Ivana Milosevic: Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White)
Here everything is complicated, says one of the women in the film. It is Cuba she talks about, and she and the 11 other interviewed women in the film both talk about and demonstrate what a life means where you have little and bad food, where power goes out very often and where there are restrictions on what you can say and do. And where your dear one(s) are far away from home.
The women are all ladies in white. Mothers or wives of men, who have been locked up in prisons for their oppositional attitude and contrarevolutionary activities in a dictatorship that has developed through decades. They meet and walk in protest marches dressed in white with white umbrellas and prints of their men on the t-shirts.
The film, made secretely, invites us to meet the women in their homes in a very informal and warm atmosphere with children running around, old people resting in the background and telenovelas very often as the sound to be heard. By written text we get to know the fate of the missing dissidents, who the women can see two hours every second month (!), and through a very present and searching-around-the-rooms camerawork and an exceptionally good choice of music, this has become a creative and important documentary film. A human story about a hard life, pain and sorrow, but also about energy and commitment and hope for change.
Czech Republic, 2008, 58 mins.
http://oneworld.cz/ow/2008/popEN.php?id=13458
http://www.damasdeblanco.com/
