Movies Features
Sundance spotlight: Richard E. Robbins documentary “Girl Rising”
By Carolyn Hays Jan 27, 2013, 17:09 GMT
Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Richard E. Robbins (“Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience”) and Frieda Pinto (“Slumdog Millionaire”) has debuted his new feature documentary “Girl Rising,”
Sundance festival spotlight: "Girl Rising" director Richard E. Robbins is out to change the world (no kidding).
Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Richard E. Robbins (“Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience”) and Frieda Pinto (“Slumdog Millionaire”) has debuted his new feature documentary “Girl Rising,”
The doc spotlights the stories of nine girls born into unforgiving circumstances. Narration is provided by Cate Blanchett, Priyanka Chopra, Selena Gomez, Anne Hathaway, Salma Hayek, Alicia Keys, Chloë Moretz, Liam Neeson, Meryl Streep, Kerry Washington and Freida Pinto.
The film was previewed at Sundance with Robbins and Pinto attending the launch party. The film makes its theatrical debut on March 7 – the eve of International Women’s Day – with screenings in New York and Los Angeles.
The movie is the centerpiece of 10x10 – a global campaign to educate and empower girls. In fact, the campaign drove the film rather than vice versa, and is reflective of a new genre of cause-related projects in which the goal is more than just having the audience watch a film.
The idea here is that around the world, millions of girls face barriers to education that boy do not. When you educate a girl, you can break cycles of poverty in just on generation.
"‘With Girl Rising,’ I wanted to make a beautiful film that met three distinct goals: change minds, change lives, and change policy, around educating girls,” said director Richard E. Robbins.
“The stories of these amazing girls are at once very typical and totally extraordinary. The response at Sundance was everything we could have hoped for.” Robbins was inspired to make the film when he became a first-time father with the birth of his baby girl. The film is a hybrid of a documentary and narrative film, involving both interviews and scripted dramatizations. Each of the nine real-life girls’ stories are narrated by a celebrity actor and is written by a renowned writers from the girl’s native country. Freida Pinto was inspired to participate in the project because “ ‘Girl Rising’ gives me hope for the future of our girls that they will have a chance to explore and achieve their full potential. That they will make the ignorant part of society value their existence and that they will be proud to be born a Girl!,” she said.
The film’s corporate sponsor is Intel. “At the most fundamental level, Intel believes if we can educate and empower a girl, she will become a change agent for innovation and economic development,” said Shelly Esque, vice president of Intel's Corporate Affairs Group and president of the Intel Foundation, which sponsored the production costs of the film. “Major change requires the kind of empathy that good storytelling elicits. It’s here in 10x10’s Girl Rising, and we hope it will help millions of girls get educated and change the world.”
PARTING SHOT: You can organize a screening of the film yourself using Gathr , a crowd-sourcing platform: http://10x10act.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/How-To-Gathr-Screening_121218.pdf
