17 MARCH 2011 – Presentation by Leslie Sacks
Welcome everyone. Welcome to Los Angeles. Welcome to the Women’s Voices Now first Film Festival. Let me start by addressing my wife, my incomparable wife Gina, whose life support has sustained me and without whom this unique project would not have been born, to my sister and brother and family whose contributions were and remain material.
I may have been the creator, the seed, and the conductor at times behind the scenes. However without the dogged and unremitting purpose of our director Catinca who germinated these ideas and brought them all and more to this wonderful reality, and without her team of devoted, creative, endlessly sacrificing, implementing and supportive team of interns, Cassandra and Miriam who were with us from the beginning; as well as Betsy, Mona, and Oluchi; without our incredible board, Mark, Justin, Danny, and Qanta, creative director Alan Stuart; this project would have remained a dream.
And of course without the voices of the women, their courage, their humanity and the directors, all our efforts would have been stillborn.
You all have made this happen and have made me proud indeed to be part of this growing movement, clearly already a catalytic force to be reckoned with. You are all already much more than I ever imagined and for that I will be eternally grateful.
Let me begin by addressing a question I have been hearing for almost two years now, ever since I began discussing the idea of a film festival about women in the Muslim world with a few friends and associates. This question, very simply, was Why? Or, more specifically: Why do you care? The question was not callous, but curious. Even folks who were well-informed about the generally dismal state of women’s rights, all around the world and especially in the Muslim World, wanted to know why I—a Jewish, South African, American, gallery owner from Los Angeles—was so invested in their plight.
The answer is two-fold. First off, and primarily, I am—and have always been—deeply concerned about the state of womankind in general, and women’s rights in particular. I believe the condition and equality of a society’s women is the ultimate marker of the justice of that society. As the source of life, women are particularly well disposed to cherish and protect it. It is unsurprising, then, that the more empowered a society’s women, the more empowered are all it’s citizens, better protected from the abuses of governments and other power brokers, and the freer to express themselves and determine their own fates. Nor is it surprising that the larger the female role in politics and other forms of decision making, the less likely a society is to wage war or violently repress its own people. These links between women’s rights and democracy and women’s empowerment and peace have been confirmed by scientific research. Perhaps more importantly, they are intuitive matters of common sense.
In the same vein, women’s rights are critical to a society’s economic vitality. Very simply, an economy in which at least half the labor force is stymied in their efforts to excel and achieve will inevitably be stunted and stagnant. What’s more—and as some of the more inspiring films featured in this festival reveal—women are so often among society’s most resourceful and entrepreneurial members, strikingly adept at making great mountains out of small molehills and lemonade out of lemons.
The second and separate reason for my deep interest and commitment to this issue is more specific—and admittedly, at times more controversial. For I believe that the promotion and expansion of women’s rights in the Muslim world is critical to the security, prosperity, and—ultimately—the survival of the Free World. A free and democratic way of living is of utmost importance to me, and I make no apologies for pursuing its best interests—especially when those interests are so closely aligned with the interests of both woman-kind and man-kind.
I believe the generally unequal, downtrodden, and oppressed state of women around the world is symptomatic of a larger rejection of humanitarian, liberal, progressive, and tolerant values by the leaders of many of those societies. I believe it is symptomatic of a deeply worrying intolerance towards basic civil liberties and a lasting democracy, a lack of respect for the individual, for each and every human life. And I believe it is these rejections and intolerances – epitomized by but not limited to overly radical interpretations of religion, which fuel fanatical violence and terrorism, homophobia, misogyny and a general distrust for those who are different.
Perhaps most importantly, I believe women are the key to changing this state of affairs, that women are the great, often overlooked change agents in the Muslim world. Over the course of this festival, you will see exactly what I mean. While some of our films perform the important task of giving voice to the voiceless, of communicating the unjust and often inhumane conditions under which many of these women toil, other films tell courageous and utterly inspiring stories of women overcoming these obstacles to create change and progress in their societies. Imagine, for a moment, a world in which these women were allowed to operate freely and individually, imbued with much fuller and less precarious opportunities to contribute to the political, social, and economic development of their countries, their cities, and their towns. Indeed, even the films explicitly about injustice and oppression reveal to us this potential, for it takes tremendous courage and dedication to raise your voice when you are required to be voiceless.
This is why we have created Women’s Voices Now. This is not a movement fixated, as most are, on ideas and politics – rather it is about each person, every individual everywhere, equal before god. We believe the fulcrum for democratic change and equality for women in the Muslim World is the freedom of expression: the freedom to say what you want; to believe what you want; to read, write, and watch what you want—and thus be who you want to be. Giving women the legal and social right, without fear, to have a voice, to exercise unfettered freedom of speech and expression, will
undermine their inequality, their subservience, their lack of ownership of their own lives, over their own sexuality, over their religious views and over their children and families. Ensuring widespread tolerance for the open expression of women’s views would by its very nature bring about the most fundamental political and social reformation of their societies, including men’s often-abusive control over them. Even the often hidden and silent horrors of honor killings and beatings, stonings, and female genital mutilation, rape, and pervasive domestic abuse could never be the same once freedom of speech cracked the edifice of indentured prejudice. At the same time, the ability of women to bring their manifold talents and new perspectives into the marketplaces of goods and ideas would not only reinforce female equality by demonstrating its clear value to society, but it will also facilitate the fusion of these societies with modernity by improving the general lot and opportunity set of everyone, not just women.
I too fervently believe that bringing voice and freedom to woman will result in a greater capacity for each individual, woman or man, being able to express more freely their own unique and individual sexuality and gender. The voices and concerns of any individual who does not conform to societies’ intolerant and narrow views of acceptability, such as those of homosexuals, are inevitably tied to the respect and freedom granted to women.
Thus giving women voice without apologies is surely the center of it all, and that’s where we find ourselves with this film festival and with our future goals, including more immediately bringing this incredible body of films and stories into the societies from which they have come and to broadcast them widely. We have now identified the Achilles heel of these oppressive regimes and societies and we will focus on giving women more voice, more opportunities to share their stories and successes, especially amongst themselves, and to change from within their restrictive worlds. In short, and in sum: women are the catalyst and their voices are the medium.
