Support a documentary exploring Afghanistan's recent revolution of photography.

A documentary exploring Afghanistan's recent revolution of photography through four local photojournalists.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/framebyframe/frame-by-frame

THE POWER OF A PHOTO

In 1996, the Taliban banned photography in Afghanistan. Taking a photo was considered a crime. When the regime was removed from Kabul in 2001, their suppression of free speech and press disappeared. Since then, photography has become an outlet for Afghans determined to show the hidden stories of their country.
In this coming year, as foreign troops pull out of the country, international media will inevitably follow. The Taliban is poised to gain influence, if not fully return to power. The future of journalism in Afghanistan is unknown.
The need for local photojournalism here couldn’t be more important in documenting the country’s issues both now, and in the future.
Frame by Frame is a character-driven feature-length documentary that follows the story of four Afghan photographers to explore the recent revolution in local photojournalism.
These Afghan photojournalists are the storytellers, the truth-seekers, the voice of their own people. They’re seizing a unique opportunity to build democracy here in a way that never existed before: through a free press. Their work is a crucial part of showing what is happening during this very uncertain time.
At the same time, they face major hurdles: threats from Taliban or other extremists, skepticism of their own people, lack of security and financial support, and for Farzana, one of the only female Afghan photographers in Kabul, gender barriers.

From left to right: Najibullah Musafer, Massoud Hossaini, Wakil Kohsar, and Farzana Wahidy

Going back to Afghanistan

Frame by Frame started production in the fall of 2012: we emptied Alexandria’s bank account, sold her car, and flew to Afghanistan with the hopes of shooting a short film about local photographers. We filmed for a short period of time, then sat down with each photographer to learn about their work and their take on the future of photojournalism in Afghanistan. Each interview captivated us more and more. This was a story that needed to be told — and we needed more time to tell it.
So... why us?
We care about the human stories behind this issue, and we also have access to tell it in an incredible way. Last year, we filmed our photographers capturing heroin addicts, the country’s first boxing match, and patrons of a mosque which normally turns cameras away. Our characters’ access has opened up a very unique opportunity for us to capture subjects and issues which are usually not accessible to outside film crews.

A pop-up studio in Kabul with our wonderful fixer Najib and photographer Wakil Kohsar

What this Kickstarter will do

This Kickstarter will get us back to Kabul this fall to finish the production side of Frame by Frame. For five weeks, we’ll follow Farzana, Massoud, Wakil and Najibullah in their day-to-day lives. We’ll capture the ups and downs of their work while driving at the larger story: what it’s like to help build and then stand for free press in Afghanistan while the country’s future hangs in the balance.
Filming in Afghanistan is expensive, especially when it comes to being as safe as possible. Our Kickstarter goal of $40,000 will cover airfare, lodging, transportation, food for the production crew, hard drives, evacuation insurance, interview translations, and a team of amazing fixers and drivers that we had last year. We’ve also budgeted in the costs of creating the rewards, shipping them to you and the 10% fee for Kickstarter and Amazon.

The more funds we can raise, the better we can make this film. Right now, we have our sights set on getting back to Afghanistan to truly capture this story. But if we can raise more then $40,000, we’ll have a head start in the post-production costs of completing this film.

Rewards for Backers

As a backer, you'll be with us all the way through the process of making this film. You’ll receive exclusive updates and have the opportunity to meet the photographers behind this incredible revolution.
We want you to know how much you’re contribution means to everyone involved with Frame by Frame, so we’ve included some rewards that will get you the film, but also bring you the story through the photography itself.
We couldn’t be more excited and honored to have the chance to tell this story, and as a backer, you’re a huge part of that. You’ll be the reason their stories are brought to the world. So... what are you waiting for? Join us!

A classic Afghan scarf! We should warn you; you may not look as awesome as Wakil does in his...

