We are so proud to have launched the 40Braids Women Film’s Caravan yesterday in Paris. We want to tell you why.
Firstly, the origin of our journey proves that there is a crossing to every road, even when obstacles seem insurmountable. In 2013, we co-established the Herat International Women’s Film Festival in Afghanistan, at a time when it was already ubiquitously clear, and had been for long, that the fall of the Taliban regime was an illusion. But we decided to fight back and give a voice to brave Afghan women – artists, human rights activists – who had been able to emerge from darkness and use culture as a vector to weave the narratives of their own histories and realities. And open their horizon by bringing to Herat (a city with no cinema theatre) films from around the world, portraying often similar issues. The outcome was encouraging. And fortunately, the various editions of the festival, which is today in its 6th year, took place in the absence of any major security incident.
Secondly, we are proud to see that Afghan women have been globally able to inspire generations of women’s rights activists, initially moved by the plight of women under the Taliban, then realizing that human experience is universal, and that this is all about a common fight against extremism, militarism, violence, inequalities or environmental destruction.
In the spirit of the Silk Road, we now want to nurture a dialogue within and between cultures and use braiding as a symbol of how women can try, as they have always done, to change narratives, norms and behaviors across and beyond borders.
At the same time, we are immensely distressed, actually outraged, to realize that peace bargains in Afghanistan (though we personally tend to refer to a failed peace process) continue to neglect the fundamental centrality of human rights violations against girls and women. Our intention here is not to recall all the atrocious abuses that still occur in Afghanistan, as a spine-chilling reminder of common practices under the Taliban (1996-2001). We prefer asking: why do we still not listen to all these Afghan women who express themselves through filmmaking, traditional poetry (landays), music, contemporary art performances, activism, or in their daily lives as leaders, parliamentarians, housewives, students, doctors, athletes?
It is estimated that close to half of Afghanistan’s 398 districts is currently under the control (full or partial) of the Taliban or other extremist groups with a similar approach to women’s and girls’ rights. As we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration (the aim of which being to achieve equality, development and peace for women worldwide), adopted just twelve months before the Taliban’s take-over of power, will we be able to say “never again”? And stand for women of Afghanistan, not as mere victims but as talented contributors to the construction of a more peaceful, sustainable and inclusive Afghan society?
In 40Braids, we see an opportunity to create new pathways of freedom, creativity and dialogue, through the eyes of women. At the occasion of the 40Braids Women’s Film Caravan’s launch in Paris yesterday (a planned parallel event in Herat was cancelled due to a state of emergency linked to the Coronavirus crisis), we honored and celebrated women in their diversity. Several Afghan women activists joined the Caravan in the French capital, of course. However, we also heard, watched and learnt from women’s rights defenders, peacemakers, scholars and filmmakers from Algeria, Colombia, France, Iran, Ireland, Kashmir, Mexico, Palestine, Tunisia, and the United States. In other words, all together we became the 40Braids.
Paris, 8 March 2020
Signatories: Guissou Jahangiri, Director of OPEN ASIA and founder of 40Braids; Afsaneh Salari co-organizer; Patrick Navaï, co-organizer; David Knaute, President of OPEN ASIA. Website: https://www.40braids.org/; Email: openasiafrance@gmail.com
