'Speed Sisters' - accelerating past gender stereotypes in film: Amber Fares at TEDxBarcelonaWomen
[Music] I grew up in a small town in Northern Alberta Canada my parents were both children of Lebanese immigrants and my grandmothers were a huge part of my child childhood which meant that we had this mixture of Lebanese and Canadian culture swirling around our home so basically we ate a lot of humos and we played a lot of hockey everything was going well up until 911 then my life kind of got turned around all of a sudden mosques started to get vandalized and my parents were getting phone calls telling them to go back to where they came from and I can only assume they weren't talking about southern Saskatchewan and for the first time in my life I started to feel like an Arab in Canada I found it very confusing Canada was the only home I knew and I was starting to feel like a stranger in my own home I felt like I needed to do something I needed to better understand my Arab culture in order to make sense of what was going on in the world so I packed up my bags and I headed to Lebanon with my camera cam in hand and as I connected with my with my Arab Roots I I felt compelled to find a way to share my experiences to try to combat this growing fear and mistrust that was happening in my home my hometown and my country so many years later I I found myself on a back street in Janine which is a socially conservative City in the occupied Palestinian territories I was with a woman named sunna who was a race car driver from East Jerusalem she wanted to compete in a race the next day but she needed a car so there I found myself standing on this dimly lit Street and about midnight there was a cloud of exhausts hovering over me like a thick thick fog and I had about 35 men surrounding me and everyone was transfixed on sunna as she did Donuts in the middle of the road here was this Fierce and determined woman who is like ripping up the road in the middle of the most conservative City in Palestine and every man was there cheering her on this is when it hit me there was a story here that needed to be told and so started my journey with the Speed Sisters the middle east's first allw women race car driving team [Music] when I enter this beautiful modified car 600 horsepower I feel like the happiest girl in the world [Music] [Music] [Music] it's Sports you know you have to concentrate your hands your feet your brain everything [Applause] [Music] [Music] so on the surface the film I'm making the Speed Sisters is about five Palestinian women who are defying a military occupation and social pressure to uh race cars but at its core it's a story about the human drive to break through obstacles in our lives in order to stay true to ourselves and our dreams um so it was very obvious to me when I was when I started making this film that it would break every stereotype when it came to uh when it came to Arab women but what I didn't expect is that through the film making process I would have to confront my own stereotypes when it came to Middle Eastern society and Arab men in Western media Arab men are often portrayed as violent extremists who keep women out of the public eye and women are shown as weak passive victims who are stuck in an all U male dominant society and we're inundated with images of veiled women of multiple wives and of lack of Education how could these men possibly be interested in in gender Equity aren't efforts for gender Equity fought against Arab men well the first man that I met while filming Speed Sisters was Mar's father khed khed grew up in a refugee camp in Janine that same conservative City I was talking about before and this is what he has to say about his daughter racing cars [Music] no khed is a a a very supportive father no matter where you come from but what we soon found out is that he wasn't alone we found that there were several men that would wanting to support the Speed Sisters in in what they're doing and this is what a few of them had to say for oh no no don't get me wrong I am sure there's plenty of people in the Palestinian society that disagree with what the the speed sisters are doing and by no means am I trying to take away from the Practical problems that women in Palestine face but it would have been very easy for us to fall into the Trap of fulfilling outside expectations and creating a film about male oppression and in doing so we would just be reinforcing stereotypes that we're already familiar with by showing alternative images of strong male characters who treat women equally will go a long way to creating new Role Models whether that's in Jerusalem Toronto or barcel Ona we've seen this in action through khed and his family through his support of his daughter and her success their extended family and and Community have shifted from being disapproving and skeptical to encouraging and proud as Nigerian novelist chimamanda adichi has said when we create a single story and we show a people in one way in only one way over and over again that's what they become but if we if we reject that single story and we realize that there's never been a single story about a place we regain a kind of paradise with Speed Sisters our goal is to encourage people to continue the conversation beyond the film and together breaking through that single story and creating this type of Paradise in a place we would least expect in Palestine but this is only one story there's a lot of work to do I encourage everyone to seek out and share stories that break our assumptions about gender stereotypes there's many stories out there they just need to be told and I believe that Speed Sisters will be able to inspire audiences around the world and men and women and we'll create a new Paradise that we can all share thank you