SOME Africans believe that if you mix the blood of a virgin with herbs, you have a potion that will heal any disease. According to the Zimbabwean activist Betty Makoni, this superstition led in time to an inexpressibly tragic belief: that sex with a virgin will cure AIDS. The locally made documentary Tapestries of Hope documents how this superstition has resulted in an epidemic of child rape. According to Makoni’s website (http://girlchildnetworkworldwide.org) the rapes are sometimes hard to prosecute; often it’s the politically well-connected who carry out this kind of blood magic.
Despite her own hardships—she was raped at 7 and saw her father beating her mother to death—Makoni started three separate villages for raped girls to find refuge and get back into school. This work has earned her recognition as one of CNN’s Top 10 Heroes for 2009.
San Mateo County filmmaker Michealene Cristini Risley traveled to Zimbabwe to meet with Makoni, shortly before Makoni herself was chased out of her own country. Risley herself was arrested while in Zimbabwe and warned that she would be murdered in jail. Though she admits she’s not the kind of filmmaker who prefers to be in front of the camera, Risley has included her own story while reporting on Makoni’s bravery.
Tapestries of Hope was co-produced by Livermore’s Ray Wang. Also on the bill at this one-night screening is Wang’s short The Profile, concerning the kind of worst-case scenario that might happen at the nearby weapons lab. A researcher named Tran is accused by the government of leaking secrets to Taiwan; he gets tried in the press and it seems suspicions have fallen on him because he’s Asian.
Long Nguyen (Oliver Stone’s Heaven and Earth) does solid work as the accused, and director/producer Wang (a former concert keyboardist) provides appropriately tragic music as Tran goes through his ordeal. It’s made all the more ironic by the fact that the accused is an ex-boat person who sought freedom in the greatest country in the world—a cliché used here to highlight just what kind of a world it is.
Tapestries of Hope and The Profile
Tuesday, 8pm
Bluelight Cinemas, Cupertino
