Filmic Examples for Ramsey and Massood

God Sleeps in Rwanda

Upon watching God Sleeps in Rwanda, I learned that women of Rwanda have had to endure a lot.  According to the short film, women's pasts were chaotic - many of whom were comparably young.  In 1994, Rwanda's Hutu government conducted an "ethnic cleansing" against it's Tutsi minority.  For some women, their pasts were packed with hardships such as (but not limited to) loss of family due to genocide and/or being a rape victim.  The latter could subsequently have led to the contraction of HIV/AIDS, or becoming impregnated - both of which would be quite shocking and life-changing, especially initially.  For those young women who had been in school and their families had suffered the loss of their parents, many had to stop going to school in order to take care of their younger siblings, giving up what some believed was their only future.  In short, women of Rwanda have seemingly had to make a lot of sacrifices.

I do think this short film presented Black female subjectivity.  I definitely felt like the Rwandan women were the subjects of God Sleeps in Rwanda.  It was packed with emotion and was good about telling stories through the women's perspective.  I mean, I felt nothing but sympathy for the individuals I saw in the film.

God sleeps in Rwanda

This film was very touching and at times hard to listen to. Hearing a woman genocide survivor talking about how terrible that travesty was gave me the viewer a great deal of sadness. Hearing her talk about almost aborting her child because she was one the militiamen, almost brought tears to my eyes because they showed the little girl playing and alive. The film was very interesting and taught me a lot of things. I didn't know that a woman was in charge of part of the raping's of during the genocide, how sick. The main scene that got me was when the documentary showed Fifi dying of AIDS. Seeing someone on their death bed, fighting for their life is way too hard for me to watch. I think this was a really good documentary and brought to light problems that we don't have to deal with, and made me a lot more appreciative of the life I live.

God sleeps in Rwanda

This short film gave me an entirely different outlook on the genocide in Rwanda. I wasn't aware that women were being raped during this horrible massacre. I felt a great deal of sadness for the women of this film because of the conflicts they had to conquered. I do believe that this short film demonstrates female subjectivity. Yes, the women identified in this film are being objectified, but the film does a magnificent job telling their story was grace and respect. The film doesn't just focus on the women being objectified, it also highlights the struggles that the women had to overcome.  

God Sleeps in Rwanda

After watching this short film, I learned many things about women in Rwanda. One of the most memorable pieces of the film for me was the fact that 70% of the population for Rwanda was women after the genocide of 1994. Despite this grisly fact, the film finds a way to document a sort of redemption paired with the shadow of loss hovering over all five of the women featured in the film.

As for Black female subjectivity, I think this film is magnificent. It tells us that this country is mostly populated by women and that this is indeed a story about women dealing with the aftermath of a horribly wounded society. These women have to reconstruct the lives they once knew and through their struggle, we are able to see their courage. Because of how close the film brings us with the "characters", we are able to at least try and understand what they are going through, even though we'll possibly never know for ourselves.

God Sleeps in Rwanda

God Sleeps in Rwanda made it clear that women’s lives in Rwanda are incredibly different from women’s lives elsewhere. Here, the women hastily acclimated themselves to a changed society while trying to move beyond the shadow of terrible, terrible tragedy. They put it on themselves to take up the opportunities that the country’s swift demographic shift presented. With that, the women keep forever-altered Rwanda from being altered solely through devastation. They embarked on an unflinching wave of progression, which can hopefully continue to develop and grow. I think that the film presents Black female subjectivity, considering the roles that these women have undertaken, and the depiction of their humanity in the face of struggle.

Yet, while women take on bigger societal roles and hold a majority in Rwandan parliament, it hasn’t kept lingering issues from looming large. Genocide survivors still have issues getting access to health care. Statistics from the Rwandan Men’s Resource Centre in 2011 show that gender-based violence is still a tremendous issue, having been experienced by 57.2% of the over 1300 women included in the study. 60% of families living in poverty are headed by women. Women in Rwanda are still nowhere near an enviable situation, and don’t get as much attention as they deserve.

The Women of Rwanda

It is extremely fascinating how resilient people can be after tragedy.

Though what brought the women of Rwanda into their current situation was catastrophic and inhumane (on so many levels), having seventy percent of the nation's population be of the female sex allows for the country progress for women's rights. I find the survivors to be inspirational in their endeavor to rebuild Rwanda and look forward to success of the country in the decades to come. This film did a fantastic job highlighting the struggles and successes of the women of Rwanda, portraying them as subjects of the film rather than objects.

One of the questions this circumstance--a mostly female-populated country--raises, though, is what will happen in the years to come when the population balances out? Will women retain these powerful positions within society? or will they regress back into their cultural norms?

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On the note of the Rwanda Genocide, it is exceptionally repulsive that any person would suggest rape as a form of war crime; however, I find it to be a disgrace to all women and abhorrent that a woman in political power had such a hatred towards the Tutsi population to recommend this act of violence.