| Index | 2 reviews in total |
3 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
A very important film, 23 December 2002
Author:
jessreed
Although it's been years since I've seen this film, I remember its power in dealing with the issue of female circumcision. It is tender, reflective, painful, and somehow empowering. Tracy Chapman and Alice Walker appear in the film, as do many "nameless" women who have experienced circumcision, have performed circumcisions, and those who have escaped it. I also recommend reading Alice Walker's novels Possessing the Secret of Joy, which deals with, among other issues, the devastation of one woman's experience at the hands of her mutilator.
3 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Colonialism attacked by...colonialism, 23 November 2004
Author:
Rod Morgan from DC
Wasn't until I read a radical film criticism book called "Keyframes"
(Tinkcom and Villarejo) that I could articulate the problem with this
film.
2 feminists (American and British) with a sense of self-important
"truth" wander into 2 countries without much research or organization
to "do good." The result turns the multicultural area of Africa into a
very large place that is all the same, advances that there could be no
reason for anyone ever to have performed these rituals that they do not
understand, depict the elderly circumcisions as a monster, ignore a
women's activist group because their cause was not our cause...in
short, act like the very colonial powers they are attempting to
discredit.
A muddle, but not without emotional power. Just don't think much as you
watch...and get your little charge of Liberal energy.
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