Basira recently partnered with the WOW Festival at the Southbank Centre in London. Together with WOW, we formed a panel discussion on the subject of 'Women of the Revolutions: Feminism in the Arab world'. It took place on 13 March, 2016.
Founder of Basira, Ahlam Akram, was joined by the English-Libyan psychotherapist Reem Shelhi (Founder of www.alloneworld.org and creator of Systemic Human Education), Amna Abdul (Founder of 'Mena Women's Platform') and Mariz Tadros (Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies based at the University of Sussex). The panel was chaired by Nadia El-Sebai, Director of the Arab British Centre.For more information: http://wow.southbankcentre.co.uk/
Basira Presents: Two Short Films
‘Ana Ahlam’ and ‘Shokran Toni’ - Followed by Q+A Session
With Sudanese director Nahid Toubia
Date: Friday, 30th October 2015.
Time: Doors open at 6.30pm for a 7pm start and running to 9pm
Venue: The Mosaic Rooms, 226 Cromwell Road, London, SW5 0SW.
Tickets: £8 on the door or book in advance via Billetto.
Produced by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, ‘Ana Ahlam’ explores gender-based violence as experienced by Palestinian refugee women living in Lebanon. It asks whether or not there is hope for female survivors of domestic abuse.
‘Shokran Toni’ reflects on a special friendship formed between the American novelist Toni Morrison and a group of Sudanese women. When Morrison published an open letter in response to a YouTube video showing a Sudanese woman being lashed for an unknown moral crime, director Nahid Toubia responded by creating this film.
Guest speaker Dr Nahid Toubia is a Sudanese surgeon and women’s health rights activist who specialises in the research into female genital mutilation (FGM). She is the co-founder and director of ‘Research, Action and Information Network for Bodily Integrity of Women’ (RAINBO).
Basira recently participated in the 59th United Nations Commission on the Status of Women from the 8-20 March 2015 in New York.
Please see the links below for information about CSW
http://www.unwomen.org/en/csw/csw59-2015
Please follow the link below to learn about Basira’s recent event at CSW.
http://unausa.org/news-publications/article/cws59
Basira is a non-profit human rights organisation that promotes womens’ rights in the Arab world, as well as mutual understanding between Arabs and the Western world. “Basira Presents” is a film screening series that promotes films which explore key issues in our work, while delving deeper into the topics with follow-up panel discussions.
Sunday 5 October, 3pm
The Tricycle Theatre
269 Kilburn High Road, London NW6 7JR
020 7372 6611
Bastards follows an illiterate young woman who took on tradition, her own family and the Moroccan justice system, for the sake of her illegitimate child. As Morocco becomes the first Muslim regime to grant legal rights to single mothers, filmmaker Deborah Perkin gained unprecedented access over several weeks embedded in the community and was the first person to film in a court in Morocco.
Screening at the Coronet Cinema, Notting Hill Gate, February 27th 2014, Thursday 6:30pm, with main speaker Shereen El-Feki.
Egyptian director Mohamed Amin depicts the tale of two young single girls in Cairo who are set on getting married but are unable to find suitable grooms. It looks at the negative psychological impact of being without a husband in a society that prizes marriage as the only way for a girl to become a woman. It also shows the desperate measures they are willing to take in order to fight the stigma and how Egypt’s young males and female are in a difficult position where economic stresses and societal expectations are impossible to fulfil.
Shereen El Feki (@shereenelfeki) is the author of Sex and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World (Random House, 2013), shortlisted for The Guardian First Book Award. Shereen started her career in medical science, with a doctorate in immunology from the University of Cambridge, before going on to become an award-winning healthcare correspondent with The Economist and a presenter with Al Jazeera English. She is the former vice-chair of the UN’s Global Commission on HIV and the Law, as well as a TED Global Fellow.