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In Film, Women's Stories Break Through At Fall Festivals

Movies

Casting Call: Hollywood Needs More Women

Bilal Qureshi has covered the Toronto International Film Festival for several years and, back in Washington, works for All Things Considered.

One of the pop culture conversations of the year has been the absence of women in cinema, both in front of and behind the camera. Stacy Smith of the USC Annenberg School has been documenting the tiny percentage of working women directors, screenwriters and producers. The MacArthur-Prize-winning cartoonist Alison Bechdel's 1985 "test" that points out the rarity of rich portrayals of women on screen still resonates. And when she accepted her Oscar for Blue Jasmine, Cate Blanchett chided an industry she said still believes that women's stories can't sell: "Those in the industry," she said, "who are foolishly clinging to the idea that female films, with women in the center are niche experiences. They are not."

At this fall's film festivals — including Toronto, New York, and London, which is underway now — films made by and about women were not treated as niche experiences but as gala premieres. Cameron Bailey, the artistic director of the Toronto Film Festival, says this year, his team of programmers "talked about gender because I was reading a lot that was happening in terms of debates around women's cinema, debates reflecting the frustrations that things hadn't progressed more." So he says he encouraged his programmers to try harder. "I didn't say to them, 'Go out and find more films by women.' I said, 'Find the best films you can, and where there are films by women, we're going to do our best to give them the best profile that we can and make sure that people pay attention.'"

From the big-screen adaptation of Cheryl Strayed's memoir Wild to Gina Prince-Bythewood's critique of pop music's hypersexualization of young women in Beyond the Lights, the films premiering at this year's festivals reflect a new energy around telling women's stories with nuance and cinematic sophistication — and, ideally, with commercial viability.

I talked with directors Olivier Assayas (Clouds of Sils Maria) and Gina Prince-Bythewood (who, before Beyond the Lights, made the romance Love & Basketball), screenwriter Julia Hart (The Keeping Room), Pakistani filmmaker Afia Nathaniel (Dukhtar), producer Bruna Papandrea (Gone Girl, Wild) and film critic Ruby Rich to talk about the role that film festivals play in closing cinema's gender gap. They had a lot to say for this story, which airs on Monday's All Things Considered.

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Seattle Swaps Columbus Day For 'Indigenous Peoples' Day'

This year's Columbus Day holiday will have a slightly different, more Native flavor in the city of Seattle. Thanks to a unanimous vote this summer by the city council, the federal holiday will now be known by a different name: Indigenous Peoples' Day.

The name change comes after activists pushed for a day to honor indigenous people instead of Christopher Columbus, the most recognizable figure linked to European contact with the Americas.

"This is about taking a stand against racism and discrimination," Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant told the Seattle Times. "Learning about the history of Columbus and transforming this day into a celebration of indigenous people and a celebration of social justice... allows us to make a connection between this painful history and the ongoing marginalization, discrimination and poverty that indigenous communities face to this day."

On Monday, the streets of Seattle will likely be filled with drums, singing, and the faces of citizens from the cities surrounding Native Nations: The Lummi, Nooksack, Tulalip, Sauk-Suiattle, Swinomish, Puyallup, Colville and 22 other Washington tribes, as well as citizens from other Indian Nations that call Seattle home.

Seattle isn't the first place to give the holiday a makeover. Earlier this year, the Minneapolis City Council also renamed Columbus Day Indigenous Peoples' Day. South Dakota celebrates Native American Day in "remembrance of the great Native American leaders who contributed so much to the history of our state." Hawaii observes Discoverers' Day in which Polynesian explorers are honored.

Of course, not everybody is happy about these changes. The AP reports that some Italian-Americans in Seattle have been upset by the change because it comes "at the expense of what essentially is Italian Heritage Day." But for those who have a negative view of Columbus' impact, the new name honors a legacy of struggle and resistance.

In the past, anti-Columbus Day protestors have clashed with the holiday's supporters, most notably in Denver where members of the American Indian Movement have taken to the streets almost yearly since the late 1980's. Those protests have quieted down in recent years, although those annual demonstrations frequently ended in arrests.

