CinéFemme - Annakarinaland

San Francisco, November 5th 2008 Its an incredible win for Barack Obama, no, incredible is not the word. Its credible. This victory shows that the old paradigm has shifted because we have evolved. The limited blue state, red state argot created out of the aftermath of the last eight year administration is soon to become obsolete just as other significations seem to have marched on. Remember when a red state was a Marxist state? The color scheme this time seems to be a purple united states. At least that is how Obama envisions it. His victory speech on election night has to be one of the most powerful he has made to date, and of any politician of recent time for that matter, revealing so much more of his core. Obama is also a writer. Nobel prize recipient Toni Morrison points that out. He writes his own speeches and is not dependent on ghost writers. Clearly he won't be needing them for his inaugural address either. I recall the last inauguration that I watched in transit at...

Veteran Swedish journalist Steve Sem-Sandberg takes issue with Uli Edel's film The Baader Meinhof Complex (Germany 2008) based on Stefan Aust's novel . He believes there is insufficient background provided for how Ulrike Meinhof turned from political analysis to political activism and violence. Sem-Sandberg's study of Meinhof - Theres (1996) discusses in depth how Ulrike Meinhof was working on a screenplay about young women in the Eichenhof correctional institution called Bambule , a film that was silenced when Meinhof became identified as a member of the 1970's terrorist group RAF - Rote Armee Fraktion ( Red Army Faction) . Bambule is briefly mentioned in Edel's film. Sem-Sandberg argues that f or Meinhof this institution where women were repressed and silenced at an early age was a microcosm of the new Germany, a politically repressive machinery built out of the wreckage of Nazi Germany, transformed into a modern police state which violated civil lib...

The transliteration of the name of the Greek island Lesbos (Λέσβος) in the northeastern Aegean is Lesvos . The classic Greek letter [β -beta] is pronounced [v-vita] in modern Greek. The inhabitants of Lesvos are Lesvians and it is not really accurate to refer to them as Lesbians because of a Beta/Vita confusion. To get around this some i slanders call the island Mytilini, the name of the capital city, and are sensitive about being associated with Lesbians who are gay women. In fact Dimitris Lambrou, the Greek editor of the right wing journal Davlos brought the issue to court in Athens to forbid the use of the name Lesbian by gay women claiming that Lesvians have the exclusive right to it. The Athens court ruled against the measure on July 18th and fined Lambrou $366 dollars, a token sum considering the ridulous fuss. For it is not only the use of the word lesbian that Lambrou wants to limit to the residents of Lesbos but even who is or isn't a lesbian - such as the po...

There was only one clear issue in the "debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin that both Democratic Republican VP candidates agreed on - according to moderator Gwen Ifil. But having done that, why did it prompt hearty laughter from the conservative Washington University student body in Missouri? Was it comic relief, or was it such a clear cut choice that it was non-polemical? The entire round of exchange took probably tops 3 minutes - and we're on to "foreign policy". "IFILL : The next round of -- pardon me, the next round of questions starts with you, Sen. Biden. Do you support, as they do in Alaska, granting same-sex benefits to couples? BIDEN : Absolutely. Do I support granting same-sex benefits? Absolutely positively. Look, in an Obama-Biden administration, there will be absolutely no distinction from a constitutional standpoint or a legal standpoint between a same-sex and a heterosexual couple. The fact of the matter is that under the Constitution w...

"On June 16, 2008 lesbian rights pioneers Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were married in the first same-sex marriage ceremony since the California Supreme Court ruled in May that it was unconstitutional for the state to deny the right to marry to gay or lesbian couples". This video of the wedding by Academy Award winning documentary filmmaker Debra Chasnoff shows the ceremony officiating by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. Phyllis Lyon died only months after the wedding. “Registered partnership” - not marriage - has been legal in Sweden since 1995 and exists in several countries today. The clinical phrasing makes it easy to create and dissolve partnerships, like registering a business. The first partnerships were often created as expressions of political victory – a milestone for so-called “equal protection under the law”, but which does not come close to the meaning of honor and commitment in marriage. This was a hard earned victory in California shot down in 2004 and which s...

There wouldn't be much point in spotlighting women in the media if a few moments weren't spent on Sarah Palin, much as I dislike having to do it. The woman N.O.W will not endorse, the woman that is a Vice Presidential candidate to a Presidential candidate that will slash all federal spending except to veterans and troops overseas. The woman who said " bet they're sorry now" to the Democrats for NOT choosing a woman, i.e. Hillary Clinton. This election was so clearly Hillary Clintons' but maybe the goofuses in the Republican party headquarters who couldn't read the signals correctly put just any woman on the ticket. Hillary Clinton was often the brunt of jokes about her gender, and Sarah Palin is no different. But while the arguments leveled by Clinton had foresight, Palin seems to be winging it alone, hit or miss, mostly miss on a variety of topics that makes it clear that any old woman isn't the same as someone who knows what she is doing. A Christ...

On the closing day of San Francisco Pride, a day full of a grand parade through the streets of San Francisco one of the most brilliant films of the Frameline LGBT Film Festival, Derek screened to an audience at the Castro Theater. The artistic director of the festival Michael Lumpkin had wanted to show one of Jarman's films, which were impossible to find in a 35mm print in the USA. That is something to take note of since Derek Jarman and his films reminds us of a time in British filmmaking that no longer exists, a combination of the political, the artistic and, with a focus on gay sexuality in several complex films such as Sebastiane (1976) and Caravaggio (1986). Jarman served as production designer for Ken Russel's fascinating treatise on sexuality and the repressed clergy - The Devils. (1970). And without Jarman, Tilda Swinton said her industry career would never have taken off. She was asked to deliver a lecture on Jarman, a lecture that turned into a documentary f...