Educational Media Reviews Online

Two Palistinian women writers are profiled in this Italian-language television documentary. Both portraits reveal women whose intentions are to achieve personal and political freedom. Both also use similar language to express themselves, stating goals of being free human beings and finding a peaceful way of living and expression in a land of political turmoil. Sahar Khalifaf (or Khalifa/Khalifeh attributed to the spelling of her name in a variety of different translations of her work) and Liana Badr (also translated as Liyana Badr) speak in English while the documentary voice-over narration is in Italian with English subtitles.

Khalifah, author of Wild Thorn, The Door of the Sirens, and The Sunflowers, is a feminist revolutionary who, in her own words has quieted down considerably, and speaks of the absolute necessity of women's inclusion politically, socially, and economically. Abhoring fundamentalism, she believes that education, raising women's awareness and economic achievement must be attempted simultaneously or Palestinians will not be learning from their past mistakes. She anticipates new and modern interpretations of the Koran, and feels that those things that cannot be changed through Islam should be entrusted to international laws. Freely criticizing the leaders in the Arab world she maintains that culture needs to be re-examined and a new approach to democracy created. In terms of her own writing, she cites the sounds, the music of the language of the streets, the smells of Nablus, as her inspirations.

Liana Badr, author of The Eye of the Mirror , A Compass for the Sunflower, and A Balcony Over the Fakihani, also struggles for her identity as a free woman. She embarks on a personal journey to where her family had lived and discusses the various areas of discrimination she had encountered. This second portrait is shorter than the first and also less focused and more disjointed. It is also marred occasionally by the insertion of obtrusive sound effects over documentary footage, which muffles Badr's voice-over narration.

We learn more about these two women as educated, and, to some extent privileged, Palestinians living through troubling unrest in the Middle East than we do about them in literary terms. It is as if the filmmaker felt that their literary lives were mere extensions of their public lives. It may be true to some degree but a deeper delving into their writing would have provided a more satisfying encounter with these two prominent writers. Recommended for Women's Studies, academic areas of Cultural Studies and Middle Eastern Studies.

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