The Minority Rights Group (MRG) has been tracing people’s stories through various countries to produce a documentary on discrimination in Africa and the Caribbean. The MRG’s Street Theatre Programme presents a film screening with a question and answer session on Tuesday, October 9, 2012. With a short cocktail hour at 6:30pm, the screening takes place at 7:00pm at Curzon Cinema Soho, 99 Shaftesbury Avenue, London (nearest tube: Leicester Square or Piccadilly Circus), England.

Description: Filmed in four countries, Say My Name tells the stories of people on the outside of society facing extreme discrimination. Viewed as less than human or ‘too dark’, Valentina, Phineas and thousands of others are prevented from studying, working or getting healthcare. Desperate for change they become actors presenting their reality to stunned audiences. Crossing visually diverse landscapes, we see theatre performed in the streets of Botswana, Kenya, Rwanda and the Dominican Republic. Faced with challenging public and official opinion, the actors must confront their own prejudices and accept each other. As difficulties surface, they discover if a simple play can really change belief built up over generations?

MRG’s Street Theatre Programme uses performance to challenge commonly held racist attitudes and negative stereotypes about minorities and indigenous peoples in Kenya, Botswana, Rwanda and the Dominican Republic.

In the Dominican Republic, MRG worked with its Dominican partner MUDHA (Movimiento de Mujeres Dominico-Haitianas)—a group that challenges both gender discrimination and racism in the country through empowering women by providing them with access to basic social services. It has built schools and health clinics in bateyes (settlements) and established day care and adult education programs. MUDHA also challenges laws and practices that maintain women and children of Haitian descent in conditions of poverty.

RSVP to gina.rico@mrgmail.org

To read more about MRG’s Street Theatre Programme, see http://www.minorityrights.org/10269/programmes/street-theatre-programme.html

For more information, see http://www.minorityvoices.org/news.php/en/1201/event-screening-of-new-mrg-film-on-discrimination-in-africa-and-the-caribbean

See more on MUDHA here: http://www.kiskeya-alternative.org/mudha/

Photo from http://haitianwomen.wordpress.com/after-the-flood/