midgebop Blog

Day two of festing brought a more serious feature, Meena Nanji's View From a Grain of Sand. The film travels thirty years of Afghanistan history, told through the lens of three women--a doctor, teacher, and activist. Roeena, Shapiro, and Wajeeha tell their stories from refugee camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. These women share their stories and fight, their losses and struggles, and ultimately their journey from lives of freedom to lives of survival in war ravaged Afghanistan. The documentary carries footage (captured by women activists hiding cameras under their burqas) of the Taliban beating women in burqas and the Taliban shooting of a woman in front of a huge audience in a stadium.

Despite the hardships suffered, these women remain alive, committed to their lives and the lives of their fellow Afghan women. One has returned with her family to Afghanistan, attempting to live without running water and electricity. The other women remain in Pakistan, displaced from their homeland, yet building futures through their work as a doctor and an activist.

I left the film shocked by the reminder of the horrors of the Taliban and the understanding of our country's implicit support of the regimes (the film points out how the U.S. funded the very religious fundamentalists that seized power and gave rise to the Taliban), yet ultimately touched by the strength of the women, their passion and spirit never wavering.

"We learned to love that summer , We were 17…" plays as the credits
to Nail Polish, a coming of age story set on the Joisey shore, scroll. Jane
Ainbinder's film is told through the lens of Allison, an awkward teen
who has recently lost her mother. Allison spends the summer before
college with her friend Becky, navigating the sexual terrain of beach
life. Becky, a free spirit with an ultimate ambition of going to
college, getting married, making babies, and retiring to Florida,
tries to guide Allison in the world of boys, giving advice on dress
and conversation. Despite the advice, Allison constantly mis-steps,
finding solace in a world of daydreams, a place where her dead
mother's gentle smile comes alive and guides her. Ainbinder accents
the separate worlds of Becky and Allison not only in their behavior,
but through their speech--Becky has a thick Joisey accent while
Allison does not.

The summer is supposed to help Allison heal from the loss of her
mother, but instead, it ends up bringing a new set of challenges. She
has a dead-end job at a diner, complete with a boss who berates her
for not correctly placing silverware in napkins, a cook whose sexual
innuendos disgust her, and a co-worker who fails to help her in a
quest to finally have sex (he passes out stoned on the beach).
Disappointment continues when Becky's mom, a former Hooter's
waitress, arrives and monopolizes Becky. The mother's arrival also
brings frat-like parties to the house, turning a potential haven into
beer bong central.

Allison, though, does ultimately find her way out ("her aim is true")
of this mess and out of her awkwardness. She meets Wayne, an
intellectual poser, who helps her transcend from a world of daydream
into reality. It is this brief love affair that teaches Allison
comfort and shows her how to finally draw on her own strength and
beauty as she moves from the awkward world of teen to adult.

Ainbinder's film perfectly nails the Joisey setting and its
characters. 80s music, with all its kitsch, pulses through the film
as the lights of the Seaside Heights' ferris wheel reminds the
viewers of the magical escape a summer at the shore provides. The
world of Nail Polish is a glimpse at growing up, a time when
teenagers use cosmetics to try on different faces, to cover up their
awkwardness, and to help their passage into womanhood.