Gala Screening
The Legend of Ruby Pasha and My Favourite Fabric Nov 17, 7-10pm, Theatre The Legend of Ruby Pasha dir. Sabah Haider, Canada + Lebanon, 15mins My Favourite Fabric dir. Gaya Jiji, France, Germany + Turkey, 96mins The films The inaugural Glasgow Feminist Arts Festival Gala Screening offers a double bill of F-rated UK Premieres: short film The Legend of Ruby Pasha and feature My Favourite Fabric. Both films playfully challenge preconceptions about women’s lives and identities in Arab and Pakistani cultures. The screening will be attended by The Legend of Ruby Pasha director Sabah Haider and will be followed by a Q&A. The Legend of Ruby Pasha follows Ruby’s journey as she escapes an unwanted engagement in Pakistan and flees to find worldwide acclaim as a revolutionary icon. Funny yet poignant, Ruby Pasha subverts stereotypical Western narratives about Pakistani women and asks us to think again about agency, gender… and the power of revenge. Gaya Jiji’s debut feature, My Favourite Fabric, tells the story of Nahla, a twenty-something retail assistant frustrated by life with her mother and sisters and determined both to lose her virginity and so relieve her boredom. Yet life is never that simple. Set in Syria amid the increasing tension and patriarchal violence of the Arab Spring, Nahla (played by an assured and brilliantly sulky Manal Issa) must overcome her teenage fantasies – and her obsession with intriguing new neighbour Madam Jiji – on her road to self-discovery. A women-centred coming of age drama, My Favourite Fabric is a breath of fresh air that thoroughly deserved its selection in the Un Certain Regard strand at Cannes. Don’t miss out. Language and accessibility Both films rely to some extent on visual material to convey ideas but contain a lot of explanatory dialogue. Both films contain some violence (The Legend of Ruby Pasha contains one violent domestic sequence and My Favourite Fabric shows news footage of military violence against civilians). My Favourite Fabric also depicts mild sexual/gendered violence against a sex worker, although its overall representation of sex work is positive. The theatre will be equipped with a hearing loop and the space if wheelchair accessible. |