Coming to The WORLD Channel’s Strength of Women series today, Friday, March 13: SOLAR MAMAS
Jehane Noujaim and Mona Eldaief’s look at female empowerment through solar energy made its feature debut at Toronto in 2012. It also screened at DOC NYC, IDFA, Sheffield, Montclair, and Human Rights Watch, among others. This shortened broadcast version debuted as part of Independent Lens the same year.
The central figure in Noujaim and Eldaief’s film is Rafea, a compelling Bedouin woman from a small Jordanian desert community. Despite, or perhaps because, she is illiterate, she is selected to participate in Indian visionary Bunker Roy’s Barefoot College, a six month training program that specifically targets mothers from the developing world. His reasoning: In contrast to men, woman have more patience to learn, and, significantly, their family ties lead them to stay in their home communities to pass on their newfound knowledge rather than escape to urban settings after they return from training. Rafea, together with her cousin, joins an international group in India to learn how to construct and install solar panels. The Jordanian governmental minister who has arranged for them to participate expects that they will be able to open their own training center, giving otherwise out of work Bedouins a way of making a living, while significantly contributing to the betterment of their community with the introduction of solar power. Rafea is up for the challenge, but, once in India, she faces incessant harassment from back home, with her shiftless husband in particular threatening to divorce her and take their daughters. The film captures the possibilities of – as well as the barriers to – gender equality in traditional societies, offering an eye-opening look at the shifting power dynamics that have a profound impact on women’s lives in these settings.
what (not) to doc 