But anti-Columbus sentiment is hardly limited to the U.S. In Chile, Mapuche activists launched anti-Columbus demonstrations that turned violent last year. In 2002, indigenous people in Guatemala protested the day by shutting down highways across the country. Today, many countries in Latin America —including Mexico, El Salvador and Argentina— recognize Dia de la Raza, while in Venezuela, the holiday has been renamed the Day of Indigenous Resistance.

In the U.S., the bigger issue now is whether the holiday can survive as a growing number of cities and states decide to do away with it. According to the Pew Research Center, it's already "one of the most inconsistently celebrated U.S. holidays." Apart from federal employees, workers in only 23 states are given a paid day off to observe the holiday.

Seattle

Native Americans

columbus day

Wolverine's Death: Superheroes And The Cycle Of Eternal Return

The fourth and final issue of the weekly four-issue Marvel Comics mini-series Death of Wolverine, written by Charles Soule and drawn by Steve McNiven, will be published next Wednesday.

Here follows an excerpt from a text exchange about the series between nerd-about-town Glen Weldon (Ghweldon) and a non-comics-reading "normal" of his acquaintance (Golfrguy).

Golfrguy: dude they're killing off wolverine???????

Ghweldon: Yep. Well I mean "killing" off. You know, for now.

Golfrguy: whuuuut but he can't be killed that's his whole thing

Ghweldon: No, sure. You'd think. But they've been setting this up for a while, actually. A little over year ago, Paul Cornell, who writes the solo comic, Wolverine, took away the guy's healing factor.

Golfrguy: how

Ghweldon: "How?" Never mind how. Not important.

Golfrguy: seriously tell me

Ghweldon: It's ... It's pretty nerdy.

Golfrguy: yeah I figured tell me

Ghweldon: ... I really don't think you're ready for this nerdy jelly, pal.

Golfrguy: DUDE.

“ In comics, death is not, as Hamlet called it, 'that undiscover'd country/from whose bourne no stranger returns.' No: it's Tijuana, and there's a shuttle.

- Glen Weldon

Ghweldon: He got possessed by an evil mind-controlling world-conquering sentient virus from the Microverse.

Golfrguy: ...

Ghweldon: Yep. It blew out his healing factor like the guy was a Radio Shack sub-woofer.

Golfrguy: wait whats the microverse

Ghweldon: You know, we should really take a step back here. This is the death of a superhero in a comic book, after all. And I've told you before: In comics, death is not, as Hamlet called it, "that undiscover'd country/from whose bourne no stranger returns."

No: it's Tijuana, and there's a shuttle.

So don't worry about Wolverine. He'll be back. They all come back.

Golfrguy: wait back up the microverse is that where the micronauts were from? Same place?

Code Switch

Superhero Super-Fans Talk Race And Identity In Comics

Ghweldon: Now, I know what you're gonna say....

Golfrguy: hows a virus control a dudes mind huh

Ghweldon: You're gonna say but Glen, when Mike Marts, the Marvel editor in charge of this whole thing, spoke to Entertainment Weekly back in April, he claimed that THIS death would be different.

"The concept of 'death' in comic books can seem a bit tenuous," EW wrote, understating like crazy, "... but Marts says that Marvel approached this event 'from a standpoint of finality, of closure.'"

That sound you hear? Is the noise made when millions of nerdy eyes roll and roll and roll.

13.7: Cosmos And Culture

Rise Of The Superheroes: Winners And Losers

Here's the thing: Wolverine is a corporate-owned, heavily licensed nugget of intellectual property. He's one of the company's flagship characters, and he fuels a vast merchandising machine that includes movie franchises, videogames, toys and clothing. If anything about him changes — if, Crom forbid, he dies — the bottom drops out of the Wolverine footy pajamas market.

Here's another thing: Comics are essentially soap operas: ongoing, open-ended narratives that deny their characters the very thing that makes a story a story: the ending. Endings give shape and weight to a narrative by providing exactly what Marts so disingenuously promises: Finality. Closure.

“ Superheroes go on adventures, endlessly iterating the same spandex Ragnaroks over and over ... they can't grow, they can't learn, they can't emerge from an adventure wholly and permanently different from how they were before.

