Nadia Murad fights for the future of the Yazidis while facing intense pressure in On Her Shoulders
ON HER SHOULDERS (Alexandria Bombach, 2018)
Village East Cinema
181-189 Second Ave. at 12th St.
Opens Friday, October 19
212-529-6799
www.onhershouldersfilm.com
www.villageeastcinema.com
Alexandria Bombach’s On Her Shoulders is an extraordinary film about an extraordinary human being. In August 2014, the Yazidis of Northern Iraq were attacked by ISIS, who raped and killed thousands of Yazidis in what amounted to a genocide, turning countless women into sex slaves. Twenty-one-year-old Nadia Murad survived and later escaped the horror and has been on a mission ever since, traveling around the world to share her story in order to save and protect this ethno-religious minority, who have been scattered throughout refugee camps. “What must be done so a woman will not be a victim of war?” she demands. For a year, Bombach followed Nadia and Murad Ismael, executive director of Yazda, a global organization dedicated to supporting the Yazidis and other vulnerable groups, as Nadia met with media and politicians while hoping to be able to address the UN General Assembly. They go to Canada, Germany, Greece, and America, occasionally joined by human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, Yazda deputy executive director Ahmed Khudida Burjus, and former International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, as she makes her case to anyone who will listen.
Nadia is not a born activist; she has taken up the cause because she can’t see any other option. In the process, however, she has become a remarkable speaker and a reluctant hero to her people, but it takes a toll on her. As she tells her story, she must relive over and over again the atrocities she personally experienced and meet with men, women, and children who are suffering terribly and often break down into tears upon just being in her presence. “As a girl, I wish I didn’t have to tell the people this happened to me. I mean, I wish it hadn’t happened to me so I wouldn’t have to talk about it,” she explains. “I wish people knew me as an excellent seamstress, as an excellent athlete, as an excellent makeup artist, as an excellent farmer. I didn’t want people to know me as a victim of ISIS terrorism.”
Nadia Murad and Murad Ismael stand tall in Alexandria Bombach’s extraordinary On Her Shoulders
Bombach, who directed, edited, and photographed the film — using a small, handheld Canon EOS 5D Mark III to be as unobtrusive as possible — treats Nadia with a deep respect and sensitivity, being very careful not to exploit her even further, nor does she put her on a pedestal. She focuses her camera on Nadia’s striking face and her expressive eyes, which are filled with a mix of horror and hope, tired beyond their years. Throughout the film, Bombach (Frame by Frame, Common Ground) includes clips of an interview she conducted with Nadia near the end of their time together. Nadia’s long black hair and black top nearly fade into the black background, her face and neckline prominent as she speaks openly and honestly about her mission. Nadia barely ever allows herself to smile, refusing to feel joy when there is still so much work to be done; she will not stop until there is justice and accountability for what is happening to the Yazidis. It’s heartbreaking when she says, “I can’t bear to live this kind of life.” In a rare moment out of the public spotlight, she is in a kitchen cooking, and it is absolutely delightful, a much-needed break from the intense pressure that hovers over her. On Her Shoulders is a deeply affecting, heart-wrenching film that will leave you emotionally exhausted but also energized to take action. “I want women and girls to see themselves as something special,” Nadia — who was awarded the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize — says, refusing to acknowledge that she herself is special indeed. Winner of numerous festival awards, On Her Shoulders opens October 19 at Village East, with Bombach participating in several Q&As on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
“How come we’ve never heard of these people?” director Paul Goldsmith says at the beginning of TVTV: Video Revolutionaries, an engaging documentary about a group of cutting-edge television makers that he was part of. In 1972, Top Value Television was formed by Michael Shamberg, Megan Williams, Allen Rucker, and Tom Weinberg, who believed that the boob tube was not depicting the real world they lived in. So they banded together and, using the small, handheld Sony Portapak VTR, were able to go places other outlets couldn’t, offering an alternative to the network news (which was only CBS, NBC, and ABC) starting with the 1972 Democratic and Republican National Conventions in Miami. “We were the new journalists of television,” Williams says proudly. A kind of mix of Vice, SCTV, the Yes Men, Sacha Baron Cohen, and SNL’s “Weekend Update” — Bill Murray, John Belushi, Harold Ramis, and Christopher Guest all did stints with them — TVTV turned their cameras on the media itself, as well as on themselves, decades ahead of reality television and social media, filming everything. “Instead of a mass media we want to personalize media,” Shamberg tells a Newsweek reporter about TVTV’s approach to cable television. Goldsmith talks to fellow TVTV alum Hudson Marquez, Wendy Apple, Skip Blumberg, Eleanor Bingham, L. A. Johnson, Rucker, Shamberg, Williams, and Weinberg about what television meant to them from the time they were children and how they sought to change the status quo, with lofty dreams and no money, often living together in small apartments and doing it all themselves.
Roger Paradiso’s The Lost Village takes on a subject near and dear to many a New Yorker’s heart: the gentrification and corporatization of the city, which is replacing affordable housing and mom-and-pop shops with luxury buildings and fancy boutiques. However, the film provides no new insight into the dilemma; in fact, Paradiso even hurts his cause by speaking with a fairly random assortment of people, including some fringe, less-than-objective, not very articulate figures, and demonstrating little skill with a camera. “People came to the Village because it was different,” he explains, stating the obvious. “They’re trying to change the character of the Village, trying to make it a hipster’s suburban mall version of what was once a great Village of artists and working-class families. It’s enough to make a Villager puke.” The film begins as a screed against NYU’s massive expansion into real estate, pointing out that many women students have become sex workers in order to afford their tuition. Mark Crispin Miller, NYU professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, shows a radical 1960s spirit in arguing against the university’s policies, but the rest of the film is scattershot and hackneyed as Paradiso, who previously wrote and directed the movie version of Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding, marches in a handful of economists, brokers, journalists, and activists who give meandering lectures that sound like “Voice of the People” letters in the Daily News. And it doesn’t help that the film looks like a 1970s relic in dire need of restoration. There’s an important story buried somewhere here; perhaps the series of talks accompanying numerous screenings at Cinema Village will shed more light on this critical topic. [Full disclosure: I’m an NYU graduate with a degree in Cinema Studies.]
