As the country imagines the horrors of war and how it affects both soldiers "in country" and returning, it's often a by-product to cease considering the plight of the indigenous people.
Organized by Peggy Goldwyn, board member of Americans for the United Nations Population Fund, the Family of Woman Film Festival will debut next week in the Ketchum. Films to be screened will highlight those issues as seen primarily through the eyes of native women. Two of the filmmakers will be in the valley to speak after their films are screened: Mohammed Naqvi, director of "Shame" and Sedika Mojadidi, director of "Motherland Afghanistan."
Events will begin on Wednesday, Feb. 20, with a lecture given by Dr. Amreen Husain, at the Community Library in Ketchum. For five years, Husain, a staff member at Stanford Medical School, and her teammates have surgically repaired fistulas (abnormal connections between two body cavities) caused by complications in childbirth suffered by women in the small, newly independent nation of Eritrea. Fistula is an unpleasant and painful condition that leads to the death of the child and often the mother.
Their work was part of a United Nations Population Fund project funded by Johnson & Johnson. In the process, they trained Eritrean doctors to do the surgery. Eritrea is very isolated politically, and the situation for emergency obstetric care is particularly grim.
Screened on Friday will be "Motherland Afghanistan," a documentary film by Afghan-American Sedika Mojadidi, a filmmaker based in New York.
Born in Afghanistan, she was raised in Florida, where she earned her master's degree in film theory from the University of Florida. The film documents her father, Dr. Qudratullah Mojadidi, treating women in Afghanistan, where one in seven women die during childbirth.
During her youth, her father "worked every year for a month in Afghanistan," she said. "The film is about my relationship to the country via my dad's work. He began going to work there one month of the year in 1982. His family is politically active, and committed to refugee medicine."
Sedika earned a second masters degree in video from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She moved to New York and worked as a field producer and cameraperson in labor and delivery for The Learning Channel and other cable shows.
"It was a strange coincidence," she said. "I had no interest in hospitals or medicine. Both my parents are physicians but I flunked science.
"On my third show I decided I needed to develop an independent project. My dad was offered a project as a consultant for the Women's Hospital in Kabul in 2003, run by the U.S. Health and Human Services. I wanted to personalize the maternal mortality crisis through the eyes of my father. I thought it was an intriguing idea, to follow him in Afghanistan.
"It's about his work, but there're a lot of stories in it. My mother and I are in it, and the patients that my father treats. He is someone trying to make a difference. He's been doing this 20 years now, a sense of that."
Her return to Afghanistan was "overwhelming and very different," she said. "The city had changed. So much had been destroyed. You're in a situation where people are literally dying. This was the first U.S.-sponsored hospital and it was a complete disaster. They'd done very little. There was no soap, no gloves, or basic life support. It was a travesty. The U.S. spent $26 million and they still don't have functioning bathrooms. The film shows my father's experience and disillusionment with the program."
"Motherland Afghanistan" relates its moving story through archival footage and photos, a visit to a local orphanage and scenes of Kabul's devastated cityscape.
The Family of Woman Film Festival
What: Lecture on "Hope in Eritrea—Safe Motherhood and UNFPA" with Dr. Amreen Husain of the Stanford University School of Medicine.
When: 6 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 20.
Where: The Community Library, Ketchum.
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What: Cocktail reception with UNFPA members and filmmakers.
When: 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 21.
Where: Private home. Call 622-1554.
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Movies: Feb. 22, 7 p.m. "Motherland Afghanistan," Feb. 23, 7 p.m. "Shame," Feb. 24, 4 p.m. "Water," 7 p.m. "Moolade."
Where: nexStage Theatre, 120 South Main St., Ketchum.
Tickets: $15 Chapter One Bookstore, Iconoclast Books or nexStage Theatre.
Filmmaker Sedika Mojadidi will discuss ?Motherland Afghanistan? after the screening on Friday, Feb. 22.
