Month: September 2017

Airbnb is launching local tours and other experiences in New York City this week with a special host.

Her listing promises an “unforgettable shoe-shopping experience'” and her bio describes her as an “actor, producer, businesswoman” and “proud New Yorker.”

 

She’s Sarah Jessica Parker of ‘Sex and the City’ fame and she’ll be taking four guests shoe-shopping at Bloomingdale’s, then sending them to the ballet.

 

Parker’s listing goes live Tuesday, with four spots at $400 each, first come, first served. The money will benefit the New York City Ballet, where Parker is a board member.

 

Airbnb is primarily known for vacation rentals around the world. Officials in many cities have criticized the company, saying its short-term rentals are reducing long-term housing options for residents and forcing prices up.

 
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She has already captured hearts across Asia by taking on corrupt politicians and fighting bad guys who tried to shut girls’ schools — and now even the United Nations has been wowed by a superheroine whose only weapons are pens and books.

Move over Superman and Batman. Here comes Pakistan’s superheroine Burka Avenger who might soon be spreading her message of peace and tolerance on behalf of the U.N.

The Emmy-nominated animated TV series has won global accolades since its 2013 launch, with its female protagonist – a teacher called Jiya – putting on the Islamic veil at night and transforming into an all-action heroine to tackle social ills.

Now the U.N. is seeking to tap her popularity as it ramps up a campaign that emphasizes women’s role in peace-building to combat extremism.

“We have a lot of shared goals,” the series’ creator, Pakistani pop star Haroon Rashid, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Islamabad.

“The whole concept [of Burka Avenger] came about because I was reading about girls’ schools being shut down and bombed by extremists, and women and girls are threatened with violence. That’s why the superheroine was created,” he said.

Rashid will be speaking at a U.N. Women conference in the Thai capital Bangkok this week which will look at using creative approaches to promote women’s role in peace-building.

Although there is no official partnership yet, the U.N. agency and Rashid both said they were keen to explore collaboration, including by making Burka Avenger an ambassador.

“Burka Avenger can be a great messenger not only for women’s issues but because it’s animation, you can highlight very sensitive issues, it makes them [appear] softer,” Rashid said.

Fight Extremism From a Young Age

“Burka Avenger” was launched first in Pakistan, then Afghanistan, India and this year in Indonesia. It has been produced in different languages including Urdu, Tamil, Hindi, Pashto and Indonesian.

The series has won numerous accolades, including the Peabody Award, International Gender Equity Prize and the Asian Media Award, while the protagonist Jiya was named one of the most influential fictional characters of 2013 by Time magazine.

Orphaned as a child, Jiya was adopted by a master of a mystic martial art called Takht Kabaddi, which uses pens and books as weapons to take on enemies.

There has also been debate over Jiya’s choice of disguise, the burqa.

The all-encompassing veil has typically been viewed as symbol of female repression in the West but the cartoon presents it in a different light, as a symbol of female empowerment.

U.N. Women Asia-Pacific head Miwa Kato said cartoons can help prevent extremism from a young age.

“We often look to law enforcement to prevent extremism but it starts very early from a child’s age, through TV and entertainment,” Kato told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“A girl and superhero using pens and books as weapons can make us start having a conversation, at home or in schools.”

“Burka Avenger” is set for more launches in Asia – including Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Brunei, Singapore and Bangladesh – but after four seasons and 52 episodes, Rashid said he has no plans to work on new episodes immediately although he is planning a full-length feature film.

“We believe that will help spread the message on a larger scale, to a larger audience,” the pop star said.
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Charles Bradley, known as the “Screaming Eagle of Soul” for a powerful, raspy style that evoked one of his musical heroes, James Brown, died Saturday at age 68.

Bradley, who achieved success later in life with his 2011 debut album “No Time for Dreaming,” was diagnosed with stomach cancer in the fall of 2016 and underwent treatment, according to a statement from his publicist, Shazila Mohammed. He went out on tour earlier this year after receiving a clean bill of health, but the cancer returned recently, spreading to his liver, the statement said.

Recording on the Daptone label, Bradley was a fiery live performer. He followed up his first album with “Victim of Love” in 2013. His third album, “Changes,” was released last year.

Among his TV appearances was a stop last year on “CBS This Morning: Saturday,” which earned him an Emmy nomination.

Born in Gainesville, Florida, Bradley found himself living in New York at age 8. He left home as a teenager and lived as an itinerant until he settled in Brooklyn 20 years ago.

