Night Waves

Women in Iraq

Monday 26 February 2007 21:45-22:30 (Radio 3)

Isabel Hilton discusses a new social history of Iraq as viewed from a women's perspective. How has the role of women changed throughout the country over recent years? Plus a look at the relationship between magic and cinema.

Duration:

45 minutes

A scene from 'The Illusionist'

The Illusionist

Playlist

The war in Iraq has put the condition of Iraqi women firmly on the global agenda. It seems that for decades the lives of women in Iraq has been framed by war and by oppression and the role of women in the future looks uncertain. The Iraqi anthropologist Nadje Al-Ali has now written a book that charts the history of Iraq as seen through women's eyes and describes the story of her own family. Nadje Al-Ali talks to Isabel Hilton on tonight's Night Waves.

In the short space of 6 months, two films about magicians at the end of 19th century have been released - The Prestige and The Illusionist. In some ways, this is an example of cinema returning to its roots, because the pioneers of the cinematograph - Georges Melies, David Devant and George Albert Smith - were magicians and stage hypnotists themselves, and they understood the connections between the two forms of entertainment. Both are about the art of illusion. Movies, magic, disappearing ladies, returning spirits and psychic phenomena will all appear out of thin air on tonight's Night Waves.

Also on the programme; To mark the opening of the UK's first Cold War museum, Historians Rana Mitter and Jonathan Haslam and author Robert Ryan
reflect on what the cold war means to us now and tell us what they'd put in their own cold war museum. And the critic and broadcaster Michael Goldfarb describes the process of becoming British and undergoing the citizenship ceremony.


'Iraqi Women: Untold Stroes from 1948 to the present' by Al Ali is published by Zed Bookstalks
The Illusionist' is in cinemas on Friday 2nd March certificate PG
'The Prestige' will be available on DVD next month.
To find out more about the National Cold War Exhibition at the Royal Airforce Museum please contactwww.nationalcoldwarexhition.org.uk

Night Waves

Episode and Playlist Information

• 7 Mar 07 Kenneth O Morgan
• 6 Mar 07 Geert Mak
• 5 Mar 07 The Good German
• 1 Mar 07 Don Quixote
• 28 Feb 07 Peter Whitehead
• 27 Feb 07 Julian Baggini
• 26 Feb 07 Women in Iraq
• 22 Feb 07 Alvar Aalto
• 21 Feb 07 the car bomb
• 20 Feb 07 Tariq Ramadan