That’s right… we now know what well over two hundred people will be doing on the evenings of June 28th & 29th, when VF13 “Centerpiece” world premiere, COMMIE CAMP, ignites the screen at New York’s Tribeca Cinema.
Calls flooded the VF offices and tickets SOLD OUT completely for the added show in just two days, making this the fastest selling program in the 13 years that VF has been running.
Excerpted from Domanivisionfilm
Dear friends,
You can buy tickets here. It’s program 6-B.
There’s a nice bar at the theater, too, where we can chat after the screening.
And I have the date for my California premier. Tickets aren’t on sale yet, but I’ll let you know when they are. Please help spread the word on that screening because the theater it’s in is huuuuuge! 600 seats! It’s a really nice deco theater from the 1920s, by the way. See the image above.
The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival
xoxo,
Katie
Rehtaeh Parsons was a 17-year-old Canadian high student who hanged herself in April. Rehtaeh started having suicidal thoughts when she was 15 after she was raped by four boys who photographed the violation and sent it around to their friends and classmates. As if that weren’t bad enough, for the next 17 months, Rehtaeh’s classmates shunned, tormented and bulliedher mercilessly. No charges were ever filed.
Two months to the day after Rehtaeh’s death, feminists are launching a day of awareness around violence against women and a commemoration of Rehtaeh. As the organizers explain on the Hands Up for Rehtaeh page,
in light of this [Rehtaeh’s story], Steubenville, and numerous other rapes and sexual assaults in the news, we are making a call to action.
We are tired of girls and women being treated like sexual objects and the effect rape culture has on global society.
To that end, we are organizing a global day of awareness on violence against women, particularly rape culture (the institutional bias against victims and failure to prevent rape and sexual assault).
We ask you to join us on June 7th and write “Rehtaeh” on your wrist to let the world know you stand against rape culture.
Also: post pictures of your wrist (with “Rehtaeh” written on it) on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter and explain why you’re doing so.
[…]
If you want to kill a prostitute or escort, you may want to consider moving to Texas.
Wednesday, A Bexar County jury delivered on verdict on a case involving a man who fatally shot an escort in the neck and back. Here is what the prosecution, the defense and, of course, the defendant all agreed happened. Ezekiel Gilbert, 27 at the time, found an ad for an escort on Craigslist on Christmas Eve, 2009. The escort, Lenora Ivie Frago, 23, came to Gilbert’s apartment that night. The two did not have sex. Gilbert shot Frago in the neck and back. Frago was paralyzed. Frago died months later. The defense claims that Gilbert paid Frago $150 for sex. She refused to have sex with him and walked around his apartment for twenty minutes. Gilbert asked for his money back and Frago refused, saying she had to give it to her driver/ pimp. Gilbert shot Frago in the neck and back. Frago was paralyzed and died months later.
The prosecution claims that Gilbert shot Frago for refusing to have sex with him and points to the fact that Gilbert never mentioned anything about a theft in the police interview. The defense claims that Gilbert shot her because he was trying to recover the $150 he paid her for sex, which she did not deliver.
[…]
What do 222 million women in developing nations around the world have in common? They all want access to modern contraceptive. In a new video and infographic, Population Action International explains that if the U.S. contributed a mere .03% of its federal budget towards international family planning, they could provide the 222 million women– more than the combined populations of Spain, The Netherlands, France, Germany and Belgium– with the contraception they so desperately want and need. This would save the lives of 70,000 women and prevent the deaths of one million infants each year!
Powerful men say the darnedest things, especially when it comes to systemic and rampant rape in the military.
I’d like to acknowledge their feats and award them for the lengths to which they’ve gone in order to distort the reality of the military’s rape problem. They have managed to avoid the obvious causes of and solutions to rape in the military. And they’ve shown remarkable creativity and imagination in the way they understand it. Coming in third, with the bronze, is General Mark A. Welsh III, a top Air Force commander. This was his insightful response to May’s Pentagon report showing that sexual assault had jumped from 19,000 cases in 2010 to 26,000 in 2012: sexual assault happens all the time [jazz hands] outside of the military. I mean everyone [jazz hands] is doing it. So get used to it! And we have hookup culture to blame. I, of course paraphrase, but barely. Here’s what he actually said when testifying at a Senate hearing on sexual assault in the military: 20% of women report they had been sexually assaulted, “before they came into the military … So they come in from a society where this occurs … Some of it is the hookup mentality of junior high even and high school students now, which my children can tell you about from watching their friends and being frustrated by it.”
General, I’m sorry your children and their friends are frustrated with their love lives. They must feel just like the women (and men) who are raped by their fellow officers and superiors and then on top of that, face indifference at best and retaliation at worst, if they report the sexual assault.
[…]
The case of “Beatriz,” the pseudonym of a Salvadoran woman denied a life-saving abortion in country where abortion is illegal without any exception whatsoever has drawn international attention, controversy, disbelief and advocacy, organizing and activism, including this Care2 petition, which collected over 27.000 signatures.
In the latest development, Monday, Beatriz underwent a Caesarian section and had an “induced birth” and not — officially, at least — an abortion. Yet, as Jodi Jacobson writes at RH Reality Check, Beatriz “had a hysterotomy, a form of abortion carried out through c-section.” In other words, thanks to the dominance of conservative sectors like the Catholic Church and anti-choice movements in El Salvador, people are pretending an abortion isn’t an abortion.
Because the 22-year old woman suffers from lupus and kidney problems and almost died during the delivery of her first child, Beatriz’s doctors had wanted to terminate Beatriz’s pregnancy, which they feared would kill her. Also, the fetus had anacephely, a severe and fatal birth defect in which parts of the brain and skull are missing. The longest a baby born with anacephaly can live is days.
Thus Beatriz’s case seemed particularly sympathetic, given that the pregnancy wasn’t viable anyway. But none of this mattered in a country where abortion is illegal even in cases of rape, incest or for the health and even life of a mother. And when doctors asked for a guarantee that they wouldn’t be prosecuted if they performed an abortion, they were denied.
[…]
Beyond Ex-Gay describes itself as “an online community for those who have survived ex gay experiences” like ex-gay therapy or “sexual orientation change efforts.” They recently conducted a survey of 400 survivors of ex-gay therapy, who no longer participate in any conversion efforts.
Perhaps the saddest part of the survey were the responses to the question “[w]hat were the reasons (the motivations) you tried to follow an ex-gay path?” As you’ll see, the primary reasons for doing so were religious. The other reasons relate to societal pressures to fit in. All of this goes to show that a LGBT identity in itself doesn’t cause unhappiness. Homophobia does.
One participant was “was forced by my parents, counselor and church members to participate in ex-gay activities.” Another participant seemed to still believe that homosexuality is wrong and incompatible with Christianity: “Scripture is CLEAR that homosexuals and other kinds of unrighteous people will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Another said, “My pastor at the time implored me to deal with this. I had no desire to change my sexual orientation. This was upon his insistence.”
One participant described a “fear of ruining God’s plan for my life.” Another participant wrote, “Mostly it was because I wanted to please God and I didn’t think being gay was an option.”
One participant wrote, “I was told to be gay was sinful.” Another was told they had “demons.”
[…]
What are people doing in New York this summer? Well, we know what a whole slew of them are doing on the evening of June 28th. Literally selling like ‘hot cakes,’ as the old saying states, tickets to Program 06 of this year’s VF13 line-up are SOLD OUT.
One of two “Centerpiece” blocks of this edition of VF, Program 06 boasts the World Premiere of Katie Halper’s COMMIE CAMP, a documentary film about Camp Kinderland, a summer camp which, since 1923, has been preaching the gospel of peace and social justice for all, just as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck rage against the supposed indoctrination of today’s children by ‘extremist’ liberal institutions. This film shows what really goes on at one of these ‘training’ camps. Preceding the feature presentation will be the animated short, THE COLLECTOR’S GIFT, by Ryan Kravetz; the coming of age short, I FEEL STUPID, by Milena Pastreich; and the fun on wheels short doc, THE GASKETTES, by Jason House.
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen! The state that brought you the chain-gang enforcing Sheriff Joseph Arpaio, the “show me your papers” immigration law, and racial profiling is proud to present its latest hit: a law prohibiting sex and raced-based abortion, based on lies and stereotypes about black and Asian women. Well, Arizona signed the law back in 2011, but it’s in the news again because the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Arizona filed a lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of the NAACP of Maricopa County and the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF) challenging the law.
The law prohibits abortions based on the sex or race of the fetus or embryo, and makes it a felony to knowingly perform or provide financing for an abortion sought because of the race or sex of the fetus or a parent’s race. The maximum punishment if convicted is 3.5 years in prison. The woman and doctor must also sign an affidavit stating the reason the woman wants an abortion has nothing to do with the race or sex of the embryo or fetus.
The Republicans (no surprise there) who introduced the bill claim they were motivated by the epidemic of gender and race-based abortion occurring in Arizona. The worst thing about this epidemic is that, well, it doesn’t exist.
katiehalper.com 