Bradley idolized Brown, working as a Brown impersonator known as Black Velvet before he was discovered by Gabriel Roth, a Daptone co-founder. He later became known for closing shows under his own name with hugs for his audiences.

“The world lost a ton of heart today,” Roth said in the statement. “Charles was somehow one of the meekest and strongest people I’ve ever known. His pain was a cry for universal love and humanity. His soulful moans and screams will echo forever on records and in the ears and hearts of those who were fortunate enough to share time with him.”

Roth said he told Bradley recently there’s solace to be found for fans knowing Bradley “will continue to inspire love and music in this world for generations to come.”

Bradley’s response? “I tried.”
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This is banned books week in the United States, an annual event that points out censorship and emphasizes the freedom to read. In Washington, the public library system has hidden around the city hundreds of copies of six books that may be banned or challenged in some libraries and schools in the U.S. People who find these books can take them home for free. VOA’s Deborah Block brings us to a bookstore where customers are searching for the books they want to read.
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An Egyptian ultraconservative Muslim preacher hears on his car radio news of the death of Michael Jackson, the pop singer he idolized in his teens, and he becomes so distraught he crashes his car.

 

The news of the passing of the King of Pop is the start of a crisis of conscience for Sheikh Khalid Hani, the main character of the movie Sheikh Jackson, Egypt’s first feature film to focus on the religious movement known as Salafis, followers of one of the strictest interpretations of Islam.

 

It follows Sheikh Hani, a Salafi, as his love for Michael Jackson throws him onto a bumpy journey to discover his own identity, mirroring how Egypt’s conservative society is torn between its Islamic and Arab traditions and Western culture in an age when television, telecommunications and social media bring together people and cultures from all corners of the world.

Humanity and identity

 

“I no longer cry while I am praying. That means my faith is faltering,” Hani confides to a female psychiatrist in one scene. Crying while praying, he explains, reflects his fear of God.

 

The film goes beyond examining Salafis, says the director, Amr Salama. 

“It’s about humanity. … It tells you that one’s identity is not a single dimension or an unchangeable thing,” he told The Associated Press just days before Sheikh Jackson premiered in the Toronto Film Festival earlier this month. 

 

It’s a journey Salama has some experience in: He was a huge Jackson fan in his teens and then became Salafi during his university years, before moving away from the movement. 

 

What is Salafism?

Salafism is one of the most closed, uncompromising visions of Islam. Its doctrine is primarily built around what its followers believe is emulation of the actions the Prophet Muhammad. They are easily recognized by their chest-long beards and robes that reach to just below the knees. They shun music, film and dance and outside influences seen as decadent. Salafi women wear the all-covering niqab, including veils over their faces.

 

Followers view life as a little more than a transitional phase and are contemptuous of worldly pleasures. Immortality in heaven is their chief goal.

When Hani goes to the psychiatrist, whom he thought by her ambiguous name was a man, he asks her to put on a headscarf during their sessions. She refuses, and throughout their talk, he can’t look at her. When she asks him the last thing that made him feel alive, his response comes from Salafi doctrine: “I bought my shroud and wrote my will.” He occasionally sleeps under his bed, convinced that it is the closest thing to being inside a grave, thus a reminder of his mortality.

Connection to Jackson

But Jackson’s death revives in Hani the obsession with the singer he had in his teens, when he imitated the star’s look and dance moves. It earned him the nickname “Jackson,” but also the disapproval of his macho father.

 

“He is effeminate,” the father says of Jackson. But Hani’s mother whispers to him, “He is the world’s best singer. But keep that as our little secret.” When the mother dies young, Hani’s father turns into a serial womanizer and becomes violent, beating Hani for imitating his idol.

 

When the adult Hani discovers his own daughter, at age 6 or 7, watching videos of Beyonce, he tears out the Wifi and denounces “dancing to the devil’s tune.”

 

Delicate territory

The film, which is to be released in Egyptian cinemas later this month and which Egypt has put forward as a candidate for a best foreign film Oscar nomination, goes into delicate territory. 

 

Thousands of Islamists have been jailed under the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who was elected after leading the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 and who has faced a fierce militant insurgency. Depicting Islamists with even a hint of positivity can bring questions from authorities and security agencies.

 

Still, while some Salafis have been jailed in the crackdown, the government has tolerated parts of the movement, in part because some Salafi political parties lined up behind el-Sissi after the Brotherhood’s ouster. 

