Muhlenberg College To Show Kandahar (2001) To Continue Film And Lecture Series
On Wednesday, April 11, 2007, Muhlenberg College will show the film Kandahar (2001) at 7 p.m. in the Seegers Union Great Room. This screening is part of the semester-long film and lecture series, “Alternate Voices from the Middle East.”Wednesday, April 4, 2007 01:59 PM
English Professor Tom Cartelli will lead a discussion after the film, followed by a reception. The film is open and free to the public.
Directed by Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Kandahar(2001) first premiered in North America in 2001, when most Americans had little to no knowledge of the Taliban or of the theocratic hold they had taken of Afghanistan from their headquarters in the ancient city of Kandahar. The film is adapted from the true story of the Afghani-Canadian journalist, Nelofer Pazira, whose family left Afghanistan in 1989, when she was sixteen, and who tried to re-enter Afghanistan in the late 1990s to rescue a childhood friend. The movie tells the story of Nafas (played by Pazira herself) who strives against great odds to make an overland journey to Kandahar to prevent her sister (who has lost both legs to a landmine) from committing suicide. The journey itself is of less import than are the Afghani refugees, hustlers, Western relief workers, African-American “doctor”, and flocks of burka-clad women she meets along the way.
Alternate Voices from the Middle East is a semester-long series co-sponsored by the Muhlenberg College Center for Ethics and the Faculty Humanities Seminar.