- Glen Weldon

In lieu of an ending, then, superheroes go on adventures, endlessly iterating the same spandex Ragnaroks over and over. They can change, albeit in carefully proscribed ways (I'm evil now! I'm good again! I'm dead! I'm back!) but they can't grow, they can't learn, they can't emerge from an adventure wholly and permanently different from how they were before.

Writers of corporate-owned superhero comics make their peace with this: they know their tenure with these characters is finite, that they are essentially taking Daddy's precious vintage toys off the shelf and playing with them for a period of months or years. They know, too, that when they finally, gingerly, return those toys to the shelf, they must ensure that they remain unscathed, unchanged, pristine.

Iraqis Displaced By ISIS Face Another Threat: Winter

Leeza Guerges sits on the concrete floor of the unfinished building where she lives now.

She calls for her two kids, husband and in-laws to eat the eggs, meat and rice she's prepared. The meat was donated, a rare treat for the family displaced from the northern city of Mosul when ISIS took it about two months ago.

They gather together on the floor and for a moment try to forget that they can't go home, and everything they once had is lost.

They live inside an unfinished mall — basically a construction site-turned-displacement camp in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Erbil — with about 150 other families.

Kids play soccer in one area, near latrines that the United Nations put up. Aluminum barriers create small cubicles for privacy for each family. But when winter comes, this place will be unlivable.

Parallels

For Fleeing Iraqis, Kurdish Areas Are The Safe Zone

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Iraqis at the Baharka camp for displaced people face real danger as the winter approaches with sub-zero temperatures. Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images

Iraqis at the Baharka camp for displaced people face real danger as the winter approaches with sub-zero temperatures.

Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images

Guerges says she doesn't know what she'll do. We don't have money, she says, no water heater. The family has two blankets for 10 people, and winter clothes cost money she and her husband don't have.

"How will we survive," she asks, "when it begins to rain and freeze?"

It is a question many are asking now. With winter approaching, the 1.8 million Iraqis displaced by forces of the extremist group, ISIS, face real danger with sub-zero temperatures.

People are fleeing for safety, away from the battle raging between ISIS, also known as Islamic State, and the Iraqi government. Many have lost every belonging they owned and are forced to live under bridges, in unfinished buildings and tented displacement camps in the Kurdish north.

Will Parks, head of UNICEF in northern Iraq, stands in a UN warehouse where boxes of supplies are stacked to the ceiling. He speaks to his colleagues about the distribution of hygiene kits, blankets, hypothermic kits and winter clothes.

Parks and his team have been preparing for winter since June, when ISIS first steamrolled through Mosul. But even with all the preparation, they won't be able to get warm clothes and supplies to all the vulnerable families in need.

"We are running to keep up," he says.

In areas under ISIS control, from the western Anbar province to the northern city of Mosul, Parks says they can't reach families who've been displaced and need help. Those who have fled to safety but are living outside in open areas number about 170,000 in the relatively safe Kurdish north of Iraq, he says.

The dirt and gravel at the Baharka displacement camp in northern Iraq will turn to a sea of freezing mud in the winter rain. Aid workers say they don't have enough blankets and winter clothing for all those displaced by the advance of ISIS. Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images

Even if they distribute every piece of clothing and blanket they have, at least 50,000 children will be left in the cold.

"We've got military situations all around us right now, and those are threats to life," Parks says. "But winter takes lives. It doesn't bargain. You can't push it back. You can't do airstrikes to prevent winter. Winter just kills children."

It's a killer that can't be stopped. At the Baharka displacement camp on the outskirts of Erbil, the families know that.

The tents are set up in a big lot of dirt and gravel that will turn to mud when the rain pours from the sky. Aid workers are trying to elevate the tents onto concrete, to prevent flooding.

Fathi, a young policeman from Mosul who wouldn't give his last name for fear of retribution, fled four months ago, when ISIS took his city. Every night he cries.

We don't want to be here for the winter, he says. We need a solution so we can go home.

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In Film, Women's Stories Break Through At Fall Festivals

Seattle Swaps Columbus Day For 'Indigenous Peoples' Day'

Wolverine's Death: Superheroes And The Cycle Of Eternal Return

Iraqis Displaced By ISIS Face Another Threat: Winter

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