Risks and challenges

Well, let’s talk about what you’re all likely thinking: “Two women are going alone to Afghanistan?!”
We are well aware this is a war zone, and there are inherent risks in being in the country at all. We’ve been to Kabul before and have built trusted relationships with our contacts here. Our ‘fixer’ (i.e. a person devoted to getting us local access) has worked with international news crews, nonprofit organizations and other visitors for many years.
All decisions — from where to grab breakfast to how long to spend shooting in a location — are made with security as a priority.
Beyond Kabul, we both have experience filming in adverse conditions around the world. We’re aware that situations can turn ugly on a dime, and we’re as prepared as possible for emergency situations.
Now... on the challenges to the film itself:
One rule in documentary is that nothing ever goes according to plan; these are real stories unfolding out in the real world. Nothing is scripted, and anything can happen. This can turn out to be a really beautiful and amazing thing, but also a really trying, difficult and sometimes dangerous thing. We appreciate your patience and support through our production.
Another challenge at this point is funding for post-production. We set our Kickstarter goal to cover the bare minimum of getting us back to Kabul and finishing production of Frame by Frame. It will NOT cover the post-production costs such as music licensing, sound design, color correction, and distribution.
So -- all funds beyond our goal will help greatly! They'll go toward post-production so we can craft the film in the edit room and get it out to the world.
Thank you for believing in this project and for being a part of telling this very important story.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/framebyframe/frame-by-frame

Maida Khal? Oh, we forgot about her.

Remember Maida Khal?  I wonder if she is still in prison?  Has anyone heard? 

Afghan judges free three jailed for torture of child bride Sahar Gul

 

          

Sahar Gul, then a 15-year-old Afghan wife, being carried to hospital in Baghlan. Her in-laws tortured her to force her into prostitution. Photograph: Jawed Basharat/AP

 

 

Human rights activists have warned of an new assault on women's rights in Afghanistan after judges and prosecutors allowed the early release of three people convicted for the brutal torture of a child bride, and conservative lawmakers made an aggressive bid to prevent relatives testifying against each other.
If successful, the small change – introduced covertly into the criminal prosecution code – would stop the vast majority of cases of violence against women from ever reaching court.
Together with the quashing of three convictions for the attempted murder of the teenager Sahar Gul, it marks an alarming two-pronged assault on women's rights by both those who make the laws and those tasked with upholding them.
"The last two months have really been a parade of horrible for women's rights in Afghanistan," said Heather Barr, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch, warning that the proposed change to the criminal code would leave most abused women with no legal protection against violence.
"Underage marriage, forced marriage, domestic violence, sale of women – these crimes are almost always committed against women by family members, whether through birth or through marriage."
The 10-year sentences handed down to Gul's tormentors last year was hailed as an important step forward, after her case horrified Afghanistan and prompted a bout of national soul-searching.
She was sold as a wife when she was an illiterate 12-year-old and her in-laws wasted little time embarking on a campaign of almost unimaginable torture. They starved her, chained her in a basement bathroom, beat her, burned her with red-hot metal pipes and pulled her fingernails out.
By the end of her ordeal she could no longer walk, and was rescued from her makeshift prison in a wheelbarrow. But last week, according to her lawyer and women's activists, a court ordered the release of Gul's mother-in-law, father-in-law, and sister-in-law saying there was no proof of abuse.

No evidence

"This was based on the idea that there was no evidence, but the people who would have given evidence didn't know that the hearing was taking place," said Kimberley Motley, a Kabul-based US lawyer who took on Gul's case last week after learning of the release.  Judges ignored the fact that the courtroom was almost empty, with apparently no representation from government prosecutors or the victim, even though both should have been informed under Afghan law.

                       

Sahar Gul at a women's shelter in Kabul, Afghanistan, last year.  She was not told about the release of her three in-laws, her lawyer said. Photograph: Kuni Takahashi/New York Times/Redux/eyevine   

 

 

 

