Award-winning activist and filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy ‘02 gave the second address in the 2019-2020 Presidential Colloquium series on Oct. 17, 2019. Her speech, entitled “On Artist Activism: Women’s Rights in a Volatile World,” combined clips from her various films with personal accounts of her life experiences to explore what the modern female activist looks like.
Obaid-Chinoy began her filmmaking career during her time at Smith, and since then she has produced prolifically, with more than two dozen credits to her name. “I found my voice at Smith,” she said. For the past two decades her work has become her activism. She began the evening by telling the crowd about her 2015 documentary short, “A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness,” a film that became a turning point in her career. The piece follows a young Pakistani woman who survived an attempted honor killing by her father and uncle. An honor killing is when a family member is murdered under the pretense that their actions brought shame or dishonor upon the family. “Shameful actions” could constitute anything from engaging in illicit relations to attempted divorce.
Obaid-Chinoy sought to create a film about these travesties because there was nothing being done about them in her home country of Pakistan. Specifically, she worked to reverse a loophole law that allowed known murderers to walk free if they were pardoned by a family member. She was successful— six months after she gave her acceptance speech for best documentary for “A Girl in the River” at the 2016 Academy Awards, where she falsely claimed that the then prime minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, had pledged to change the law, the law did change, and the loophole was closed.
Yet, her film did not have the triumphant end she imagined; the young woman they followed ended up forgiving her family in court after facing intense societal pressure to do so, therefore letting her father and uncle go free. Obaid-Chinoy noticed, too, that the honor killings did not stop with the passage of the law, and therein lies the turning point of her career. She resolved to do all she could to change the hearts and minds of the people she was trying to reach with her films.
Since “A Girl in the River,” Obaid-Chinoy has launched many projects with the hope of making a difference in Pakistan and world-wide. She and her team built a ‘mobile cinema’ that travels all over Pakistan screening “A Girl in the River” and other films for all ages in order to bring important films to those who may not have access to them. In some of the most conservative areas of Pakistan, where women and men cannot sit together, the women watch films on subjects such as how to acquire property, while the men sit outside, oblivious, viewing completely different films. Obaid-Chinoy’s intentionally shows films that represent women and young girls in roles that aren’t traditional in Pakistan — one film is about a girl’s boxing club preparing for the Olympics. Another features a group of female Pakistani police officers training to fight terrorism.
Obaid-Chinoy’s most recent project “Fundamental” is a film series created in conjunction with the Global Fund for Women that highlights five stories of female activists across the world in Pakistan, Kenya, Brazil, Georgia and the U.S.
When asked by an audience member what inspires her to continue to do the difficult work that she does, Obaid-Chinoy said, “It is my turn to amplify the voices of other activists around the world.” Many attendees had questions concerning how she deals with the backlash and inevitable negative feedback anyone in the spotlight receives. She was relentless in driving her point home — for her, this work is too important to back down. “In the still of the night, the people who cheer you on are those who you should listen to…I am not here to be loved, I am here to be free.”
Wow. She is amazing. Her answer to the question posed in the final paragraph hit me like a ton of bricks. All the best to you, Sharmeen, for your incredible work!