 

Salafism has been the fastest growing Islamist movement in Egypt for the past decade, and it covers a spectrum. Some Salafis are relatively engaged with other parts of society, often as successful businessmen; some separate themselves to avoid sinful influences; others denounce society outright as “kafir,” or non-believing. A militant fringe embraces jihad against “infidels” and tyrants. 

 

The film risks a backlash from the public, either by viewers who see as it as too sympathetic to Islamists or, from the other side, as mocking religious beliefs. 

 

“I have neither glorified nor dissed the Salafis,” Salama said. “They are just human beings like us.”

 

Touching moments

That extends to depictions of Salafi family that almost never show up in films. Hani’s wife understands his turmoil after Jackson’s death. At one point, Hani tells her he loves her because she loves God more than she loves him.

 

In a scene many parents could sympathize with, their young daughter watches her parents with disapproving bemusement as they drive her to school, joyously singing a religious hymn they heard on the day they met. Embarrassed, she asks her father to drop her off far from the school gate.

 

The movie builds Salama’s reputation as a director willing to take on some of Egypt’s thorniest issues. His 2014 Excuse My French dealt with the forms of subtle discrimination that Egypt’s minority Christians face, while the 2011 Asmaa portrayed the social stigma endured by those who are HIV positive.

 

Still, neither of the previous films was a box office hit, despite critical acclaim. Sheikh Jackson is unlikely to fare better in a country where comedies and action movies the only sure winners. 

 
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Britain’s Prince Harry is in Toronto ahead of his Invictus Games for wounded veterans

The founder of the games left the Royal York hotel and arrived at a Toronto office building for a symposium about veteran issues on Friday.

 

Harry wore a blue blazer as he greeted and posed for photographs with athletes ahead of the symposium. His girlfriend Meghan Markle is a Toronto resident, but did not appear.

 

At least 550 competitors from 17 countries are slated to compete in 12 sports. U.S. first lady Melania Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will meet with Harry on Saturday.

 

The opening ceremony is Saturday night and will feature a performance by Sarah McLachlan.

 
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Kayra Martinez took calligraphy paper and pens into refugee tents in Greece last year. “That was the first time I had actually seen the children really calm,” Martinez said. “And I realized that this is something that they really love to do.”

As a flight attendant for United Airlines, Martinez is often in Greece, where she was drawn to the refugee camps and began volunteering there in 2015.

Focusing her efforts on Nea Kavala in northern Greece, she is now the first point of contact for many families in need.

“It’s very, very actually challenging to be able to leave Greece, because you have urgent needs every day,” she said. “Every day you have a family writing to you.”

The paper and pens presented a whole new opportunity. Martinez put one of the pieces of art on Facebook and instantly received offers to purchase it. Since then, Martinez has provided canvases, watercolors, pencils, markers, calligraphy paper and sketchpads to adults and children in the refugee camps.

She collects their art and takes it to cities around the U.S. and Europe, selling each piece for $25 to $150. She then uses the money to help the refugees in the camps through her new organization, Love Without Borders — for Refugees.

Many of the pieces sold are from children as young as 3.

“I’m really focused on what the children want to draw, more than telling them what they need to draw, because they have a lot of feelings, a lot of trauma that hasn’t been worked out,” Martinez said. “So, we just let them take their time and draw whatever they would like.”

Therapy and independence

Many of the pictures displayed at a recent show in a small gallery in Washington were done in black and gray. The young artists drew their homes burning, their cities being bombed, their families crying.

“There was one that was kind of a row of buildings and a bomb above it — ‘Syria,’ ” said Niyati Shah, who attended the art show. “This is what this kid sees every day. You see it in the news, but then you see children’s depiction of their reality, and it’s certainly moving.”

Other pictures were colorful and bright, showcasing the hope and resilience of the refugee artists. Each piece had an accompanying note about the artist, telling his or her story

“It’s just also nice to be somewhere where you’re not just getting the tragic images, but it’s kind of a more positive way and constructive way to look at the conflict,” said attendee Julieta Jakubowicez. “Very humanizing.”

Martinez sold 122 pieces of art in three hours, about 60 percent of the collection she brought with her from Greece. She raised $17,503, most of which will go back to the refugees.

At least one of the refugees Martinez helps was an accomplished artist before being displaced by war.

