Educational Media Reviews Online

Afghanistan Through Women’s Eyes portrays the Afghan people and their desire for a life of democracy and social justice, away from the war, foreign interference, and fundamentalists that have ravaged their nation in the last twenty years. Shot and completed quickly in late 2001, the video presents a series of interviews and observations of Afghans, illustrating the misery of people displaced to Pakistan refugee camps in the month after the U.S. bombing, left only with their pride and dignity. Velcrow Ripper is an award winning Canadian filmmaker, and the video, while of low image and sound quality, is arresting in its composition and editing, creating at times an impressionistic, if indistinct, collage of slow motion and overlapping audio.

The video was made in association with and focuses on the refugee programs of RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, an independent feminist group with an anti-fundamentalist stand that has been advocating for women’s and human rights since 1977. Their activism both inside and outside Afghanistan is focused on increasing the number of Afghan women experienced in social, educational, and political work with the goal of establishing an independent government based on democratic and secular values. The video showcases an interview with a lone veiled woman who clearly articulates RAWA’s political position condemning the misuse of Islam by both the Taliban and the Jehadi, or Northern Alliance, fundamentalists. The interviewee, in contrast to U.S. media coverage that has treated the latter group as heroes, describes the Northern Alliance as puppets controlled and nurtured by foreign countries and acting against the true interests of the Afghan people. The video focuses on the natural beauty of the Khyber Pass, and the expressive faces and voices of Afghans in refugee camps around Peshawar and Islamabad. The impressionistic quality of the sound and images supports the artistry of scenes filled with traditional music, interestingly repetitive motion -- a kite, birds, light bursts -- , and the colorful decoration of interiors, signs, and clothing. Interviews with children and other refugees in RAWA run schools and orphanages relate tales of the random brutality of war and the tragedy of family separation.

The video ends with a distressing set of statistics including: total number of Afghan refugees (4.7 million), Afghan life expectancy (46.5 years), percentage of children that die before the age of five (25.7), and number of people who need assistance to survive winter 2002 (7.5 million). Some of these conditions remain at this date. While 2 million refugees reportedly were returned to Afghanistan in 2002, security, maintained by an international force in Kabul, is nowhere outside the city, and individual rights, particularly women’s, remain severely curtailed throughout the country.

This data poses a profound dilemma and increases the anxiety of viewers aware that the region continues to be a setting for massacre and general lawlessness. This video is part of the “ScaredSacred Project” cycle of films, writing, and web art based on a journey to the “Scared” and “Sacred” places of the world.