Main Library

“The Daughters of Yalta” A Conversation with Catherine Grace Katz

by

October 8, 2020

Watch the Recording

Join us for a virtual conversation with author Catherine Grace Katz as she discussed her new book, The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans, A Story of Love and War. Katz will be in conversation with the Library’s programs and education manager, Martha Williams.

Tensions during the Yalta Conference in February 1945 threatened to tear apart the wartime alliance among Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin just as victory was close at hand. In The Daughters of Yalta, Katz draws on newly accessible sources to bring to light the untold story of the three intelligent and glamorous young women who accompanied their famous fathers to the Yalta Conference with Stalin seventy-five years ago, and of the fateful reverberations in the waning days of World War II.

Kathleen Harriman was a champion skier, war correspondent, and daughter of US ambassador to the Soviet Union Averell Harriman. Sarah Churchill, an actress turned RAF officer, was devoted to her brilliant father, who depended on her astute political mind. Roosevelt’s only daughter, Anna, chosen instead of her mother Eleanor to accompany the president to Yalta, arrived there as keeper of her father’s most damaging secrets. Situated in the political maelstrom that marked the transition to a post war world,  The Daughters of Yalta is a remarkable story about complex personal relationships seen through the lens of a pivotal historic moment.

Catherine Grace Katz is a writer and historian from Chicago. She holds degrees in history from Harvard and Cambridge and is currently pursuing her JD at Harvard Law School. The Daughters of Yalta is her first book.

VIRTUAL – “The Magical Universe of the Ancients: A Desert Journal”

by

Join us for a virtual evening with Julie Weston and Gerry Morrison, collaborators on the new book, The Magical Universe of the Ancients: A Desert Journal, as they share stories and photos from their travels through the desert Southwest.

This program will be broadcast on LIVESTREAM and recorded for later viewing. A Q&A will follow the presentation.

REGISTER HERE to receive the link and a reminder about the program.

Mystery haunts the desert Southwest, in drawings by people who lived millennia ago. Morrison’s photographs capture the rock art and little known ruins juxtaposed with Spanish churches, folds and wrinkles in the landscape, and desert wildflowers. Weston’s journals complete the spaces between photographs with anecdotes and experiences, including blisters and cactus quill wounds, visits to secret places, archaeological and cultural information, along with meditations on life and death and the Universe.

Julie Weston grew up in Kellogg, Idaho, and is a Wood River Valley resident whose short stories and essays have been published in Idaho Magazine, The Threepenny Review, and Boston Literary Magazine, among others. Her award-winning novels include Moonscape, Basque Moon, and Moonshadows, mysteries set in Idaho in the 1920s. She is also the author of the memoir, The Good Times Are All Gone Now: Life, Death, and Rebirth in an Idaho Mining Town, published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

Gerry Morrison is a native of Seattle and Wood River Valley resident whose photographs have been featured in Idaho Magazine, Saint Ann’s Review, and Rendezvous. His work can also be found in the collections of more than fifty families and businesses.

VIRTUAL – Family of Woman Film Festival: “The King of Masks”

by

Watch the film on LIVESTREAM.

This film will only be available for live viewing at the time scheduled.

The film is set in the 1930s, a time of political turmoil in the Sichuan province of China. Wang, the King of Masks, is an elderly street performer, enchanting audiences with the complicated art of face-changing. He illustrates Chinese folk tales by split second changes of a large repertoire of character masks. Traditionally, the King of Masks passes down the secrets of the art to a son or grandson, but Wang has no heir. At an illegal child market, Wang buys an orphan boy to become his adopted son and apprentice. However, Wang soon learns his apprentice is actually a girl and sends her away—but she refuses to leave. He reluctantly allows her to act as a servant, calling her “Doggie” and commands her to refer to him as “Boss”. Doggie will do anything to gain Wang’s approval and surprises him by performing street acrobatics to draw a crowd.

