She Wants to Talk to You

A film by Anita Chang

2001 | 29 minutes | Color | DVD | Order No. W03795

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SYNOPSIS

In October 1999 filmmaker Anita Chang befriended three 13-year-old girls – Monika Rasali, Sushma Sada and Vinita Shrestha – while living in Kathmandu, Nepal. Honestly presenting themselves in front of the camera, these girls share with the filmmaker their ideas on marriage, friendship and spirituality. Their recordings provide a complex and poignant framework for three Nepali women living in the U.S. to reflect on their own struggle, exile and quest for liberation. Through verite documentary, the film offers rare insight into the lives of girls and women from a society steeped in patriarchy, tradition and caste. SHE WANTS TO TALK TO YOU speaks closely to young girls and women, as well as provokes universal introspection about the nature of happiness and oppression, and human relations and intimacy.

PRESS

“Chang marshals voices of women in Nepal and the U.S. for a meditation on the meaning of freedom…This poignant film speaks to the tenacious complexity of women's dreams and struggles, reflected in their doubts no less than in their convictions.”

Peter X Feng Assoc. Prof., English & Women's Studies, University of Delaware

“The girls' frank opinions about marriage, friendship and spirituality provide a complex and poignant frame for the Nepali-American women's experience of exile, struggle and transformation.”

Film Arts Foundation

”…beautiful, lyrical…Highly recommended.”

Erica Fletcher Girls, Inc.

“Intimate and provocative, the film gently explores the desires and struggles of these diverse women as they contend with patriarchal societies and seek their path between two worlds.”

Irina Leimbacher SF Cinematheque

SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS

Women in the Director’s Chair
New York Asian American International Film Festival
San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival
National Museum of Women in the Arts’ Festival of Film & Media Arts
Ann Arbor Film Festival - Isabella Liddell Art Award
LA Asian Pacific Film & Video Film Festival
Boston Asian American Film Festival, Museum of Fine Arts
Women of Color Film Festival, Pacific Film Archive
Film Arts Festival of Independent Cinema, San Francisco
Dallas Asian Film Festival
Kerala International Film Festival
South Asian Documentary Film Festival, Kathmandu, Nepal

ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)

Anita Chang

Anita Chang is an artist, writer and educator, who works with various media forms, including film, digital video, photography, installation and the web. She has been making films for 25 years. Her films have been screened and broadcast internationally, and presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Bay Area Now, Walker Arts Center, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and National Museum of Women. Honors include grant awards from Creative Capital, Fulbright, San Francisco Arts Commission, National Geographic All Roads and the KQED Peter J. Owens Filmmaker program.

Chang’s research and creative practice examine the ways postcolonial, diasporic, and multicultural societies represent themselves in various visual media, with a focus on retelling and reviving their stories and histories, along with the impact these works have on their respective communities and nations. Chang’s moving image works reflect observations and philosophical explorations of ideas, such as inequality, spirituality and freedom. In pushing the boundaries of the moving image medium, she experiments with the interplay between content and form to inspire different kinds of audience engagements. Many of her creative works focus on the experiences of women and girls, minorities, immigrants, exiles, and disenfranchised communities. They are engaged with and complicate discourses on (post)colonialism, ethnography, diaspora, race, gender and cross-cultural representation.

Chang has taught film production and media studies in community-based and academic organizations in the Bay Area, Nepal and Taiwan, including the Department of Indigenous Languages and Communication at National Dong Hwa University. She is the author of Third Digital Documentary: A Theory and Practice of Transmedia Arts Activism, Critical Design and Ethics, and has published in American Quarterly, Verge, positions, Concentric and Taiwan Journal of Indigenous Studies. She is currently associate professor of communication at California State University, East Bay. (08/01)

Subject Areas

Drawing the Tiger

Shot over seven years, Drawing the Tiger takes a sweeping view of one Nepalese family’s daily struggle to survive off of subsistence farming. Eat, pay their debts, stay alive—that’s their day-to-day reality. But when their bright daughter receives a scholarship to study in Kathmandu, the family’s prospects suddenly improve by leaps and bounds overnight. They rest their hopes and dreams on her narrow shoulders, but will the weight of their expectations crush her? Can she really break the cycle of poverty and redefine their collective destiny? She seems eager to try, promising to return and free her family from their hand-to-mouth existence. But when she doesn’t come home, the family is forced to face their fate. Is their future set in stone or sand; is it solid or ever-shifting? Drawing The Tiger is a powerful portrait of pressure and the price one family pays for their golden opportunity that reminds us of what we can and cannot change.

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The Sari Soldiers

Filmed over three years during the most historic and pivotal time in Nepal’s modern history, The Sari Soldiers is an extraordinary story of six women’s courageous efforts to shape Nepal’s future in the midst of an escalating civil war against Maoist insurgents, and the King’s crackdown on civil liberties.
When Devi, mother of a 15-year-old girl, witnesses her niece being tortured and murdered by the Royal Nepal Army, she speaks publicly about the atrocity. The army abducts her daughter in retaliation, and Devi embarks on a three-year struggle to uncover her daughter’s fate and see justice done. The Sari Soldiers follows her and five other brave women: Maoist Commander Kranti; Royal Nepal Army Officer Rajani; Krishna, a monarchist from a rural community who leads a rebellion against the Maoists; Mandira, a human rights lawyer; and Ram Kumari, a young student activist shaping the protests to reclaim democracy. The Sari Soldiers delves into the extraordinary journey of these women on opposing sides of the conflict and the democratic revolution reshaping their country’s future.

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I Am a Girl

There is a group of people in the world today who are more persecuted than anyone else, but they are not political or religious activists. They are girls. Being born a girl means you are more likely to be subjected to violence, disease, poverty and disadvantage than any other group on Earth. In I AM A GIRL, we meet 14-year-old Kimsey from Cambodia, forced to sell her virginity at 12; Aziza from Afghanistan, who will be shot if she goes to school; Breani, a teen living in a ghetto of NYC and dreaming of stardom; Katie from Australia, who is recovering from a suicide attempt; Habiba from Cameroon, betrothed to a man 20 years her senior; and Manu from Papua New Guinea, about to become a mother at 14 following her first sexual encounter. As they come of age in the way their culture dictates, we see remarkable heart-warming stories of resilience, bravery and humor. Nominated for four Australian Academy Awards including Best Documentary and Best Director, I AM A GIRL is an inspirational feature length documentary that paints a clear picture of the reality of what it means to be a girl in the 21st century. I AM A GIRL provides practical and ready-to-use resources for educators to address human rights and social justice issues affecting girls in the classroom. Girl Be Heard Education Guides for I AM A GIRL are three units of 25 total lesson plans aligned with US Common Core Curriculum (grades 9-12), to provide a practical and ready-to-use resource for teachers to address human rights and social justice issues affecting girls around the world. Girl Be Heard Education Guides for I AM A GIRL help teachers bring important human rights topics and a future of gender equality to the classroom. For more information, go to: http://girlbeheard.org/i-am-a-girl-education-guides.

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