Tag Archive for 'Emma Thompson'

Emma Thompson on The View Talking About Sexual Slavery

Published
by
Melissa Silverstein
on November 10, 2009
in Feminism
. 6 Comments

Journey_NYCEmma went on The View yesterday to talk about Journey which is opening in NY today.  Kudos to the View for discussing the topic and really letting her talk about it in lots of details.  I was kind of surprised at how little Barbara Walters seemed to know about the topic but maybe she knew more and was prompting Emma with questions:

It seemed to me that she really didn’t know what sexual slavery is and was shocked to hear that there are women enslaved right here in NY.

Barbara: What do you mean by sexual slavery?

Barbara: Here in NY?

Here’s the full segment (in the segment is a great PSA on human trafficking that Emma did for the UN)

On another Emma note, Shakesville has reported that her name has now been fully removed from the pro-Polanski petition.  She is the first person to have done that and I commend her on realizing that it was a mistake.

I’m going to see the installation tomorrow afternoon.  Anyone want to come with me?

Actress Emma Thompson’s art project takes viewers on ‘Journey’ of sex slave (NY Daily News)

Journey NYC (The Brow)

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Tags: Barbara Walters, Emma Thompson, sex trafficking

Emma Thompson Rethinks Her Position on Polanski and Gets Ready to Talk About Human Trafficking

Published
by
Melissa Silverstein
on November 5, 2009
in Actresses and News
. 11 Comments

Emma-Thampson_491bea143e30dIt broke my heart when I read that Emma Thompson signed the petition to get Roman Polanski out of jail.  I could not believe that she of all people, a woman who has dedicated herself to bringing attention to the epidemic of human trafficking, would sign a petition to get a rapist out of jail. The good folks at Shakespeare’s Sister were also mortified and have been following the issue. One reader, Caitlin Hayward-Tapp a student at Exeter University in England put together a petition asking Emma Thompson to remove her name and got over 400 people to sign.

Caitlin was able to present the petition to Thompson at a recent event and got a very interesting answer as to why she signed it in the first place (This comes straight from Shakesville):

she [Emma Thompson] explained about how well she knows Polanski, how terrible his life has been, and how forgiving the survivor of the rape all those years ago now is. She said she thought the intentions of the judge were unclear, as were the intentions of those who arrested him recently. She told me that a lot of her friends had rung her up asking her to sign the petition, so there had been a certain amount of pressure. (My bold) She said that she had already been thinking a lot about the petition, as others had expressed their dismay at her signing it.

A certain amount of pressure.  I bet.

Here’s more:

She said, while she supported Polanski as a friend, a crime is a crime. I don’t know whether she had realised the extent of Polanski’s crime, but she is now fully aware. She will remove her name from the petition – in fact, she said she would call today and sort it out. Even though, she stressed, Polanski has had some truly terrible experiences in his lifetime, experiences that we couldn’t even imagine and which should not be taken out of the equation, she agreed that she could not put her name to a petition asking for his release.

Here’s a message Emma wanted to pass along:

“Know that I will remove my name because of you, and all of the good work that you have been doing. I have read your petition. I have heard you. And I will listen.”

I am so glad that Emma is removing her name.  She does such good work of human trafficking and will be in NYC next week with the installation Journey which highlights this blight that nobody seems to give a shit about.  Here are some details on the event.

Journey opens to the public on Washington Place, off Washington Square Park.

Hours of Operation are:

Tuesday, November 10 – Friday, November 13 12pm-8pm

Saturday, November 14 11am-7pm

Sunday, November 15 10am-3pm.

Produced in partnership with the City of New York and the City of London.  Here’s the press release.

Let’s organize a group to go and see the installation.

Emma Update (Shakesville)

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Tags: Emma Thompson, human trafficking

An Education

Published
by
Melissa Silverstein
on October 9, 2009
in Reviews
. 1 Comment

An educationThe second An Education opened at Sundance last January the buzz began.  The buzz was most especially focused on the star making performance of a pretty unknown English actress Carey Mulligan.  Sometimes the buzz blows over or gets overtaken by new buzz, but the buzz on Mulligan, and the film, has stayed steady all through the lead up to the film’s release today.

I was blown away by Mulligan when I saw her act circles around Kristin Scott Thomas in The Seagull (which they are now making into a movie with most of the same cast) on Broadway in the fall of 2008, and I remember how much I enjoyed her performance in The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard so I knew that she would be great in An Education, and she is.  The good news is that she is one just one of the excellent pieces in a pie full up of excellent pieces.  Everything about An Education is great which is directed by Danish director Lone Scherfig from a script by Nick Hornby based from the memoir by Lynn Barber.

An Education is a feminist coming of age story of Jenny (Mulligan) a too smart, too worldy for her own good, young woman in 1961 London when young women had few choices.  The country is still living in a post war mentality.  The 60s really haven’t begun yet.  What Jenny has going for her is that being the only child of Jack played by Alfred Molina, he has drilled it into his daughter that she must get a proper education in order to be successful.   She believes it and works hard for it.   From those scenes you get the sense that dad has been drilling her about getting into Oxford since she could walk.

