First there was the Yahoo! News article that got my attention with the title, ‘We Women Warriors’: Bringing Needlepoint to a Gunfight. This text followed:

At the outset of the new documentary We Women Warriors, which opens this week in Los Angeles as part of 2012’s DocuWeeks Festival, a group of women in Colombia is seen spooling twine. The activity takes their minds off the ongoing violence of civil wars that have been a part of daily life in the country since the 1960s. Also, the resulting fabric can be sold to help finance their efforts to reclaim, through nonviolent means, the land that’s rightfully theirs, to peacefully dismantle police barracks that have overtaken their villages, and to mobilize marches to major cities to demonstrate their plight.

Naturally, I went to the documentary’s website and watched the trailed, which is below:

I was especially struck by the frame below (a still from the trailer, which is preceded by the words, “We call ourselves MUKANVI: Kankuamo Women Victims of Violence.” After the still, “But it is also the craft of carefully spinning out path as native peoples. When it is well made it doesn’t break.”

To find out more about this documentary, check out their website (where you can also sign up for their newsletter) and/or their Facebook page. To find out more about the director, Nicole Karsin, go check out her bio.


And speaking of these women’s strength, I found apt quote that agrees that all things bold need not be loud.

Though little dangers they may fear,
When greater dangers men environ
Then women show a front of iron;
And gentle in their manner, they
Do bold things in a quiet way.
-Thomas Dunn English,
Betty Zane, Stanza 1