“And now he’s having his first exhibition in Greece. We’re selling his art all over the U.S.,” Martinez said. “It got back his independence. He’s empowered, he’s motivated, and also he can now create a better environment for his family when he has his own money.”

In addition to providing cash to refugees, Martinez also teaches them how to make jewelry and baby clothes to sell so they don’t have to rely on fickle government and NGO services.

“They are really tired of having to ask for everything and then be disappointed at the end by not getting it,” Martinez said.

Filling in the aid gaps

Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war, hundreds of thousands of refugees have arrived in Greece. Many continued to other countries in Europe, but many remain — something Greece was not prepared for.

Despite financial assistance from the European Union, Martinez said, help from large aid organizations was not getting to the refugees.  Volunteers and smaller organizations, including Love Without Borders — for Refugees, fill in the gap.

“We’re doing a lot of work that a lot of organizations cannot do, but we are very innovative. We have a lot of ideas, and we’re a little bit more independent to be able to make things happen a lot quicker,” Martinez said.

She volunteers with refugees and hosts art show fundraisers around the world, while still working as a flight attendant for United.

“I think basically I’ve given up my social life. I don’t go out with my friends anymore,” Martinez said. “I don’t; I can’t.”

She doesn’t sleep much, but she doesn’t regret anything.

“I’ve loved to learn languages, and I’ve loved to learn cultures by traveling around the world. So I get to do what I love to do in a different sort of way.”
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This is the Top Five Countdown! We’re detonating the five most popular songs in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart, for the week ending Sept. 23, 2017.

Sometimes the Top Five can lull you to sleep with its slowness … and then there are weeks like this.

Number 5: Logic Featuring Alessia Cara & Khalid “1-800-273-8255”

It all starts in fifth place, where we welcome newcomer Logic, who surges four slots to fifth place with “1-800-273-8255” featuring Alessia Cara and Khalid.

What’s with that song title? 

Logic hails from Gaithersburg, Maryland, not far from Washington, D.C. The song title is the telephone number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Logic says the inspiration for this song came on a recent tour, when he stayed in fans’ homes. Logic says some told him his music helped save their lives … which showed him his power as an artist.

Number 4: Taylor Swift “Ready for It?”

No artist is more aware of her own power than our fourth-place newcomer. Taylor Swift is back, and she came to play with “Ready For It?”

Taylor maintained a low profile for much of the past year, then last month re-emerged in a burst of activity on social media. Her sixth album “Reputation” arrives on November 10.

“Ready For It?” features songwriting and production from the solid-gold team of Max Martin and Shellback. It appeared on September 3, immediately becoming Taylor’s 13th number one single on the Billboard Digital Songs chart.

Number 3: Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee Featuring Justin Bieber “Despacito”

Ms. Swift isn’t finished with us yet, but right now let’s bring on Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber: “Despacito” backs off a notch to number three.

On September 16, Luis gave a special private performance in San Antonio, Texas. He stopped by the Children’s Rehabilitation Institute of TeleTon USA. He sang for the young patients, who battle musculoskeletal and neurological disorders.

Number 2: Cari B “Bodak Yellow (Money Moves)”

Cardi B gets serious this week, as “Bodak Yellow” moves into the runner-up slot.

The Bronx rapper was previously on track to drop her debut album in October, but now says she may need a bit more time to finish it.

Number 1: Taylor Swift “Look What You Made Me Do”

November 10 is the day Taylor Swift delivers her “Reputation” album, and the lead single remains atop the Hot 100. Ruling the roost for a second week: “Look What You Made Me Do.”

 

This marks the first time in nearly three years that two solo women control the Hot 100. It last happened in December 2014: Taylor Swift was again in the driver’s seat with “Blank Space,” while Meghan Trainor was the runner-up with “All About That Bass.”

We’re all about those hits, and we’ll have more for you next week — so join us if you can.

 
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More than 150 pieces of art made by refugees from Greece are part of the collection at Love Without Borders – For Refugees’ art show in Washington D.C. Many of the pieces sold are from children, as young as three years old.
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On April 13, 2015 the world watched as two homemade bombs exploded at the finish line of the iconic Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 264 others. Jeff Bauman was one of those badly hurt. Both his legs were blown off. Hours later, when he awoke from surgery, Bauman helped the FBI identify Tamerlan Tsarnaev as one of the suspects.

Now, a film titled Stronger — based on Bauman’s memoir by the same name —  recounts how that terrorist attack changed his life forever and for the better.

Actor Jake Gyllenhaal portrays Bauman.