"Sahar Gul was not told about this," Motley said. "The prosecutor didn't show up or wasn't informed. I believe the only person in court was the defence lawyer for the accused."
The quashing of the conviction was followed by a suspiciously rapid release of the prisoners, just two days later. In Afghanistan there are many layers of baffling paperwork between an overturned conviction and freedom, that usually take at least a month to complete.
"I cannot see that [process] happening in a legal way in two days' time in Afghanistan," said Motley. "It has taken me a minimum of seven working days to secure the release of clients, and that's when I'm devoting 100% of my time to it. But I don't pay [bribes]."
Judges must firstly put their decision in writing. That letter is taken to the prosecutors, who can mull an appeal for up to 30 days before authorising a release. If they accept the judgment, their signature travels by the rickety postal system to the central prison directorate, which attaches another letter to the pile of documents and sends it to the prison where the prisoner is housed, Motley said.
The prison governor must also sign off, and take the prisoners back to the office of the attorney general, who finally signs off again on the release and the prisoner is finally released.
The process means that even if government prosecutors were not told of the original hearing, they must have twice had the chance to appeal or prevent the release, but passed it up.

Systematic failure

"This is a systematic failure. This is corruption at the core of the justice system. I don't know how they can justify how this happened to this girl," said Motley, adding that the release would have involved the connivance of three judges and a prosecutor "at an absolute minimum".
The attorney general's office could not be reached for comment on the case.
Sahar Gul only heard about the release when an organisation now supporting her recovery and education tried to chase up whether a date had been set to hear an appeal by her in-laws.
"The lawyer went to court to find out when the trial was, and found out they had been released," said Manizha Naderi, executive director of Women for Afghan Women, which is supporting Gul. "We don't know where they are now … Sahar Gul is very scared, and wants them in jail for the rest of her life."
However terrifying women's advocates find the quashing of sentences for Sahar Gul's tormentors, the legal changes that some MPs are hoping to bring to the country's criminal prosecution code, now travelling through parliament, would have stopped the case even reaching court.
They have added a provision to clause 1 of article  26, which lists people who cannot be questioned as witnesses. "Relatives of the accused" are now grouped with small children, the accused's defence lawyer and others, according to one source who has seen a draft of the law.
Qazi Nazir Ahmad Hanafi, a conservative MP who has been a driving force in efforts to quash a landmark law on violence against women, confirmed to the Guardian that the provision had been added to a draft of the code that recently went through the lower house of parliament. It would still need to be passed by the upper house and signed by the president to become law.
Women's rights activists and female MPs who are outspoken about women's rights said they were not aware of the change, which still has to be approved by the upper house, but the head of the UN's human rights unit warned it could make prosecution of violence against women "almost impossible".
"The state [government] is obliged to protect women from domestic violence wherever it happens and prosecute whoever is committing such crimes including victims' family members," Georgette Gagnon told the Guardian.
It comes weeks after MPs quashed efforts to endorse a law on ending violence against women, arguing its terms against underage and forced marriage were unIslamic. The MPs also made a secret last-minute change to an election law, eliminating quotas of seats reserved for women on provincial councils.

South Dakota's Oglala Sioux Tribe legalises alcohol

 

A South Dakota Native American tribe ravaged by alcohol abuse has voted to end prohibition, which critics say will only worsen the reservation's problems.

The Oglala Sioux Tribe must now apply to the county and state for a permit.

Under the law, the tribe will own and operate stores on the reservation, and profits will be used for education and detoxification and treatment centres.

Their Pine Ridge Indian Reservation legalised alcohol in the 1970s, but restored the ban two months later.

An attempt to lift prohibition in 2004 also failed.


'A new era'
Alcohol abuse among the Oglala Sioux is blamed for some of the highest rates of domestic abuse, suicide, infant mortality and unemployment on Indian reservations.

End Quote Bryan Brewer Tribal president

Four stores in Whiteclay, Nebraska, two miles south of Pine Ridge, currently sell millions of cans of beer a year to tribe members.

Both sides in the debate would like to see those stores go out of business.

The tribe sued beer stores and manufacturers last year for $500m (£309m), blaming them for the reservation's social problems, but a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit.

Larry Eagle Bull, himself a reformed alcoholic, was one of nine tribal council members who put the issue to a public vote.

He told the Associated Press news agency: "This is a new era we're in. We've got to remember now we lived dry for 100 years and it was proven that prohibition didn't work. We're in new territory now."

