Filmmaker Barbara Miller's Forbidden Voices profiles women bloggers Yoani Sánchez (Cuba), Zeng Jinyan (China), and Farnaz Seifi (Iran), who have all risked their lives to expose, via the Internet, human rights violations. Interviews, blog excerpts read by the authors, and live footage tell the story of police actions against peaceful demonstrators, freedom of speech and press denied, and state-sponsored propaganda accusing dissenters of threatening national security. Sánchez has been arrested and beaten for writing about political prisoners on her award-winning blog, Generation Y member Jinyan and her husband write about forbidden topics including human rights, pollution, and the spread of AIDS; charged with subverting state power, they live under house arrest and have suffered years of constant police surveillance. Seifi wrote about “taboo things,” particularly discrimination against Iranian women and restrictions based on religious laws; she was repeatedly arrested and interrogated until 2007, when she fled Iran. Finding ways around government efforts to block Internet access, Sánchez, Jinyan, and Seifi represent thousands who have suffered brutal attempts to silence their criticisms of totalitarian regimes. Forbidden Voices conveys the terror of living under despotic powers that are both vicious and capricious in enforcing restrictions on daily life, while also illustrating how the Internet provides ordinary citizens an unprecedented platform for political speech. Informative and inspiring, this is highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (M. Puffer-Rothenberg)
Forbidden Voices
(2012) 96 min. DVD: $89: public libraries; $395: colleges & universities. Women Make Movies. PPR. Volume 29, Issue 3
Forbidden Voices
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