During the interview, Gyllenhaal and Bauman were completely in sync, like two people who seemed to have known each other for a long time and deeply, even exchanging chummy jabs.

​Gradually, the tone of our interview became more serious as the focus turned to Stronger, the film directed by David Gordon Green. The film follows Jeff Bauman, a Costco employee showing up at the Boston Marathon, big sign in hand, to express his support for one runner — a former girlfriend he hopes to woo back.

Within seconds, Jeff Bauman turns from an enthusiastic spectator waiting at the finish line, to a front line terror victim. As soon he opens his eyes in the hospital, both legs amputated, Jeff Bauman, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, has to relearn how to live in his own body. His relationship with girlfriend Erin Hurley, played by Tatiana Maslany, is resumed but tested. His mother Patty, played by Miranda Richardson, is portrayed as loving but erratic.

Jake Gyllenhaal told me this was the most challenging role he has ever played.

“You know the great irony of this, I’ve played people who are professional athletes and there has been nothing that’s come close to as difficult physically as this role,” he said.

“Understanding the difficulty of just taking a few steps is what we thought and we’ve always believed the movie to be about – about a man who learns how to take a few steps and the extraordinary journey that he goes through to do that, so yes, it was difficult but it was an honor!” he said emphatically.

Gyllenhaal said his journey of interpreting Bauman and his life story brought him closer to a whole community of amputees. “As painful as it was to understand what he went through, I think it was incredibly inspiring,” he said.

 

Asked about his advisory role to Gyllenhaal, Bauman said he showed him how he works and moves as an amputee. “I showed him how to take off the legs, how to get in and out of a car perfectly,” he said. “He watched me getting in and out of chairs.” He chuckled “When it came to acting, he did not need any coaching.”

Gyllenhaal’s gritty portrayal informs not only Bauman’s battle to stand on his prosthetic legs but his emotional struggle against Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

“I always think that you need a very long runway whenever you try to create any character,” he said. “But when you are trying to play a character that is actually in existence, who is living an incredible life themselves and has been through as much and is right next to you, it’s a whole other experience, like understanding what it is like to have an amputation above the knee in both legs, it’s the same thing to understand the concept of PTSD.”

“I have over the years met many different people in the process of making movies, members of the military, police officers, a number of people who have suffered from PTSD in many different forms,” he continued. “And I always feel like you kind of carry the characters you’ve played with you into other characters. But in terms of understanding Jeff and what he went through, it’s pretty much impossible. I know we talked a lot about feelings. I think [turning to Jeff], you are not shy about struggles. So, we spoke. I got to know him, his fears, and it was a slow long runway like I said.”

Bauman shared his experience and thoughts on how it feels to experience a terrorist attack.

“I felt like I was sucker punched,” he said. “You are just not ready for something like that, especially an IED attack. And then afterwards, I did research on IEDs and the person that did this to me and why they did it, what the motives were. And then you start reading about different things in history and different bombings. Since it’s personal to me, I kind of attach myself to what’s going on in Barcelona, and Syria —  anywhere, Moscow, it happens all over the world, every day. It makes my stomach tighten up. Then I also take a step back and say, Why are we doing this to each other?'”

Bauman said the movie is not about the trauma but about survival and recovery.

“I want people to see it and realize that you can get through something like this, and you can live a positive life after,” he said. “My life is nothing but positive now. But I still have trauma. I do. I live with it”

“Stronger” depicts how Jeff Bauman became “Boston’s Strong” because his recovery symbolized the recovery of the whole city and beyond. Six weeks after losing both his legs in the Boston Marathon bombings, he was wheeled onto the Fenway Park infield by Carlos Arrendondo, the man who rescued him, where he pitched the first ball at a Red Sox game.

Jake Gyllenhaal delivers a powerful performance as Jeff Bauman where the latter’s day-to-day struggle is in the details. Gyllenhaal said despite Bauman’s unfathomable experience and grueling rehabilitation, this film is about hope.

“This is a film that is not about an event. This is a film about a human being,” he said.

“And I think Jeff himself said it best the other day: ‘it doesn’t have to make headlines to be hard.’ And I think what Jeff’s story tells us is that no matter what you’re going through, be it an event like he went through, which is unfathomable, or be hurricanes that are affecting so many different cities and towns and people all over the world, whatever it might be, Jeff’s story tells us that we can get through it,” he said.

