period. In the film, they will introduce the main characters, watch them as they contend with major challenges as well as get the audience hooked on the girls and their stories. Compared to their noneducated peers, they will be getting married older, having fewer children. Their mothers will gain confidence and independence and their fathers responsibility. Their families’ standard of living will rise; their homes will improve. Not statistically—literally, visibly.
Swasnimanchhe: A Married Woman; a one-act play
(Asha Magarati, 20min, Nepali) Asha Magarati is visiting from Kathmandu, Nepal.
Swasnimanchhe is dramatic comedy based on lives of 3 wives of contemporary Nepal, and reflects how the relationships are changing here. It will be performed by our guest performer Asha Magarati from Kathmandu, Nepal.
1. Mamata Gurung, a schoolteacher, is married with a doctor.
2.Radhika Ghising, wife of an Indian Army.
3.Kavita Biswakarma, a sex worker.
Asha Magarati will be visiting from Kathmandu to perform in this one-act play. A well-known playwright actor in Nepal, she has acted in many Nepali films, and plays. When she is not acting, she teaches drama to kids in Kathmandu. She is the featured actress in the film Chaukaithi we will be showing before her performance.
Asha's performance will also be followed by a short film Chaukaith in which she has acted.
Chaukaith (“Threshold”)
(Deepak Rauniyar & Asha Magarati, Nepal, 2008, 31min, Nepali)
Chaukaith is an encounter between two young women, a housewife and a single, divorced mother working as a census officer. All the acting is improvised, with no scripted dialogue.
Chaukaith portraits contemporary features of Nepalese society and it also raises questions about barriers among different people and societies, but in a more intimate and domestic context - in which a woman searches for her identity, a life outside her own threshold.
Sunday 3PM
Afghan Girls can Kick
(Bahareh Hosseni, Afghanistan, 2007, 50 min, Dari, English subtitles )
Register your seats here.
“Afghan girls can kick” is an intimate fly-on-the-wall documentary portrait of teenage girls breaking the stereotypes set for them by intensely conservative Afghan society, in some cases escaping grinding poverty, gaining self-esteem and confidence as players in Afghanistan’s first ever women’s national football team.The film follows the team during preparations for their first competitive international matches, concentrating on a number of the players and their journey from growing up under the Taliban, to their life in modern-day Afghanistan and their hopes for the future.
As a child, Roya had to collect waste paper off the filthy, dusty streets of Kabul’s slums in order to find fuel for her family. Found by an Afghan charity helping street children, she received an education and found she had a talent for football. She now plays centre-forward for the national women’s team, but also works teaching and training other children who are still forced to work on the streets to help their families.Other members of the team recount their problems with the Taliban and how football helped them to see a future in present-day Afghanistan, beset by insecurity and suicide bombings.
The film offers a rare and intimate insight into the lives of young Afghan women, showing them as people individuals striving for a future and not just passive victims.
About the Filmmaker: Bahareh Hosseini is a 32-year-old freelance Iranian film-maker based in Britain. After studying fine art in Tehran, Bahareh worked as a painter, actress and performance artist, before moving into film-making. She has since worked as a self-shooter director/producer on a range of documentaries and has shot a variety of projects in Afghanistan,Africa and the UK. For her first solo documentary production, Bahareh spent three months living in Afghanistan following a group of young women breaking the mould of what it means to be an Afghan woman in the national football team.
Sunday 1PM, FREE
Afghans in America: a Reading from One Story, Thirty Stories
One Story, Thirty Stories is an anthology of American writing. As the military and media continue to spin their own agendas in and about Afghanistan, join us for nuanced perspectives on Afghans in America with Sahar Muradi and Gazelle Samizay.
Program includes readings, photographs and conversations with them.
About Sahar Muradi: Sahar Muradi was born in Kabul, Afghanistan and raised in New York and Florida. She holds a B.A. in creative writing and literature from Hampshire College, and an M.P.A. in international development from New York University.In 2003, Sahar returned to Kabul to work for two years at the Afghan Foreign Ministry and at the Foundation for Culture and Civil Society. She is co-founder of the Association of Afghan American Writers and an Organizing Fellow for the Open City Project, a community-based writing project through the Asian American Writers' Workshop. Sahar lives in New York City.
About Gazelle Samizay: Gazelle Samizay was born in Kabul, Afghanistan and now resides in the US. Using video and photography she explores the intersection of her Afghan heritage and American upbringing through her status as a woman in both spaces. Her work investigates how traditions may be perpetuated, reconfigured or challenged in new locales. Samizay’s photographs and videos have been exhibited across the US and internationally, including Brazil, Bulgaria, Egypt, France, Indonesia, Pakistan, and the UK. Samizay is a recipient of the Princess Grace Experimental Film Honoraria, the 1885 Graduate Fellowship in Arts and Humanities, and the Northern Trust Enrichment Award, among others. She received her Bachelor’s from the University of Washington and Master's in Fine Arts at the University of Arizona.
Aaina Tickets on Sale!
Aaina tickets are up for online sale! Reserve your seats now before they sell out. Don't wait click on the link below.
Aaina, “mirror” in Hindi/Urdu, is an annual South Asian Women’s Festival, focusing on and celebrating the artistic and activist work of South Asian women through performance and visual art, films, workshops, and conversations that are aimed at highlighting issues critical to the empowerment of South Asian women. Aaina is produced by Tasveer in collaboration with the Gardner Center for Asian Arts & Ideas.
Tasveer is a Seattle-based grassroots community organization that is committed to bringing independent progressive South Asian films and artists to the Pacific Northwest. See More
All programs to be held at Seattle Asian Art Museum (SAAM) at the Volunteer Park.
• Yoni Ki Baat 2011 tickets: http://tinyurl.com/4uzs9j8 3 shows
Friday, March 25, 8-10pm
Saturday, March 26, 8-10pm
Sunday, March 27, 5-7pm
• Film tickets: http://tinyurl.com/6esw8o4
Saturday, March 26th
Gulabi Gang, 1pm
Hiding Divya, 3pm
Women of Nepal, 2 films and a play, 5p
Sunday, March 27th
Afghan Girls can Kick, 3p
March 2011 issue of Courageous Creativity
 The founders of Flying Chickadee, Shirin Shubani and Shahana Dattagupta, bring yet another amazing edition of Courageous Creativity. The March 2011 issue of Courageous Creativity celebrates International Women's Day and put a special focus on Tasveer's Aaina festival. Click on the image to download the issue.
Read on as a man kicks off our issue with his perspective on women's issues, which he believes are really men's issues. Read about one woman's personal insights will making a documentary on the "Pink Chaddi (Underwear) Campaign," and about another woman's journey with Yoni ki Baat (South Asian adaptation of Vagina Monologues). Gain insight into the insidious subtleties of abuse and oppression through a powerful poem and a videographer's insights. Enjoy breathtaking celebratory jewelry-art, and most of all, gain vision from our youngest contributor - a little girl who lost her eyesight to cancer.
Community Events
5th Annual Holi Celebration 2011 at Trinity Nightclub Tonight!!!
Friday, March 18th, 2011, Trinity Nightclub
All Tasveer newsletter subscribers, you can get on on the guestlist for FREE. Just Email: Guestlist@DJKazan.com w/ full names
DJ Kazan & Trinity Nightclub present 5th Annual Holi Celebration 2011!
Seattle's best Annual Holi celebration that has hosted Jay Sean, DJ Rekha and other international and local celebrities.
PRIZES & PERKS!
★ Win 2 Free Trips to India, Tickets to the Cricket World Cup Finals (Mumbai) & India Fashion Week (Delhi)!
|
