Name:JMD •
Title: "Water" - A film by Deepa Mehta •
Date posted: 05/21/07 22:23
Q: "Deepa Mehta's Water is a magnificent film. The ensemble acting of the women in the widows' hostel is exceptional: intimate, painful, wounded, jaundiced, corrupted, tender, tough. The fluid lyricism of the camera provides an unsettling contrast to the arid difficulties of the characters' lives. The film has serious, challenging things to say about the crushing of women by atrophied religious and social dogmas, but, to its great credit, it tells its story from inside its characters, rounding out the human drama of their lives, and unforgettably touching the heart."
- Salman Rushdie
http://water.mahiram.com/
"In February of this year (2000), Deepa Mehta was to direct the film Water in India. It was the third of a trilogy of films for this Indian-born woman who now resides in Canada. The first was Fire, a story of two middle-class women drawn together in search of the warmth that their loveless marriages lacked. The onscreen lesbian relationship between the women angered many in India. Extreme protesters went as far as burning the cinema that first screened Fire to the ground, and Deepa Mehta was shunned by her country of birth for showing the world what was considered bad images of India. "
[i.e. showing the truth - how terrible they treat women.]
"The second film, Earth, is a love story encompassing conflicting religions and politics between India and Pakistan. Finally, Water, is a film about Indian widows in the 1930s. In the past and present, many women whose husbands have died are forced to enter "widow houses." Labeled as worthless without a husband to measure themselves by, they struggle to survive by begging and often turn to prostitution. It happened in the ‘30s and is still happening today. With this information in mind, I believed working as a clapper loader on a film to be directed by a woman of such courage would be an interesting experience..."
http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/28/water.html
"The film examines the plight of a group of widows forced into poverty at a temple in the holy city of Varanasi. It focuses on a relationship between one of the widows, who wants to escape the social restrictions imposed on widows, and a man who is from the highest caste and a follower of Mahatma Gandhi."
Yes, sexism and fundamentalist religion always go hand in hand. The more hardcore fundamentalist it is, the more hatred/oppression of women; it's a good way to gauge a religion - ask 'how are the women treated?' The more enlightened a religion, the more balanced/equal, the less barbaric and unfair it will also be. Just as there are fundamentalist branches of all religions, there are fortunately, always also the more egalitarian, esoteric, inner branches of those religions, too.
As an atheist website once said "One day women will be equal - but when it happens, it will come in spite of religion, not because of it!" So true, so true.
Name:Anchorite •
Date: 05/22/07 3:09
A: HOOVES
What if Wapiti could do the Calculus
Would he still be a Wapiti
And what of horse topology
What if hooves fly universe
Do thoughts equestre
Register
The Master, or the Play
~Anchorite
Name:Panluna •
Date: 05/22/07 16:26
A: I've decided to follow Bast..Catwoman
Name:Not Dattaswami •
Date: 05/22/07 18:03
A: .
Name:Not Dattaswami •
Date: 05/30/07 0:26
A: ..
Name:JMD •
Date: 05/30/07 8:59
A: Isis and Mary were called 'Star of the Sea.'...Just as the embryo is suspended in the amniotic fluid of the womb, so we are suspended in the invisible matrix of life....In mythology, the longed-for treasure is often to be found across or beneath the sea, or is imagined as the Water of Life. In dreams, immersion in water is, symbolically, to enter into the dimension of the Feminine, the dimension of the instinctual soul to be renewed, cleansed, restored."
-Andrew Harvey & Anne Baring, 'The Divine Feminine'