Wang refuses, however, to share the secrets of the masks, and Doggie secretly tries to inspect them closely while the old man is sleeping. In the process, she sets the sampan on which they live on fire. Out of guilt, she runs away, and compounds her errors further by rescuing a kidnapped boy fated to be sold by kidnappers and takes him to Wang to be the grandson he desires. Unfortunately, Wang is arrested as a kidnapper and thrown in prison, destined to be executed. Doggie is determined to save him. By this time, the audience is completely enraptured by the wondrous King and the amazing Doggie, and completely drawn into their exotic world. A true classic, The Kind of Masks won many international awards when it was released in 1995.

The film will be preceded by the National Geographic short film, Akashinga: The Brave Ones, which follows a women-only team of rangers protecting animals from poachers and empowering African communities through an innovative approach to conservation. Executive produced by three-time Academy Award winner James Cameron and directed by Maria Wilhelm, the film is a celebration of the courage, conservation and unorthodox thinking that’s leading to massive positive change.

Drama, China, 91 minutes
Documentary, United States, 13 minutes

 

    

 

VIRTUAL – Family of Woman Film Festival: “The Perfect Candidate”

by

Watch the film on LIVESTREAM.

This film will only be available for live viewing at the time scheduled.

Haifaa al-Monsour is Saudi Arabia’s first female director. She burst into world view with her first feature film, Wadjda, about a young Saudi girl who becomes a student of the Koran in order to win a bicycle in a contest. The Perfect Candidate is a much more complex and nuanced film, with a story and a cast of characters who are so engaging, a viewer is left wanting a sequel.

The film starts with a problem increasingly irritating Maryam, a young woman Saudi doctor: an unpaved, rutted and constantly flooded street leading to the doors of her clinic makes access next to impossible for patients and ambulances alike. Frustrated by the failure of her entreaties to the local authorities to fix the problem, Maryam decides to run for her local city council to get things done. She is assisted by her two sisters—the older an enthusiastic wedding player, and the younger a reluctant teenager—and also by the grandson of a crotchety old man he has brought to the hospital after an accident. The elderly gentleman insists upon being examined by a real (male) doctor, and remains a thorn in Maryam’s side until he admits that he voted for her. Maryam’s father is a professional musician, who is constantly on the road playing traditional music. He and his best friend, another musician, become an amusing Greek chorus as Maryam’s campaign progresses, both agreeing that nothing can be done about daughters.

Dramatic comedy, Saudi Arabia – 104 Minutes

 

    

About the Filmmaker

Haifaa-al-Mansour is regarded as one of Saudi Arabia’s most significant cinematic figures. She studied comparative literature at The American University in Cairo and completed a master’s degree from the University of Sydney. The success of her 2005 documentary, Women Without Shadows, influenced a new wave of Saudi filmmakers. Her debut feature, Wadjdaˆ, is the first fictional feature film shot entirely in Saudi Arabia. It received wide critical acclaim after its premiere at the 2012 Venice Film Festival and was selected as the first-ever Saudi Arabian entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. al-Mansour is the first artist from the Arabian Gulfregion to be invited to join the Academy of Motion Pictures in the USA.

VIRTUAL – Family of Woman Film Festival: “A Girl From Mogadishu”

by

**If you missed the screening on September 9, REGISTER HERE to view the event on demand**

Based on a true story, the dramatization follows Ifrah Ahmed’s perilous journey as a refugee. Forced into an abusive marriage as a teenager, Ifrah has fled from this bondage, only to be rejected by her family. In the midst of civil war, she makes her way back to her home in Mogadishu to try to attempt a reconciliation . Rejected by her father, her grandmother gives her some money and the telephone number of a relative in the U.S.

Bombs are falling amid complete chaos. Director Mary McGuckian portrays Ifrah’s escape from Mogadishu in frightening, documentary fashion: you are there, experiencing the terror Ifrah experiences. The viewer becomes firmly placed in Ifrah’s shoes as she makes a perilous journey to safety, with danger at every corner. Who can she trust to help her? At the edge of your seat each step of the way, deep insight is gained into the desperation and determination of refugees fleeing for their lives. It is a shock when Ifrah doesn’t wind up in the US, but she has luckily landed in a haven where she realizes the potential buried inside of her. Today, Ifrah is a leader in the campaign to end FGM (Female Genital Mutilation).

