Wanda's Picks Radio Show: UNAFF 2013

We rebrodcast an interview with subjects of The Revolutionary Optimists, which screens this afternoon at the United Nations Association Film Festival 2013 in East Palo Alto. The film draws us into the world of two 11-year olds with no access to clean drinking water, a girl forced to labor inside a brick kiln, and a teenage dancer on the precipice of choosing child marriage to escape from her abusive family. From these fragile lives, lawyer turned change-agent, Amlan Ganguly mines the strength and vision to build an unlikely revolution. The film follows Ganguly and 4 children from Kolkata's poorest slums on an intimate journey through their adolescence. http://www.unaff.org/2013/f_revolutionary.html Our next guest in the studio is, Ilse van Lamoen, the director of MIND (Media Information & Narrative Development) and producer of the film, Daughters of the Niger Delta http://www.unaff.org/2013/f_daughters.html.
Daughters  is an intimate film portrait of three heroines who manage to make ends meet against all odds. As their personal stories unfold, we come to see that the widely ignored environmental pollution in their backyard is not the only human rights violation affecting their lives. This documentary tells a different story about the Niger Delta than the usual media reports about oil outputs, conflict and kidnapping. The film also highlights the strength and resilience of ordinary women who have to overcome injustices that we rarely hear about in the news.