January 27, 2013

‘Outlawed in Pakistan’ selected for Sundance Film Festival

‘Outlawed in Pakistan,’ a documentary by Pulitzer Center grantees Habiba Nosheen and Hilke Schellmann is one of 15 short documentary films selected for the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. The film is being screened in the Documentary Short Film category during the January 2013 Festival in Utah.

“Outlawed in Pakistan” follows the story Kainat Soomro, a Pakistani teenager, who accuses four men from her village of gang-raping her and then faces threats of honor killing. She takes her case to the Pakistani courts and confronts a deeply flawed criminal-justice system. The Pulitzer Center supported the underlying reporting project by Nosheen and Schellmann in Pakistan.

According to the Sundance Film Festival announcement, the 2013 Short Film program is comprised of 65 short films selected from a record 8,102 submissions (427 more than for the 2012 Festival). “The selections represent the immensely varied and dynamic approaches to storytelling that will inspire audiences with their huge accomplishments within a limited timeframe,” Trevor Groth, director of programming for the Festival, said in the announcement. Other Short Film categories include US Narrative, International Narrative and Animated. Nosheen is an award-winning journalist whose work highlights international women’s issues. Schellmann is a video journalist for The Wall Street Journal. Previously they worked together on an investigative documentary special on surrogacy that aired on the Emmy-award winning show “NOW” on PBS in September 2009.The 2013 Sundance Film Festival is being held in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.

Daily Times

January 27, 2013

Mother of two shot dead

Karachi: Nazo Bibi, 40, wife of Abdul Rehman, was at the dinner table with her family when two men broke into their residence in Raees Goth in Baldia Town and murdered her.

Police said the woman had two children and was killed over a personal enmity.

The News

January 27, 2013

United Nation campaign cites Malala as inspiration

DAVOS: The bravery of Malala Yousufzai has inspired children around the world to fight for a better education, key figures in a UN campaign said on Friday.

Hosting a discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, UN special education envoy and former British prime minister Gordon Brown paid tribute to 15-year-old Malala, who was shot and injured in October.“We saw when Malala Yousufzai was shot in Pakistan, girls in Pakistan went on to the streets to protest that they too wanted the education they were being denied,” Mr Brown told an elite audience at the luxury ski resort.

Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who is also involved in UN education efforts, said Malala’s example showed the need for the international community to help “vulnerable states”. “Her story has affected us all, it has affected teenagers all over the world, my own teenage daughters are thinking about this and worrying about girls’ education,” she said.

“And that’s why this ownership (of the issue) is so important: some girls don’t get education because their country is at war and a weak state and a very poor country.“But some kids, especially girls, don’t get their education because of cultural, religious choices in their part of the world.”

The Danish premier said all countries should take the responsibility for providing a good basic education where possible. “Those examples where girls are allowed into schools, where we help in vulnerable states like Afghanistan, that’s where we can make a difference,” Ms Thorning-Schmidt said.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon who appointed Mr Brown last July to lead a campaign to get 61 million more children into school by 2015 opened the discussion by saying that the world “cannot afford a lost generation”.

“Education must be a top priority of global and development agendas – this is not an option it is an imperative,” he told the audience of global politicians and business leaders. Mr Brown had pushed the Malala’s case and in November visited Pakistan to present a million-signature petition to the government calling for a change.

Dawn