ADAM: Max Meyer breaks with tradition.

stars:
Hugh Dancy, Rose Byre, Frankie Faison, Mark Linn-Baker with Amy Iring and Peter Gallagher.

Hold on to your hat, secure your seat belt, the film "Adam" breaks with tradition. Imagine a main stream film, Fox Searchlight films where the women are Not the essentially irrelevant characters who appear when a need to show the otherwise perfect man mess up because of Her, the Bad one , the woman otherwise kept out of the viewer's awareness.

In Adam the women are the driving message vehicles opposing the men who have so much trouble making it in this world.

The pivotal moment is encapsulated in the concept of "the lie": the big lie, the little lie. In this film "the lie" is one and the same. When untruth is celebrated all bets are off, is the unspoken message that cries out to the viewers loud and clear.

Lies of omission (secretive extra marital affairs) and lies of convenience and lies in business, financial irregularities seem to hold equal weight in this less than exciting film.

Adam is message driven, without benefit of a hint at character change. That is not to be confused with change of behavior. Behavior, the human ability to learn, is amply shown, is actually the overt message of the film. But in this day and age with all the technological advancement in film making, with all the great ways of telling a compelling story, Adam falls so short of interesting that the audience was restless and even I had trouble crying at the film's end.

The one outstanding moment was the on scream appearance of Amy Irving. Her professional achievement was on a par with the reigning Queen of film, Meryl Streep. Too bad she was given a minor role. Imagine if the film had used a "mature" woman rather than a young, lost soul to carry the message forward?

Adam, is a lesson in not to lie, not to omit, not to manipulate and to be emotionally honest. A lesson none of us in today's world will learn no matter how much we believe in its importance.

It just ain't real.


Linda Zises
Criticalwomen@blogspot.com
WBAI Women's Collective

A Memory Revisited:

Have we forgotten Raymond Velez from the Bronx, the politician the then New York City Mayor Ed Koch called "the poverty pimp". Have we forgotten that Espada Jr. has a history, a decade of being elected on the Democratic ticket because... that is where the votes are and once elected to the State Senate, switching to the Republican side because... that is where the money is?

I met Raymond Velez in early 1970's. He was a short, full breasted, wider than tall man, whose head sat on his shoulders without apparent need of a neck.
He presided with his arms wide perched on a dais awaiting the moment when his voice, his pearls of wisdom would be heard on air. Radio at its finest.

I was working for the City of New York and had, at his insistence, written a grant proposal. I was also pregnant, in my ninth month when Raymond sent his "boys " to my New York City office to learn the fate of our effort to get him more federal money.
I had my feet slightly raised as I sat in my desk chair His "boys" surrounded me. When the fatal piece of paper upon which a rejection of our request for money was plainly stated and read aloud by me, the assembled men erupted into fierce yelling, complaining, gesturing. I sat up, uncomfortably erect or as erect as I could given my physical state and said, ""It's not my fault". When that failed to calm the clamor in the room, I became more agitated. That's when i pulled rank. "Get out of my office"", I yelled "Out, Out!" and as I stood up with great difficulty the men dispersed. All except one. He was a slender man who stood quietly while his fellow travelers ran away.
"From where I come, men don't treat pregnant women this way" he said. Please, let me drive you home".
I did.
It was a quiet trip, no words seemed necessary in the wake of so many That was on a Friday. On Monday morning January 3, in the beginning moments of a fierce snow storm, I delivered my second son.

Linda Z(ises)
criticalwomen@blogspot.com

A Walk to Beautiful: DVD

Director/Producer Mary Olive Smith

An Engel Entertainment production in association with NOVA
Filmed in Ethiopia


The setting is beautiful, breathtaking. the hardship endured by the native women excruciating to see, to learn about and their illness is unimaginable for those who have never seen it nor smelled an incontinent woman

Imagine being a five to ten year old girl, married. Imagine getting pregnant and giving birth at 13 or 14 years of age. Imagine being in labor not for 24 hours but for a week because the birthing canal is too small to enable the fetus passage. Imagine the damage to your body, the puncture of the thin wall between the birthing canal and the blather.

