In the past seven Olympic Games, Cuba, an island nation with a population of 11 million people, has dominated the sport of boxing: 63 medals, 32 of them gold. Boxing has held a special place of honor in Cuban society since the revolution, not least because Castro has deployed the nation’s athletes as an unconventional tool of foreign and domestic policy. Sport propels the nation onto the world stage – allowing it to break out of economic and political isolation into a very public and superficially apolitical arena. While the country has never had the military might to challenge the U.S., it has found a way to compete inside the ropes of the boxing ring. Now, as Castro’s faltering health has thrown the future into question, Cuba’s athletes, as well as the rest its citizens will face a crucial time of transition. While the shift of power from Fidel to his brother Raul seems to have gone smoothly, there are some indications that changes in economic policy may lie on the horizon.

About the Film

WIDE ANGLE gains intimate access to the Havana Boxing Academy on the outskirts of Cuba’s capital. There, from the tender age of nine, boys hand-picked as future Olympians are molded into soldiers of the ring. They live and train at the academy with a single purpose: to bring home Olympic gold. Victory Is Your Duty follows the boys’ dramatic path over eight months of training, schooling and boarding as they build up to the biggest event of their lives — the annual National Boxing Championships.

For the summer 2009 re-broadcast, WIDE ANGLE host Aaron Brown travels to Miami, Florida, to tell the story of what happens when graduates of Havana’s boxing academies grow up – and defect to the United States. The boxers tell of the triumphs and obstacles they faced in Cuba and continue to face as they pursue a professional career in the rough-and-tumble world of American boxing.

This episode of Wide Angle is the precursor to the theatrical film Sons of Cuba.

“An amazing documentary”
–baristaexchange.com

Eleni Gabre-Madhin is a woman with a dream. The charismatic Ethiopian economist wants to end hunger in her famine-plagued country. But rather than relying on foreign aid or new agricultural technology, she has a truly radical plan. She has designed the nation’s first commodities exchange, which she hopes will revolutionize an ancient market system whose inefficiencies have been partly responsible for the country’s persistent food shortages.

In April 2008 and after more than a decade of planning, the starting bell rang on the trading floor for the first time. Gabre-Madhin has been running frantically ever since. She attempts to maintain the machinery that keeps her country fed while facing powerful special interests, antiquated farming practices, poor infrastructure, and an unpredictable climate. Not to mention a global economic crisis.

WIDE ANGLE travels to East Africa for The Market Maker, hosted by anchor Aaron Brown, to tell the dramatic, intimate story of a woman on a mission – and a world of trouble standing in her way.

FOCAL POINT trains its lens on one of the 15,000 North Korean defectors who have made it to South Korea. Twenty-year-old Haejung (not her real name) was smuggled out of North Korea some years ago in the hope of a better life — leaving her family behind. She now attends Hangyeore High School, a special boarding school an hour outside of Seoul, founded in 2006 to help North Korean teens adjust to life in the South. Most of the school’s 240 students are separated from one or both of their parents back in the North, with little hope of ever seeing them again. They experience severe culture shock transitioning from one of the world’s most isolated Communist states to one of the most technologically and economically advanced societies. The school tries to fill both the emotional void and the cultural gaps. The students eat, sleep, and study on campus. The teachers live with them in the dorms, and many have training as therapists to provide psychological counseling. The curriculum includes everything from history to English to learning how to use a cell phone, computer or credit card. In Field Trip to the DMZ, the students make their annual trip to the border, and Haejung dreams of a time when her family and her homelands will be reunited.

Coming this summer, WIDE ANGLE tells the moving and dramatic stories of refugees crossing the North Korea-China border and the intrepid South Korean journalists who risked their lives filming with them undercover for almost a year.

Vote for Benazir’s Blood follows wealthy feudal landlord and former U.S. ambassador Abida Hussain on election day — as she competes for votes against her own equally illustrious cousin.

You Cannot Hide from Allah shows the rise and fall of Ishan Khan, a man of humble Pakistani origins who moves to the U.S., hits the jackpot in a lottery, and returns to his hometown to run for mayor.

“Beautifully filmed…. It’s so good to have Aaron Brown back again.”
–PopMatters

Read the latest news and updates on Iraqi refugees.

WIDE ANGLE reports from the frontlines of the staggering refugee crisis that is unfolding in the Middle East as Iraqis flee their war-torn country at the rate of up to 50,000 people per month. Since the war began in 2003, more than four million Iraqi civilians have fled their homes -– half of them becoming exiles in neighboring countries and the rest dislocated within Iraq’s borders.