Oglala Sioux Tribe Election Commission chairman Francis Pumpkin Seed said the result was 1,871 in favour of legalisation and 1,679 against.

The outcome of Tuesday's vote had been delayed by hundreds of disputed ballots.

Bryan Brewer, a tribal president who opposed legalisation, said he would abide by the result and work to implement the law.

"We know the use will go up," he said. "We know there'll be more violence.

"There'll be more women and children who will be abused. It will taper off. But it's something we're just going to have to deal with."

The measure calls for a new department and a full-time director to administer and enforce the law.

Federal law bans the sale of alcohol on Native American reservations unless the tribal council allows it.
-End of Article


Americans in the 1700-1800's (not today) - YOU are responsible for the stagnation of this tribe.
Americans today - what can, or should we do about it?

Badar Azim: Does the Queen's ex-footman live in a slum?

By Rahul Tandon BBC News, Calcutta

Recently, like many other journalists in Calcutta, I was trying to find the Queen's former footman, Badar Azim, who returned to India when his UK visa expired. British papers had written about his journey to Buckingham Palace from the "slums of Calcutta"... but this did not go down well with his family.

When I and a few other journalists knocked on the door of the house where Badar lived, his uncle opened it.

Among the throng were a few of us who worked for British-based media organisations. He stared at us while he asked why foreign newspapers wrote lies about his nephew.

And he finished by saying: "They think that all of we Indians live in slums." Some of the local journalists nodded their heads in agreement.

Outside Badar's house I met a friend of mine who works for a local news agency. She had a big smile on her face as she said, "You slumming it today?"

Before I could reply, she added: "How do you define what a slum is... I mean how do you guys know which area is a slum and which area isn't?"

It was a good question. Answering with more confidence than I really felt I said: "You don't seem to know yourself - so to avoid any arguments about this why don't we Google it."

Badar Azim played a public role, helping to announce the recent Royal birth

 

Before she could respond, I was typing away on my phone. Within seconds I had a definition from that most trusted of sources - the Oxford English Dictionary. I read it aloud: "A squalid and overcrowded urban area inhabited by very poor people."

We all then looked up at the building that Badar lived in. He and his two brothers, his mum and dad, and maybe a few more relatives, lived on the top floor. From the outside the structure looked shabby and the building which must once have been white was now a dirty grey colour. There were open sewers outside it and the area was full of people - many of them children, who probably should have been at school.

There was silence for what seemed like a minute or more. Then one of Badar's neighbours, Ghulam Mohammed, who had been listening to the conversation announced: "This cannot be a slum - because decent people live here."

He then told me he had a proper job in an office - so how could he live in a slum?

"I have a television and a motorbike, sir. Do slum-dwellers have these sorts of things?" he asked.

Local residents do not always see their surroundings as slums

 

This is not the first time that people in India have been upset with the use of the "S" word. Danny Boyle's film Slumdog Millionaire may have won a host of Oscars but there were protests about its title across the world's largest democracy.

I remember walking around one of Mumbai's largest so-called slums and seeing posters that said "I am not a slumdog but the future of India."

In a way, this anger has grown as India's economy has grown. India's new middle class wants the world to look at their success, not the poverty that still exists in many parts of this country - something which, at times, they seem to ignore.

A friend of mine recently told me, "The problem with you foreigners is that you still think we are a land of snake-charmers and beggars."

When I pointed out that it was the United Nations, not journalists, who said that 50% of Mumbai's population live in slums, he just shrugged his shoulders and said, "They are foreigners as well."

Recently I had to visit one of the poorest parts of Calcutta when an 11-year-old girl was burned to death after resisting attempts to rape her. Locals took me to the field where she had died.

We walked through large puddles of sewage water and past lots of small houses that looked like they were about to collapse and were crowded with families.

There were no toilets - people had to get their water from a dirty-looking well, and what little electricity there was would come and go. At one stage I asked one of the locals who had tried to save the girl whether it bothered him that people call this area a baasti, a slum.

"Only the rich have time for such debates," he replied. "Nobody would want want to live here but we have no choice - whether you call it a slum or not makes no difference to us as it is not going to change our lives."