Imagine the reversal of all you know about and feel about being toilet trained, about being part of a civilized, loving nurturing community. Imagine being ostracized, having to live in a separate space from everyone, Imagine being totally alone, rejected, at thirteen, fourteen years of age. That is the plight ,the central premise of the film Walk to Beautiful:. a six mile or more lonely walk in search of help.

But it isn't only in Ethiopia. I was a social worker in Sunset Park Brooklyn when a young woman's 's brother brought her to my office. Everyone in the vicinity ran from where we sat, she by the side of my desk.

The brother said, everything in the house is ruined. Every chair, the sofa. she can't go outside and we can't live with her in the house. The smell coming from her person was overpowering.
But it wasn't the first time I had smelled the sustained odor of urine.

The hallway in the then poverty stricken Harlem were my training ground for walking up and down the long flight of stairs with that order filling my nostrils. But I learned, as did my fellow workers, to breath without smelling, without gaging or being overly repulsed. Even the smell of feces is a human order. We are not as clean nor sweet as we might like to think

As she sat by my desk one of the fellow workers started to wash the floor near us with strong smelling ammonia which i found more distasteful than her odor and i experienced the commotion that her very presence brought to the fore. with trepidation.

How could I help her? I racked my brain to find something to say, My task was to decathex the embarrassment of her condition to allow this distraught adult brother to take her to the hospital for help. She was convinced her condition was beyond medical intervention.

From the depth of my personal ignorance I looked at her and I thought, sex. Tell me about your sex life i said. Have you had sex, did you enjoy it. And her face lit up. We were two woman sitting next to each other, one the surviver of two normal child births , the other a long suffering victim of a sexual event beyond her control What we had in common was our state of being a woman. And in that moment of our shared essence she found the courage to seek help.

Brooklyn is an ugly industrialized city. We have so much civilized help available and so much knowledge of what to do, when, but the pathos that this woman instilled in me, albeit many many years ago is part of my knowledge base, my understanding of the travails of womanhood that I thankfully do not have to endure.

That doesn't mean that we should live in ignorance. This film must be seen, must be part of our experience our knowledge of the perils of being adults because there is such a compelling base for empathy that it enriches our consciousness, the core of our being.

I recommend this beautiful, compelling, documentary and encourage everyone to imagine the odor, the horror with which each afflicted woman and those close to her must endure.

Linda Z
WFCC
WBAIWomen's Collective

UPTOWN: a Brian Ackley film

Stars:
Chris Riquinha, Meissa Hampton, Derek MAllister, Deirdre Herlihy



This film feels like a conversation, a long drawn out story with an ending tacked on that is less than credible. The problem with the film is the role in which the woman finds herself, listening to a husband who has grown estranged within the short year and a half of their marriage. However, at the request of her husband, she puts on hold, or maybe ends her new friendship because...well, that is the unanswered question.

Uptown is about the preciousness of intimacy; how it is so difficult to establish, so hard to maintain. We are living in an overcrowded world where pleasure comes only occasionally directly from those we see, live with and talk to on a phone. With the internet, the tech messages, the music blasting while we try to connect, connecting is what we need most but are most likely to fail at.

True to the problems of today. True to life. This film goes on and on when maybe we want to turn away, look elsewhere but that is exactly what we do in life and shouldn't.

Watching Uptown might brings us all back to what it means to be human; to feel, to think, without props, without all that noise.

Linda zises
WBAI Women's Collective

Father's Day 2009

1

you stand as tall and straight as I remember
you sit hunched over the chess board
but you don't laugh anymore.

and your partners
the ones who'd line up watching, waiting their turn

you were the guru of the park, the chess player supreme. Have you lost your knack,
the brilliance of you calm mind.

Has the world around you changed because the world changes or are you the catalyst
I wonder as you approach, slowly, looking quietly at me, assessing the damage of a year's time

you approach wearing a cap, you never wore a cap, not all of last summer when you came home with me
and we laughed seemingly all night about nothing and everything

you stand in front of me, now, your head slightly bent to look at me eye to eye and I smell you
so loud, so clearly, so unmistakably.

Oh, I say the sound of shock or is it pity permeating the air around us.

You are homeless.


