TFA presents two Official Selections from the eighth annual Tallgrass Film Festival for November’s Third Thursday Screening, co-sponsored by WSU’s International Education and Center for Women’s Studies

The Tallgrass Film Association (TFA) will present two official documentary selections from the eighth annual Tallgrass Film Festival (TFF) as the TFA Third Thursday series continues in November. AFTER THE REVOLUTION (Mexico/Ireland), which had its North American premiere at the 2010 TFF will play with QUEST FOR HONOR (USA, set in Kurdish Iraq). The screening is co-sponsored by WSU’s International Education and Center for Women’s Studies in celebration of international education week. The film will screen at 6:30 pm at the C.A.C. Theater. Tickets are $9 general admission, $5 for WSU faculty and staff and FREE for all students with valid ID. Tickets can be purchased online at tallgrassfilm.ticketleap.net or at the door.
AFTER THE REVOLUTION (2009, Después del Zapatismo) is directed by Leticia Agudo. In 1994 in Chiapas, Mexico, an uprising started where the women had made sure their own demands of justice and equality were a distinctive part in the struggle against the oppressor. The Zapatista National Liberation Army, formed mostly of indigenous men and women, started a war of self-defense for their identity, their land and a place in Mexican society. The women rebels also wanted justice within their own culture. The problem is however, part of the Zapatistas’ aim was to recover old traditions, and some of those traditions justify abuse of women. The women are trying to hang onto the traditions they like and efface the ones that harm them. The movement and its women leaders opened the doors for their emancipation. Even so, they still fight the hardest battles at home, in their kitchens and their bedrooms.
From Director Mary Ann Smothers Bruni comes QUEST FOR HONOR, documenting activist women, journalists, and lawmen of the Kurdistan Regional Government (the KRG) who join forces to eradicate honor killing and redefine “honor.” A call to the Women’s Media Center in Slemani, reveals that a woman’s body has been found in a field outside Rania, a mountain town near the Turkish border. Freelance video journalist Hemin Kaikay and Lawen Asad, a reporter at SOMA, the English language newspaper, investigate the shooting. Through the investigations, interviews and visits, we learn how the Women’s Media Center and their investigative reporters vigorously pursue these cases in an effort to get the stori es out, educate the public, and change tradition. Kurdish mainstream media follows their lead. Like the problem of honor killing itself, these cases are generally not adequately resolved. The fight for justice and change led by the women and the KRG continues.