Program

Silk @ Iron

WAYANG 2002 Thailand/Malaysia Documentary b/w 26min Betacam

The impact of globalization and the paternal social system together mold the roles which women should play. The career women, who struggle to free themselves from the traditional-bound feminine positions of wife, daughter, and mother, show their iron-like wills and accuse the society of its unfairness and oppression. Since 1997 when political and financial turmoil swept across Asia, female workers have become the scapegoats of the wrong policies made by IMF, WTO, and world banks. Their salaries are lower than the average; the high rate of female unemployment is often neglected by the statistics; not to mention the problem induced by age discrimination. Who says that women should stay at home and behave themselves well? That men and women are different inherently should be used as an excuse? When the silk-like women turn to be as strong as iron, these gender issues cannot be hidden and ignored by all of us.

Director

WAYANG

WAYANG is an alternative communication organization that seeks to visualise what is "shadowed" or repressed in society - to communicate people's experiential knowledge and local wisdom; and to share moving images that seek to move people, in solidarity, towards more balance (yin and yang), justice and creativity in the existing communication disorder… In 1984, WAYANG initiated the video documentation of a series of dialogues with women from different ethnic communities in Malaysia about their work, their struggles and their hopes. Over the past 20 years, WAYANG's alternative communication work has involved a broader range of communities, organisations and contexts in various parts of Asia and beyond. WAYANG's work prioritises issues relating to gender, labour, fishworkers, indigenous peoples, culture and human dignity.