11

I don't want fame nor fortune
I want to fade into the background, of time, of life
I want to see, without being seen
I want to be invisible and I am

I am
until that light goes off
rage, anger come to the fore
and I explode

In a moment of uncontrollable essence, I am
who
I am
who I don't want to be

I am
the product of my parents; my mother who knew only anger/rage/discipline to a fault
my father with his sharp biting mind and withdrawn presence
I am no different
only modified

111


Barren
void of a vehicle to offer
my wealth/
my wisdom/
my stories

where do I place the knowledge of my
forefathers
the knowledge of my life
as it pulls me ever forward into
a bodiless entity
a whiff of wanton black smoke
ascending

1V

I've said it all before
I said
come play with me
but I didn't mean it
I said walk softly on tip toe
but i didn't know what tip toe meant

I said that I love you
but I didn't understand
that love is a feeling
indestructible
because
I don't


Linda Zises
WBAI Women's Collective

The Stoning of Soraya M

Cyrus Nowrasteh


Cyrus Nowrasteh’s film, “The Stoning of Soraya M,” is the story of the stoning of an innocent woman because her husband of twenty years wanted to have another wife, a child bride 14 years old.

Judging from the name of the film I would have turned away, and said, I know things are bad for women in the world where religious fundamentalism is the rule of the land. But something made me take the leap of faith and watch as Soraya M. is killed, murdered by the people she grew up with; her friends, her family, her neighbors. and her own children.

The landscape consisted of a barren view of a primitive town, all authentic. built on dirt and stones. Stones everywhere, all sizes, shapes, gathered by male children for use in the bloody execution.

Soraya M's her father was forced to join with the rule of the town's people, her father asked to throw the first stone. With stone like stoic expressions, her children were also told to throw the second, the third stone. Later they brought down in tears.

The lone voice of her Aunt as she tried to defy the powers of the town's governing body and failed was heard throughout the film. Her effort applauded, her failure to save her neice a sorriful but predictable outcome

Whenthe film ended, the tears were pouring uncontrollably from my eyes. My identification with Soraya more than I had expected.

Maybe we don't stone women to death in this country but we don't embrace the woman who tries to leave her husband, her marriage, when he doesn't agree to her demand for change.

This is an important film, a film to force us to re-evaluate from whence we came and how far we have or have not come in all these many years.

Linda Z
WBAI Women's Collective

THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX An Oscar 2009 winner!

Director: Uli Edel (Last Exit To Brooklyn, Christiane F)

A Cast of Stars:
Martina Gedeck (The Lives of Others, The Good Shepard), Moritz Bleibtreu (Run Lola Run), Johanna Wokalek (Aimee and Jaguar) and Bruno Ganz (The Reader, Downfall). The film is directed by Uli Edel (Last Exit To Brooklyn, Christiane F) and was written and produced by Bernd Eichinger (2005 Academy Award nominee Downfall), based on the book by and in consultation with Stefan Aust.

PLOT: A lengthy history of the far-left terrorist group that shocked Germany from 1968 onwards. Their search is for a life we can all embrace, their method is what we instinctively reject.

Guilt is not on the side of violation of law and order in this film. The guilty are those who make the laws, who enforce the law in this conflict ridden post WWII Germany. The war of the concerned courageous citizens, is unrelenting as the viewer watches the interactions of the group who go into banks to rob and into buildings to bomb, to steal, to plunder what they need to further their "cause".

Their cause is to bring to the attention their agenda of Stop the War in Vietnam, stop killing innocent citizens. But what do they embrace?

There is an invisible line between those who kill and those who don't. A gun is not requisite equipment in every one's wardrobe. This makes the free wielding of this object of murder, in a seemingly quiet domestic environment disturbing, not easy to understand. But then, that is the point of the film; To bring to our attention the thoughts, the ways of Revolutionaries who we might not know and can't understand. After the full experience of two and a half hours of The Beeder Meinhof Complex, one can not continue to think we are all knowing, all caring, all right.

This is not a summer evening's casual date flick. It is a provocative and brilliant creation that will remain in the viewers mind.

Whether or not we want to remember, we will.


LindaZises
WBAI Women's Collective
Criticalwomen@blogspot.com