Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Speaking from a mother's heart

Diane Mason films pleas for peace from those who know war's cost.

By STEVE PERSALL
Published February 16, 2007

Julia Ward Howe and Cindy Sheehan would have been sisters-in-arms, if they weren't separated by two centuries. Each advocated peace in the name of motherhood, the collateral emotional damage of wartime in any era.

Sheehan's public protests against the Iraq war and Howe's stand after the Civil War are at the core of Diane Mason's documentary Mother's Day. The title refers to the holiday Howe famously proclaimed in 1870, urging women to unite against future wars for the safety of their children.

Before Mother's Day was an excuse for selling flowers and candy, it was an international plea for peace. From Appomattox to Baghdad, the message bears repeating, now in Mason's film, culled from last year's Code Pink Women for Peace vigil at the White House, led by Sheehan, as well as Howe's 19th century writings.

Enemies have changed, but maternal instincts haven't.

"There's this place that mothers know, but it's not reserved for biological mothers," Mason said during a telephone interview. "It's an understanding, a knowing that there's no difference between a mother in Iraq or Afghanistan and a mother in the U.S.

"Mothers know that killing a child anywhere is the same as killing your own child. We don't want to send our children to kill another mother's child.

"It's an understanding that we're all in this together. Once you get that - and anybody can - then there's no enemy lines, no distinction between them and us."

A woman's view

Mother's Day is the centerpiece of the eighth annual Through Women's Eyes Film Festival, set for Feb. 23-24 at Hollywood 20 in downtown Sarasota. Mason's third documentary on the modern peace movement - the others are available at her Web site, www.hopefilms.net - will be shown at 8 p.m. Feb. 24. Tickets are $15, available at the box office.

Mason, a former St. Petersburg Times reporter, also serves as the festival's artistic director, and she selected 20 other international short films and documentaries created from women's perspectives. Proceeds go to UNIFEM, a United Nations development fund for women in developing nations. Oscar winner Nicole Kidman is the group's goodwill ambassador.

Many issues addressed by UNIFEM - economic empowerment, ending violence against women and gender equality - are reflected in the lineup, available at the festival's Web site, www.throughwomenseyes.com.

"It isn't that women make better films than men; we just make them differently," Mason said. "Those films give voices to women around the world and let everyone know what's going on for women throughout the world."

Remembering Andy

Mason's Mother's Day hits especially close to home. A large portion of the film is devoted to an interview with Tampa resident Norma Aviles, whose 18-year-old son, Andy, a Marine, was killed in Iraq during the first three weeks of battle. Aviles turned grief into action as a critic of the war.

"Her story is so much every mother's story," Mason said. "Her grief is very much there. There's crying, but there's also laughing because she talks a lot about Andy when he was a baby and funny things he did, those things that mothers never forget. And then she'll talk about his loss and it's like it happened yesterday.

"I felt like I knew Andy by the time we got done with this. I felt his loss, too, just from his photos and hearing Norma tell his story."

Mason hesitated to describe Mother's Day, which includes celebrity peace activists such as Susan Sarandon, as a "dove statement" because she thinks the phrase is divisive.

"The film isn't an antiwar statement; it's more about the heart of the matter," Mason said. "It isn't about us being right and them being wrong or whatever. There has to be a place where we all get it.

"I don't think there's any other place where we can create peace except that place in the heart where everybody is connected. If we find that, they have to stop war."

- - -

Because so many people wanted to see Easy Street, the film about St. Petersburg's homeless profiled in this column last week, a repeat screening has been scheduled for 10 a.m. Saturday at Studio@620 620 First Ave. S, St. Petersburg.

Tickets are $5; a portion of proceeds goes to local homeless support agencies.

Steve Persall can be reached at (727) 893-8365 or persall@sptimes.com.

ON THE WEB

A mother's story

- For more about the Code Pink event shown in Diane Mason's film Mother's Day, go to www.codepink 4peace.org.

[Last modified February 15, 2007, 20:53:49]