Screening: Hidden Faces by Kim Longinotto

Saturday 7 September 2015, 2.30–5pm

at Royal College of Art, Kensington Campus, Lecture Theatre 1.

Free, tickets available via Eventbrite

Originally intended as a film about internationally renowned feminist writer Nawal El Saadawi, Hidden Faces develops into a fascinating portrayal of Egyptian women’s lives in Muslim society. In this collaborative documentary, Safaa Fathay, a young Egyptian woman living in Paris, returns home to interview the famed writer and activist, but becomes disillusioned with her. Illuminated by passages from El Saadawi’s work, the film follows Fathay’s journey to her family home and discovers similar complex frictions between modernity and tradition. Her mother’s decision to return to the veil after twenty years and her cousins’ clitoridectomies reveal a disturbing renewal of fundamentalism. This absorbing documentary broaches the contradictions of feminism in a Muslim environment; a startling, unforgettable picture of contemporary women in the Arab world.

This is an event to accompany the exhibition Hengameh Golestan: Witness 1979.

With thanks to Cinenova.

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