The New York Times reports that UN officials cited that approximately 500 women were raped in eastern Congo in July and August, demonstrating that both rebel militias and government troops used sexual violence as a weapon.

We are releasing 2 titles this Fall dealing with the current situation in Congo, CONGO IN FOUR ACTS, which is composed of 4 short films including one specifically about violence against women, and STATE OF MIND: HEALING TRAUMA about Albert Pesso, an American psychotherapist who brings his method to Congo to help war victims, including a woman who was held hostage and sexually abused for two years.

Labels: albert pesso, congo, fall 2010 release, new titles, New York Times, psychotherapy, war, women's issues

In SAUDI SOLUTIONS, filmmaker Bregtje van der Haak, the first Western filmmaker ever granted permission to film the lives of Saudi women, takes us inside this closed society where fewer than five percent of women work. She profiles several women with professional careers and asks them to explain what it means to be a modern woman in a fundamentalist Islamic society.

Labels: anthropology, Islam, Middle East, women's issues

Gathering steam in the US Congress, a recent non-binding resolution passed the House Committee on Foreign Affairs that asks Japan to acknowledge and apologize for drafting women into sexual service during WWII. It will move on to a vote in the House and is expected to pass. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has promoted "historical amnesia" (Norimitsu Onishi in the NY Times), refusing to issue any apologies regardless of any Congressional resolution.

SENSO DAUGHTERS by Noriko Sekiguchi offers powerful testimony from women who lived through it. The film caused an uproar when it came out because Sekiguchi, Japanese herself, not only condemns the abuse but the society that continues to deny it happened.

Labels: Article 9, comfort women, Japan, Shinzo Abe, women's issues

Sara Baartman, also known as "The Hottentot Venus," was a young Khoi Khoi woman taken from her home in South Africa to be crudely prodded and exhibited as a sideshow attraction in Britain in the early 1800's. Her life is the subject of a new book, "African Queen: The Real Life of the Hottentot Venus" by Rachel Holmes just released by Random House. Caroline Elkins, the Hugo K. Foster associate professor of African studies at Harvard, reviewed the book in this Sunday's New York Times noting, "The story of Saartjie Baartman — the Hottentot Venus’s real name — is inherently fascinating, and littered with a diverse cast of highly unlikable characters."

Learn more about Baartman in Zola Maseko's multiple award-winning doc, THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SARA BAARTMAN. Called "telling and quite powerful" by the American Historical Review, the film explores Baartman's life and the legacy of racism and sexism her exploitation represented, which lived on for over a century after her death. And following up the first film, Maseko returned to Baartman’s story when French senator Nicolas About introduced a law to repatriate Baartman’s remains to South Africa chronicled in THE RETURN OF SARA BAARTMAN.

Labels: Baartman, history, Hottentot Venus, South Africa, women's issues