“And like he says in the movie, if he can do it, you can do it,” added Gyllenhaal. “I think that’s very important. When events are tragic as they are, we tend to focus on the event itself and the people who did the event, not the people who survive. This movie is about the people who survive, who go on to live, and who go on to live a better life than they thought they would even before and that’s why Jeff inspires me.”
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Britain’s division of the Indian subcontinent into two countries 70 years ago led to the largest mass migration in modern history, with more than 12 million people displaced and more than half a million killed.

The traumatic legacy of the birth of India and Pakistan is the focus of a new museum that opened in Amritsar in Punjab, the northern state that witnessed the worst frenzy of violence after its western portions went to Pakistan and the eastern ones to India in 1947.

This violent chapter of history had been almost forgotten, said Mallika Ahluwalia, co-founder of the Partition Museum.

​Telling their stories

Although fiction and cinema have reflected that troubled time, there was until now no memorial or museum to millions of people caught in partition.

“We found that so many people we talked to say to us that finally someone is hearing their story. For a long time there was no space, either metaphorical or physical, where their story could be told,” Ahluwalia said.

An initiative of the Arts and Cultural Heritage Trust, the museum opened in Amritsar’s restored, British-era Town Hall.

Exhibiting ordinary items that people carried as they fled, as well as photos, newspaper clippings and audio recordings, the museum recreates the time when slaughtering mobs and bloody riots ravaged both sides of the newly created border.

The exhibits tell tales of ruined homes, lives shattered and rebuilt, loved ones lost and found as tens of thousands of Sikhs and Hindus crossed to India and Muslims to Pakistan. They crammed into overcrowded trains, trucks or even crossed rivers clutching whatever they could salvage.

Some displays depict the functional and mundane, such as a sewing machine and boxes. Many had emotional value. A woman carried her wedding sari. A heavy embroidered jacket and a briefcase belonged to a woman and her fiancé, who were separated amid the looting and carnage, but were happily reunited at a refugee camp. A woman has donated a box that as an 8-year-old girl, she pulled out of the rubble of a house hoping to put into it new dolls to replace the ones she left behind.

Violence bore by women

In a section devoted to women, who largely bore the brunt of the violence, the central exhibit is a water well, a tribute to thousands who either jumped into wells or were pushed by their families to keep them from being raped or abducted.

But an embroidered fabric strung on the well exemplifies the many instances of humanity found amid the carnage. 

“That phulkari (embroidered fabric) belonged to a woman who jumped into the well along with all her family members when they were attacked, but she was rescued. She was rescued by someone from another community,” Ahluwalia said.

A jute cot, carried by a family, symbolizes the endless stream of refugees, including tens of thousands of affluent families, that huddled in sprawling camps.

​Cherished possession

One of them is Jagat Singh, now 90, who traveled from the neighboring city of Jullundur to Amritsar to relate his story.

He escaped the massacre in his village by crossing the Ravi River on a boat when he was a 19-year-old student. Singh still struggles to understand how the harmony between Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, who lived together in neighboring villages and towns, deteriorated into horrific bloodshed.

“In my hostel, we had friendly and affectionate relations with Muslim students. We used to visit each other’s homes. I don’t know why this turned into violence,” he said.

He has donated his most cherished possession — the documents of an $8 student loan that enabled him to graduate and rebuild his life after he arrived as a penniless refugee.

From stories, understanding

Such stories are helping visitors, especially those of younger generations, understand that it was not just leaders of the freedom struggle from British rule, but also countless ordinary people who paid a heavy price for independence.

Praniti, a law student, said the museum left a deep impression on her. 

“It makes me feel so free and so privileged and so aware of how unaware I was,” she said.

It was not just people who were victims. Objects in museums in Punjab also had to be divided between both nations, Ahluwalia said. She points to a necklace dating back to an ancient civilization that had to be split.

“We have come across files which have said half of the beads need to go to Pakistan and half to India. Our entire history in a sense they were trying to divide it in a way that is sad — how do you divide a shared heritage?” she asked.

The answer to that question still eludes the South Asian nations that, 70 years on, remain bitter rivals. But even as the scars of partition continue to fester, for many, the exhibit keeps the hope of reconciliation alive.
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On April 15, 2013, two homemade bombs exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Three people were killed and more than 260 injured, including Jeff Bauman, who lost both his legs. Hours later, when he awoke from surgery, Bauman helped identify one of the terrorists. Now, the film Stronger, based on Bauman’s memoir by the same name, recounts how that terrorist attack changed Bauman’s life and for the better. Jake Gyllenhaal portrays Bauman; they spoke to VOA’s Penelope Poulou.
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An elderly woman seeks a romance with her swimming coach in the Hindi film Lipstick Under My Burqa, which battled the Indian censors ahead of its release in theaters last month and is now going strong on streaming service Amazon Prime.

