The following film review of "Forbidden Voices" is written by Suzy Nelson-Pollard. Forbidden Voices will be shown on Monday 23rd April at 10:o0 am at the Salle Communale. How much do you value the freedom of speech in your country? Are you free to post observations on Facebook, cries for change on Twitter, criticism on your blog? What does it mean to have free press reporting on the current situation around you? "Forbidden Voices" will be shown for the second time on Monday morning at 10 a.m at the Salle Communale, and if there is one film that shouldn’t be missed this week at Vision du Réel, it is this one. The documentary follows three renowned female dissident bloggers from Cuba, Iran and China in their struggle to continue publishing the truth on the Internet, despite state repression and persecution. “I’m living in a Utopia, that isn’t my own”. Yoani Sanchez’s blog Generation Y, a rare insight in to Cuba through the eyes of a political enemy, has already been praised by the likes of the Obamas, Hillary Clinton and most of the Western press. Despite the fact that Cuba has one of the lowest internet connections in the world and that Sanchez has been denied an exit visa nineteen times, the Cuban blogger is one of the leading internet journalists of our time with a huge global following. The film concentrates mainly on her, as the camera crew are able to film within her home and gain access to her life with more ease than with the other two women. Sanchez says the fact that she is internationally recognised in a way keeps her safe and protects her from persecution, although she reveals later on in the film that she was a victim of an extremely violent attack by three government agents, which she manages to film on her mobile phone. We see the daily life of Yoani Sanchez, the meetings and the rallies she organises, her hopes and dreams for a freer, more tolerant Cuba. The internet is accelerating this process; it was online that Cubans first saw pictures of the fall of the Berlin Wall and Tiananmen Square, ten or eleven years after the events themselves. “Exiled Iranians live on the internet, it is our virtual country” Farnaz Seifi started blogging in the early 2000's about her experiences as a women in Iran, focusing on the gender in equality in the Islamic Republic. “If there was a car accident, insurance companies have to pay out more money if there is damage to a man’s genitals than if there is a female death. We women are officially considered to be half of a man”. After organising peaceful feminist rallies, Seifi was arrested, interrogated and then forced to flee due to fear for her family. She now lives in exile in Germany, and works closely with Reporters Without Borders. The documentary shows beautifully the deep sorrow of exile especially as Seifi speaks to other Iranian dissidents abroad. “My keyboard is the only thing that helps me to bear the sorrow and the indignation” Zeng Jinyan and her husband Hu Jia are so closely monitored and censored by the Chinese state that most of the documentary footage is either from long distance shots, homemade videos or a skype camera. They are both shadowed at all times by two surveillance state employees and their internet connection often cut off, but this does not stop either of them from voicing their opinions on human rights and AIDS in China online. Zeng Jinyan’s husband is sentenced to three and a half years of prison, leaving her alone with their baby daughter under house arrest. “He has done nothing wrong,” she cries “Freedom of Speech is in the Chinese Constitution”. Although alone and desperate, she never stops trying to break through the Great FireWall. The director of the film Barbara Miller said that raising money to make a documentary about women, technology and politics was a painstaking process, but this film could not be more topical, showing the lives of the women behind the repressed voices of authoritarian regimes. Not violence, repression, exile nor humiliation can stop the hope and struggle for a better future in the hearts of these three women and for dissident bloggers worldwide.
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