Tuesday, May 2, 2006
AWAKENING Premiers at Santa Cruz Film Festival
I am happy to report that my documentary film AWAKENING will premier at the Santa Cruz Film Festival May 6, 2006. It will then screen again in California on May 20th, 2006 at the Mendocino Film Festival.
In the shadow of today’s global economy over two billion people lack access to any form of credit. Although many see their poverty as inescapable, some of the world’s poor are awakening to other possibilities. Through education that challenges their oppression and with access to micro-loans, many are liberating themselves from generations of economic apartheid. Shops are being built, organic farms seeded and families that once had limited opportunities now look to a sustainable economic future with hope.
In Bihar, India’s poorest state, Sister Mary Lobo has organizes village women into groups where they learn to save small sums and invest their capital as a group. A new ideology is spreading among these that far transcends the boundaries of rural women’s traditional roles.
In Afghanistan, the nation’s first woman-led micro-finance institution believes the nation’s long-term success is dependent on women’s economic empowerment. The film reveals the hidden lives of Afghan women few Westerners have seen. Now free to run their own businesses, they talk openly about their lives under the Taliban and current initiatives for women’s rights.
Is this the beginning of a new economic system, in which the poor band together to become more self-sufficient? In the film, Sister Mary Lobo, says: “A new class is being born, a new world is being born, with some alternative values like sharing, mutuality, collaboration, closeness to Nature, the values precisely with which economic globalization and the corporate world need to be challenged.”
# 5/2/06; 7:41:44 PM
AWAKENING Premiers at Santa Cruz Film Festival
I am thrilled to report that my new documentary film AWAKENING will have its premier screening at the Santa Cruz film festival on May 8th 2006. Then it will show again at the Mendocino Film Festival on May 20th, 2006.
In the shadow of today’s global economy over two billion people lack access to any form of credit. Although many see their poverty as inescapable, some of the world’s poor are awakening to other possibilities. Through education that challenges their oppression and with access to micro-loans, many are liberating themselves from generations of economic apartheid. Shops are being built, organic farms seeded and families that once had limited opportunities now look to a sustainable economic future with hope.
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p> </o:p>
In <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:place><st1:City>Bihar</st1:City>, <st1:country-region>India</st1:country-region></st1:place>’s poorest state, Sister Mary Lobo has organizes village women into groups where they learn to save small sums and invest their capital as a group. A new ideology is spreading among these that far transcends the boundaries of rural women’s traditional roles. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
In <st1:country-region><st1:place>Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region>, the nation’s first woman-led micro-finance institution believes the nation’s long-term success is dependent on women’s economic empowerment. The film reveals the hidden lives of Afghan women few Westerners have seen. Now free to run their own businesses, they talk openly about their lives under the Taliban and current initiatives for women’s rights. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
Is this the beginning of a new economic system, in which the poor band together to become more self-sufficient? In the film, Sister Mary Lobo, says: “A new class is being born, a new world is being born, with some alternative values like sharing, mutuality, collaboration, closeness to Nature, the values precisely with which economic globalization and the corporate world need to be challenged.”
# 5/2/06; 7:34:54 PM