In another Bollywood film this year, Anaarkali of Aarah, inspired by a true story, a dancing girl who sings innuendo-laden songs at functions in a small town called Aarah takes on a powerful official who molests her in public.

A fresh crop of Hindi films — or Bollywood, as the industry is popularly known — are telling stories of ordinary women seeking sexual and financial freedom.

“Bollywood is a male-dominated industry, but there is a sudden influx of women-oriented films that are also doing well,” Avinash Das, writer-director of Anaarkali of Aarah, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Triggering the change in Bollywood’s narrative was the brutal gang rape of a 23-year-old woman on a bus in New Delhi in 2012, which led to massive protests across the country and put a spotlight on women’s safety in India.

Bollywood films, often characterized by their song and dance sequences and male-dominated story lines, are influential in India and beyond, and objectification of women and their use in titillating songs is often blamed for stoking sexual crime in the country.

India has only 10 cinema screens per million people, compared with 124 in the United States and 90 in China for the nearly 1,000 films Bollywood churns out every year, but it has the largest number of people going to the cinema.

The films that tell women’s stories, though still perceived as commercially unviable, have done well at the box office.

Alankrita Shrivastava, director of Lipstick Under My Burqa, said viewers were drawn to her film as “an honest story about them” and that the film remains the most watched since Amazon Prime’s launch in India last December.

The makers of Anaarkali too could prove naysayers wrong when the film did commercially well, and even a movie exploring lack of sanitation as a women’s rights violation — Toilet: A Love Story — has been a major hit this year.

“When issues matter to people … they are bound to come into popular entertainment media,” said veteran filmmaker Shyam Benegal, whose award-winning films explored India’s caste divide and told stories of ordinary women. “Films like Toilet: A Love Story ring a bell with a large section of the audience who identity with the problem, and that explains why they are doing well.”

Off-screen voices

In April, popular actor Abhay Deol took on fellow actors for endorsing skin-whitening creams and slammed the popular Indian belief of “fairer is better” as racist.

This off-screen voice of leading actors is creating awareness on subjects that were never discussed, be it fairness creams or even sex trafficking, campaigners said.

“Celebrities have a huge following and the message goes out to people that campaigners would never be able to reach out to,” said Samarth Pathak, spokesman at U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

Pathak interviewed Bollywood heartthrob John Abraham on World Day Against Trafficking in July, when he described trafficking as a “serious threat to humanity.”

“This was our first interview with a film star, and it created quite a buzz. A lot of young people are reaching out [to understand] trafficking, which is unprecedented,” Pathak said.

A couple of days before the interview, Bollywood’s most sought-after actor, Akshay Kumar, who plays the male lead in Toilet and is now working in a film on menstrual hygiene, spoke at an international sex trafficking conference in Mumbai about the need to protect children from abuse.

These star voices matter as Bollywood’s handling of prostitution had been restricted to portraying women as “call girls” without delving into the problems of sex trafficking and modern-day slavery, said Sanjay Macwan, regional director of the anti-trafficking charity International Justice Mission.

“When Bollywood celebrities speak against sex trafficking, exploitation and bonded labor, it brings the issue before every Indian,” Macwan said.

‘Fashionable again’

Last year’s release, Dangal, which shows an aging father train his two daughters to become wrestlers, defying social norms in conservative Haryana state in northern India, is among Bollywood’s biggest hits, beating fluffy romances and epic revenge dramas in box office collections.

While arthouse films in the 1980s and a crop of independent filmmakers have tackled social issues, gender and small-town India in their films, the backing of such projects by major studios seems a recent phenomenon — but in some ways is simply following an old Bollywood tradition.

“Hindi cinema has been dealing with social issues since the 1920s, even in the silent era,” Meenakshi Shedde, South Asia consultant to the Berlin and Dubai film festivals and festival curator, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

A 1937 film, Duniya Na Mane (The World Does Not Agree), showed a young schoolteacher from a poor family refusing to consummate her marriage with an old man.

Some of India’s most successful filmmakers from the 1930s to ’60s such as V Shantaram and Bimal Roy had social themes at the center of their stories.

