As Saudi Arabia’s first female director, Haifaa al-Mansour wrote and directed a film that reflects everyday life in the capitol city, Riyadh. “Wadjda” follows the story of a young girl who enters a Quran recitation contest to raise money for a green bicycle. Until this April, Saudi women were prohibited from riding bicycles and it’s still not common, but that doesn’t stop Wadjda from practicing on her family’s rooftop. She also listens to pop music, paints her toenails and reluctantly wears a headscarf. Al-Mansour did much of her directing from inside a van, communicating with her crew using a walkie-talkie because women and men are not allowed in the street together. She says religion permeates Saudi culture, “If you grow up in Saudi, religion is present every day. You cannot escape it. It becomes more than just being a good Muslim or not a good Muslim. It becomes part of the life.” Interview and editing by Lauren Talley.
Author Archives: Fred Yi
Methodist Gay Marriage, Chagall’s Jewish Jesus, Lindisfarne Gospels
We talk to United Methodist clergy about the contentious issue of same-sex marriage; visit an exhibition of the Lindisfarne Gospels at Durham Cathedral; and look at the work of artist Marc Chagall, whose painted images of a crucified Jewish Jesus personified Jewish pain, suffering, and sadness.
Lindisfarne Gospels
The oldest surviving English version of the New Testament Gospels withstood Viking raids and the Dark Ages to be exhibited this summer at Durham Cathedral.
Chagall’s Jewish Jesus
This modern artist’s body of work was based on the Hebrew Bible and the Jewish Jesus, often depicted with tallit and phylacteries. In the crucified Christ he saw the personification of Jewish suffering, pain, and sadness.
View a selection of Chagall’s paintings from the exhibition “Chagall: Love, War, and Exile” at the Jewish Museum in New York:
Robert Randolph and “Sacred Steel”
R&E caught up last month at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC with Robert Randolph and the Family Band and their “House of God sound.” Also described as “sacred steel,” their music has its roots in an African-American gospel tradition that developed in a group of Pentecostal churches in the 1930s. Lap steel and pedal steel guitars were embraced in worship in place of an organ. Today Robert Randolph is one of the most talented sacred steel musicians around. Interview by Julie Mashack. Edited by Fred Yi and Missy Daniel.
Syria Conflict, Birmingham Church Bombing 50th Anniversary, Kever Avot
We discuss moral considerations with Brookings Institution scholar William Galston as the Syria crisis continues to unfold; we visit Birmingham, Alabama on the 50th anniversary of a church bombing that killed four African-American girls; and we talk to Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles about the ritual of Kever Avot, or visiting the graves of one’s ancestors during the Jewish High Holy Days.
Syria Conflict
“It is only the threat of force that has brought the Syrians to this point, a point that they’ve resisted for decades.” William Galston, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, talks with host Bob Abernethy and managing editor Kim Lawton about moral consideration as the U.S. decides how to proceed in Syria.
Birmingham Church Bombing 50th Anniversary
Fifty years after it was bombed, Sixteenth Street Baptist Church stands as a witness to the violence and suffering of the civil rights era.
Glenn Eskew Extended Interview
“Sixteenth Street Church had unwillingly come into the civil rights movement and was quick to exit the movement—and yet in many ways it becomes the symbol of the movement in Birmingham—so much so that following the dynamite blast, many of its members leave.” Watch more of our interview with Glenn Eskew, professor of history at Georgia State University in Atlanta and author of the book “But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle.”
Kever Avot
It is a time during the Jewish High Holy Days for repenting and remembering as a community. “This is the rare time when you actually have dedicated moments to think, to reflect, to meditate. It doesn’t happen very often in our lives, and so this really is our chance to change who we are and therefore to change what becomes of us,” says Rabbi David Wolpe.
Photo gallery by Noelle Serper:
