The movie followed three photo/journalists in far flung parts of the world as they went about their work. The fact that they were all located in dangerous regions made it more fascinating, and that they all happened to be women added a certain frisson to the documentary
Mariella Fuller is a Swiss/Lebanese photo/journalist who originally went to South Africa when she was commissioned by Marie Claire Magazine to do a piece on infant rape. It was to take her 3 days. What she discovered profoundly moved her, and now some eight years later she is still there working documenting the child abuse that is so prevalent there and is about to publish a book this year of her work.
Gail Tibben is an independent photographer who has been working in Jerusalem for the past decade. She has been exploring the theme of religion, documenting the various Christian denominations in Jerusalem’s Holy Sepulchre, baptism in the River Jordan, the ancient Samiritans and Ethiopian Christianity. As a photo/journalist working in the city she also closely covers the atrocities such as car-bombings even when it means putting her own life at risk. Working as a woman there gets in that entrenched society seems to get harder especially now with the Ultra-Orthodox Jews taking such extreme stances.
Adriana Zehbrauskas is a Brazlian photographer working in Mexico on a Project on Faith. Her rough inner city patch included the fervent religious folk ( as evidenced in her wonderful coverage of ‘The Day of The Dead Festival’) to out and out macho gangsters. Her ‘guide’ who took around lived in a 10 ft sq. room with her large family, and yet seemed perfectly content that as this was ‘God’s will’.
The movie is the work of Miami local filmmaker/film school professor Jim Virga, and he really made this a cohesive and thoroughly engrossing piece by simply letting the women tell their own stories in their own words. Excellently edited it’s a powerful film about three dedicated and totally committed women that were a joy to watch and for some 76 minutes share their stories.
Labels: 2012, documentary
