The Way North

EPCC Salute to the Arts sponsored this documentary in the Lecture Forum at TM.   I was fortunate enough to get to spend time talking to the producer (Dan VanZant) and director (Shara K. Lange) at a reception before the documentary.   Both are very animated young people.  

The documentary highlighted part of the life of Fatima Rhazi, the first female sports photographer in Morocco and her work for the Femmes D'Ici et D'Ailleurs (Women here and elsewhere). 

Take aways:

• Fatima is an incredibly strong person, a survivor who also enables others to do so too.   Once a photographer for the King, she left Morocco after her husband's death to avoid her husband's parents from taking her child from her.  
• Quote I especially like:  "I thought that in France life would be easier—it’s the land of liberty. But it wasn’t like that at all." --Fatima Rhazi   I suspect my great-grandfather would have said the same thing about the United States.
• The issue of clothing (in this case wearing a head scarf) is universal between parents and child.
• Children need to feel they belong in school.   Fatima made a point in the film that her son, who is very dark skinned, will have a much more difficult time because of his color.  We forget that racism isn't just here in the US. 
• In France, she deals with the same ills we find here, racism, sexism, learning a new language, finding one's vocation, etc.   Before the film, I hadn't thought much about other countries having illegal immigration issues, and this was a great film to start that conversation.
• Maghrebi refers to people from the areas of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania.
• This documentary was a school project for Shara's MFA.  Dan and Shara teamed up at UT Austin.
• Small grants and access to the equipment/staff/fellow students at UT Austin made the project possible.
• Hadja's papers were eventually approved. 

Definitely enjoyed the film and bought a copy of the DVD to watch it again.

Trivia:  Dan and I are both from Illinois.