A recorded interview with Mary McGuckian and Ifrah Ahmed, moderated by Sarah Craven of the UNFPA, will air following the film.

Drama, Somalia, Republic of Ireland, (113 Minutes)

 

    

 

About the Filmmaker

McGuckian has been producing, writing and directing feature films independently for over twenty years. A Girl From Mogadishu is her twelfth film as an auteur – producer, writer and director. Born and raised in Northern Ireland during the ‘troubles’, McGuckian completed her education in the Republic of Ireland at Trinity College, Dublin, taking a degree in engineering. At the same time, she became deeply involved with “Trinity Players”, appearing in over 30 productions, as well as producing, designing and directing. Post graduation, she followed an autodidactic path in literature, theatre, acting and directing in London, Paris and Italy, including writing a number of avant-garde plays, the most acclaimed of which was a long-running stage adaption of Brian Merriman’s poem, The Midnight Corner. In the early 1990s, she set up her own company, Pembridge Productions, to develop and produce feature film projects. Active as a co-producer on many Irish feature films, the company also produced three pictures which McGuckian wrote and directed, Words Upon the Window Pane, This is the Sea, and Best. Other films include Man on the Train, with Donald Sutherland; The Bridge of San Luis Rey, with F Murray Abraham, Kathy Bates, Gabriel Byrne, Geraldine Chapin, Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel; and The Price of Desire, a dramatization of the inception of 20th century architecture.

About Ifrah Ahmed

Ahmed left Mogadishu at the age of 17, and was granted refugee status in Ireland in 2006. Ahmed has established the United Youth of Ireland in 2010, an NGO for young immigrants, and the Ifrah Foundation, which is devoted to eliminating Female Genital Mutilation. Since 2016, she has been a Gender Advisor to the Prime Minister of Somalia.

The United Youth of Ireland provides support to young immigrants in their business, artistic and creative pursuits. Through the Ifrah Foundation, Ahmed continues to advocate for the eradication of FGM in her native Somalia. Her work includes raising awareness through producing media content to highlight the negative impact of FGM. In July 2018, in collaboration with the Global Media Campaign to end FGM, Ahmed produced a short documentary on the death of a 10-year-old girl due to complications resulting from FGM.

Additionally, Ahmed has been involved in organizing various events, workshops, fundraisers and seminars. Ifrah Foundation has partnered on impactful projects with international NGOs, and has formed strategic partnerships with governmental agencies on policy and legislation. Her focus over the past four years has been to deliver programs in Somalia providing evidence-based results that inform Ifrah Foundation’s proposed national action plan for the abandonment of FGM/C in Somalia.

Ahmed was awarded with a People of the Year Award in 2018 for her work.

Family of Woman Film Festival Begins

by

UPDATE

You can still watch the recorded Bonni Curran Memorial Lecture with Dr. Natalia Kanem by clicking here.

From September 11-18, you can watch A Girl From Mogadishu on demand. Register here to get the link.

All other films and events are being shown LIVE only.

 

Join The Community Library for the 2020 Family of Woman Film Festival, which will be presented in a fully virtual format.

All films will air on the Library’s Livestream page.

The Family of Woman Film Festival was founded in Sun Valley, Idaho, in 2008, by Friends of UNFPA Board Member, Peggy Elliott Goldwyn, to bring attention to the work of the United Nations Population Fund, which works in more than 150 countries to assure women and girls have access to reproductive health care, education and basic human rights. 

Five feature documentaries and dramas from around the world are presented each year, personalizing the status of women in different societies. In 2014, the annual keynote address was named the Bonni Curran Memorial Lecture for the Health and Dignity of Women, in honor of a local philanthropist deeply committed to working on behalf of women and children around the world. In 2019, Friends of UNFPA once again became the Festival’s beneficiary and partner.

For 2020, all films will be presented virtually, free to the public, September 9 through 13. The Bonni Curran Memorial Lecture for the Health and Dignity of Women will be presented virtually on September 8 at 6:00 PM.  

To learn more about the films, click below:

 

Support the Library

The Community Library’s free resources and services reflect the generosity of community members like you!
Donate
Gold Mine Stores
Volunteer