“Bollywood is often perceived as monolithic, masala films with stars, six songs and a happy ending. But it is many different things,” Shedde said. It is wonderful that social issues are becoming fashionable in Bollywood again.”
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The new Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa is, in a word, ambitious.

 The museum opens its doors Friday, Sept. 22, 2017. The building is itself a work of art, a century-old grain silo on Cape Town’s historic waterfront that has been slickly overhauled by star British architect Thomas Heatherwick to house the continent’s largest collection of contemporary art — in the case of this museum, all of it made after the year 2000.

The nine-floor museum strives to show that African contemporary art — so long overlooked on the international stage — is worthy of appreciation and attention. It attempts to thrill visitors with its array of exhibits. Some are inventive, some confrontational, some whimsical, and some, puzzling.

But, says curator Mark Coetzee, the museum’s true ambitions are grander still.

“I think the first and foremost gesture of the museum is a political one,” he told VOA. “And that is to say that for a very long time, the narrative of Africa and the representation of Africans has been defined by others, by outsiders. And the museum’s motivation is to say, let’s create an institution where people from Africa, whether we were born here thousands of years or whether we immigrated yesterday, can contribute to the writing of our own history. Let us also define how we want to be represented to the world.”

He says their work gives rise to many pressing issues in the modern world.

“What contemporary art museums do is, basically, they give us the tools to be able to negotiate the time that we are living in,” Coetzee said. “So, artists ask very difficult, complex questions of society: ‘Why is there separation of wealth and power? Why does the ability to represent culture or represent people rely on a few people’s input and  and not a holistic group of people? How do we negotiate difference in society when we have different religions, or different genders, or different orientations?’

“And so what a museum does is, it’s a very safe space to discuss very difficult issues which impact all of us in the 21st century.”

Dragons, Zebras and Cows

But, Coetzee says, if you’re not inclined toward deep thought, the art is pretty cool too. The museum houses the private collection of Jochen Zeitz, a German art collector and philanthropist, and former CEO of athletics brand Puma.

Visitors will be greeted by a massive dragon, made of bicycle inner tubes, with a 100-meter-long tail, the work of South African artist Nicholas Hlobo. They’ll be dazzled by the whimsical, eye-searingly bright images of zebras and balloons and richly costumed figures, composed by South African photographer Athi-Patra Ruga.

They will be dragged into the undertow of “Ten Thousand Waves” — a video exhibition by of British installation artist Isaac Julien that assaults the senses on nine screens. They’ll be able to touch — and take home — prints of the stark, bold images of Angolan photographer Edson Chagas. And they’ll be haunted by room after room of ghostly cow hides, plastered into ethereal shapes by Swaziland’s Nandipha Mntambo.

Time for African Art

What visitors will not be able to do — at least not on opening weekend — is linger. That’s because when the museum offered 24,000 free passes for two-hour blocks during the grand opening, they were snapped up in just nine minutes.

In the last few years, African contemporary art has started to receive its due, says Hannah O’Leary, head of modern and contemporary African art for international auction house Sotheby’s. While the market is still new, she says, and African artists have yet to command top dollar price, the auction house’s first auction earlier this year brought in $3.8 million (2.8 million pounds).

In doing do, it broke multiple records, including the highest sales in a single auction of contemporary African art. While South Africa has always had a vibrant art scene, she says other African countries are on the rise — both in making art, and in consuming it.

“From the results of our first sale, we had buyers from 29 different countries, in six different continents,” she told VOA, from London. “And that’s really very significant. We’re not talking about just selling South African art to South African buyers. We are taking the greatest art from across the continent and we know that that has an international appeal, so we are are selling to collectors in Africa , but also in North America and Europe. Anyone who is a collector and can appreciate great contemporary art should also be looking at Africa.”

Coetzee says visitors should not be intimidated, though, by the museum’s $38-million renovation, its untold millions of dollars worth of art, or its elegant exterior. Nor, he says, should they be scared away by the $13 ticket — citizens of African nations get free admission every Wednesday, and children’s passes are always free. That’s because, he says, art is something everyone needs.

“The thing that separates us from animals, the thing that makes us unique is our identity. It’s the pride in who we are. And I think that if you remove cultural representation, and say it’s not a basic need, where does that leave us? What meaning does that give us in life?”

Deep questions, indeed. And one that the museum hopes to provoke — if not to answer — when it opens its doors.
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