But Jenny’s different and her role models of educated women are not very enticing, so when she meets David (Peter Sarsgaard in a creepily good performance) an older con man who opens her up and offers her a different type of education she leaps in head first.  He takes her to concerts, makes up stories about people he knows and not only enchants Jenny, but also her parents so much so that plan A for Jenny’s education — university — is thrown out the window in favor of plan B — marriage.

So Jenny, this young woman with so much potential to be different and special because she is so smart becomes just like all the other girls.  But she doesn’t.  Suffice it to say that things don’t work out with David cause he is a con man and Jenny needs to figure out how to get back onto plan A.

It’s not easy.  Jenny has let down the women who have invested some serious time and attention into her future.  Olivia Williams as her teacher Miss Stubbs is incredibly personally hurt when Jenny betrayed her, as is the school’s headmistress played by Emma Thompson.  These are women who close plan A, but had to make immense personal sacrifices to become educated women in that time.

Most of all An Education is about choices and how each choice we make has consequences and can snowball out of control.  But it also about how those choices teach us — give us an education if you will — so that as we grow up maybe, just maybe, we will make different ones next time.

Film opens today in limited release and will then roll out over the next couple of weeks.

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Tags: Carey Mulligan, Emma Thompson, Lone Scherfig

Fatal Promises: A Look at Human Trafficking

Published
by
Melissa Silverstein
on September 15, 2009
in Documentary and Feminism
. 4 Comments

It is absolutely unacceptable that we have a slave trade in the 21st century.  It is beyond belief – Emma Thompson

I saw this Fatal Promises on Saturday and I have not stopped thinking about the topic.  It’s not because Emma Thompson was there and was so passionate about the issue, it’s because I felt — and still feel — really ignorant on the topic.

emmaTo me it’s unfathomable to believe and understand how people can feel that’s it’s ok to sell other people.  They sell people and make money at it.  All day, every day.  This is a huge business.  Bigger than arms and drugs, yet we all want to get rid of drugs and keep trying unsuccessfully to deal with the arms topic, but the selling of people — mostly women and girls — just passes us by as we go about our every day lives.

The film tells the story of several people — both men and women — who have escaped from slavery.  Yes, they are slaves.  It’s not what we think of as slavery, but they are held against their will, lots of time transported to foreign country, lots of time sexually abused, not fed and made to do work that they are not paid for.  That’s slavery.

Emma Thompson became moved by the issue because she met a woman, Elena, who worked in a massage parlor on Emma’s street in London.  It was a place she and her family passed every day and joked about and behind the glass window was a young woman who was a slave.

Fatal Promises webLots of people who are trafficked are women and girls who are forced into sex work.  Girls are kidnapped or sold and young women are lured lots of times by other women into situations they can’t escape from. Fundamentally as Emma Thompson said: “I suppose that it has to do with the fact that in the world there is not enough safety for women.  Women are not safe in many places and that’s a huge and complex issue but in essence the undervaluing of the female is at the root of all of this.”

As an individual, the whole issue seems so overwhelming because there is so much that is unknown.  It’s an underground issue that is about power, sex and money   But you can do something.  First, think about the people around you. Lots of times people who have been trafficked are hidden in plain sight.  If something looks fishy call the cops.  Problem is that lots of times the women who have been trafficked are treated like criminals because there are no good laws to deal with persons who are in another country against their will without proper papers.

Another thing to do is to learn about the issue.  That’s on my list.  If you are in NY go and see this film.  It opens tomorrow at the Cinema Village.

In November, Emma Thompson who is the chair of the Helen Bamber Foundation an organization that works with survivors of human rights abuses, will bring to NY Journey an installation that “bring the reality of the sex trafficking industry to the forefront of social consciousness and empower people to take action. Shackles bind perpetrators to victims, and victims to the punters who exploit them.”

Here are some tidbits (courtesy of Charlotte Cooper and her Flip Cam) from Emma and director Kat Rohrer talking about the issue after the screening on Saturday.

You can check out the trailer for the film on the Fatal Promises site

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Tags: Emma Thompson, Gloria Steinem

DVD Alert: Michelle Williams in Two New Releases

Published
by
Melissa Silverstein
on May 5, 2009
in DVD
. 2 Comments

incend1stpicOut now on DVD are two films starring Michelle Williams, the lovely Wendy and Lucy and the straight to video release of Incendiary about the aftermath of a terrorist attack in London.  Film is  directed by Sharon Maguire who directed the first and best Bridget Jones’ Diary.  Maguire also wrote the screenplay which is based on the novel by Chris Cleave.

It premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and also stars Ewan McGregor and Matthew MacFadyen.  It opened in England last fall and did not get a theatrical release here in the US.

Here is the trailer:

Also out on DVD is Last Chance Harvey starring Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman.  Here is a letter from Emma Thompson encouraging women to see the film.

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Tags: Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Ewan McGregor, Incendiary, last Chance Harvey, Sharon Maguire