While headlines are dominated by the deadly sectarian violence engulfing Iraq, the refugee crisis — the biggest in the Middle East since the displacement of the Palestinians in 1948 — is all but ignored.

Our story takes us to the heart of the crisis -– to Syria and Jordan, which harbor the vast majority of uprooted Iraqis. WIDE ANGLE explores the displaced Iraqi community – from the middle class suburbs of Damascus where Iraqis have sent housing prices soaring more than 50 percent to the cafés, schools and food distribution sites of Amman.

We follow refugees as they cope with their new surroundings amid government pressure and rising resentment from the local population whose health, education, and housing resources are being stretched to the limit.

And, WIDE ANGLE’s anchor, Aaron Brown, speaks in Jordan with Queen Noor, the American-born widow of the late King Hussein, about the impact of the refugees’ influx on Jordan and her outlook on long-term solutions to the crisis.

]]> http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/iraqi-exodus/introduction/811/feed/ 23 http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/ladies-first/introduction/204/ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/ladies-first/introduction/204/#comments Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:29:06 +0000 admin http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/2008/06/02/introduction-5/ Ten years after the bloody genocide that killed an estimated 800,000 people in just 100 days, Rwanda’s women are leading their country’s healing process and taking their society forward into a different future. They are playing a remarkable role in politics and are also emerging as prominent figures in the business sector. In spring 2004 — as Rwanda commemorated the 10th anniversary of the genocide — WIDE ANGLE traveled to this fractured nation to make a film that looks forward instead of back. Profiling women on the forefront of change, “Ladies First” reveals the challenges facing them and their country as Rwanda struggles to build a sustainable peace between the majority Hutus and minority Tutsis — a peace that has eluded the country for almost half a century.

About the Issue:
Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution reads:

Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. 2) In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

In the aftermath of World War II, Japan’s new pacifist constitution renounced the right to wage war and maintain military forces. Instead, Japan created the Self-Defense Forces with a strictly defensive mandate.

In recent years, though, the line between defense and offense has blurred. In 2004, Japan sent its Ground Self-Defense Forces to Iraq — the first deployment of Japanese soldiers in an active combat zone in over 60 years.

With North Korea test-launching ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan and China’s economic and military expansion, Japan has started reconsidering its regional strategy.

Today, Japan has a $40 billion military budget, the fifth largest in the world.

About the Film:
Japan’s About-Face is a remarkable window into the shifting role of the military in post-war Japanese society.

WIDE ANGLE has acquired unprecedented access to the National Defense Academy, Japan’s “West Point.” We follow Defense Academy cadets preparing for a future that may involve overseas deployment, and meet with a group of peace activists — some of them atom bomb survivors — on a grueling two month, 750-mile protest march from Hiroshima to Tokyo. We also witness joint maneuvers with the U.S. Marine Corps, a surveillance flight over the Sea of Japan, and the DDH Hyuga — the first Japanese aircraft carrier built since WWII.

Japan’s About-Face offers new insight into the future of Asian geopolitics.

The Issue

Poised to surpass the United States as the largest economy in the world, yet facing mounting domestic and international pressure for a fair and transparent framework of laws, China is racing to reshape the rules of society. In the past quarter century, the country has opened nearly 400 law schools, trained hundreds of thousands of judges and lawyers, and launched education campaigns to encourage people to bring their grievances to court rather than taking to the streets. But the transformation is incomplete and the judiciary far from independent. Senior judges are appointed by, take orders from, and receive their paychecks from the one-party state. Hundreds of Chinese lawyers have been jailed in recent years while citizens are taking to the streets in record numbers to protest land seizures, corruption, pollution, or unpaid wages. And China executes more prisoners each year than the rest of the world combined.

The Film

WIDE ANGLE gained exclusive access to film in Chinese courts – a first for a Western documentary. Profiling itinerant judges, law students, a human rights lawyer, and ordinary citizens, The People’s Court examines China in flux, revealing the lengths to which Chinese people must go to obtain justice and raising crucial questions about their emerging system of law.

The Issue

Since Afghanistan emerged from under Taliban rule in late 2001, women’s rights have made great strides on paper. But the reality on the ground is a mixed picture. The Loya Jirga of 2003 produced a constitution guaranteeing a place for women at the political table and gender equality for all as a basic right. The classroom, the workplace, the hospital and even the parliament have opened their doors to women, and they are playing an active role in the nation’s reconstruction. But tradition often takes precedence over law, and many Afghan women and girls still fear male reprisal for attending school, working outside the home or even traveling alone. Even in the halls of the national legislature women struggle against the prejudices of a conservative, male-dominated society that resists change under the new banner of democracy.

The Film

A Woman Among Warlords follows the campaign of a woman running in Afghanistan’s first democratic parliament election in more than 30 years. WIDE ANGLE profiles 27 year-old Malalai Joya, one of the country’s most famous (and controversial) women since 2003 when she challenged the power of warlords in national politics. Forced to live in hiding and surrounded by armed guards, Joya conducts her parliamentary campaign in the remote desert province of Farah, the heart of poverty in Afghanistan. Despite death threats and assassination attempts, Joya continues to meet with clan leaders, opium kings, and adolescent girls pressured to marry older men. Six years after a U.S.-led coalition overthrew the Taliban, WIDE ANGLE provides unique insight into the politics and culture of a nation almost ruined by war, still ruled by fear, but desperate for change. A Woman Among Warlords is the television version of the celebrated documentary Enemies of Happiness, a film by Danish director Eva Mulvad.

“Intimate and harrowing”
–United Feature Syndicate

“This just might be the most eye-opening, unforgettable documentary you will see this year.”
–Canwest News Service

About the Issue

As the Palestinians enter their 40th year of Israeli occupation, the divisions between their two main political factions – the moderate secular party Fatah and the militant Islamist organization Hamas – are as pronounced as ever. Sporadic fighting between the two rival factions intensified after the death of charismatic Fatah leader Yasser Arafat in November 2004. Following its landslide election victories in January 2006, Hamas, branded a terrorist group by the United States, Israel and the European Union, continued its refusal to recognize the Jewish state or to renounce its tactics of violence. The West responded with a crippling boycott, cutting off more than $1 billion in aid to Palestinians, and Israel not only closed Gaza’s borders but also restricted trade, making food, fuel, and medicine more expensive and increasingly scarce. Tensions between Hamas and Fatah grew after repeated failures to reach a deal to share government power, culminating in an outright civil war in June 2007 that split the Palestinian Territories into a Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and Fatah-dominated West Bank.

About the Film

In the summer of 2006, as internal battles fracture the Palestinian Territories, WIDE ANGLE provides a glimpse inside the conflict as it spirals out of control. Gaza E.R. follows doctors, nurses, and staff at Shifa Hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, as they struggle in the face of turf wars between Hamas, rival faction Fatah, and powerful families with competing agendas. Our cameras reveal that gun-battles inside the hospital, massive shortages of pharmaceuticals and basic supplies, and unpaid salaries are routine occupational hazards at this medical outpost in the troubled Palestinian landscape.

WIDE ANGLE is on the ground as the Democratic Republic of Congo holds its first elections in 45 years — an election supported by more than $450 million from the United Nations. The stakes are high in Congo, a nation rich in timber, diamonds, and coltan — a substance essential for small electronics from cell phones to laptops to Play Stations — but the country is reeling from decades of dictatorship and a civil war that left more than four million dead. We follow a former school principal running for parliament who sees her Christian faith as the means for improving living conditions in a country where the per capita income is $100 per year. And we explore what the election means to ordinary Congolese like Jean “McCoy” Kajanda, a would-be accountant who instead spends his days knee-deep in a muddy river bed, sifting the soil for diamonds, earning less than a dollar a day — not always enough for his wife, Sophie, to feed their three young children. Through a diversity of voices in a country rarely seen on U.S. television, “Democracy in the Rough” immerses us in a nation haunted by war, threatened by corruption, and torn over how to move toward a democratic and more promising future.

In this episode’s essay, Christopher Caldwell examines the issues facing Turkish society in the new millennium, and gives his perspective on a country at a key turning point in its history.

Source: CIA World Factbook 2006

Marriage Age: 21 for males and 18 for females; a “qadi” (judge of religious law) can waive the age requirement.

Polygamy: A man may take up to four wives. A wife maintains the right to notification that her husband is taking another wife, and may sue for divorce if her consent was not given to the marriage.

Marriage Guardianship: A guardian is not permitted to force his ward to marry without her consent; however, there are no legal penalties for such action.

Divorce: Divorce by mutual consent is permitted after a mandatory reconciliation effort has failed. The wife can apply for divorce on the following grounds: non-payment of maintenance; infirmity preventing marital relations; husband’s abstinence from sexual relations for over four months; husband’s imprisonment for over a year for an offense that brings disgrace to his family; husband’s absence without provision of maintenance or valid reason for over a year; and any grave moral impropriety.

Child Custody: If a mother is given custody, she will lose custody to the father if she remarries.

Sources: Islamic Family Law, special project of Emory Law School; Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Rand Corporation