Why “Half A Song To Sing” Should Be The First African Film To Win Rode Reel Film Competition?

The issue of woman abuse is not a community problem, not a country problem but a world problem. Day in and day out women are been hurt by men who are supposed to protect them, love them, encourage them and be there for them.

On KNUST campus, one night in my hostel, there was an uproar which got many people to wake up from their beds to inquire what could possibly be going on in the middle of the night. A gentleman who even happen to be from another hostel had come to our hostel to beat up her girlfriend. Last year, the news of the taxi driver who stabbed her girlfriend to death shocked the country. A pregnant woman was also with an iron by her husband, and when she was dead she was left to rot in a locked room.

I cannot talk about the many stories around that is been hidden in closets. Women been beaten by men who had once been happy marrying them. I cannot even talk about those that are silence about their pain and think it is their right to be victimized.

Anybody can argue with me by trying to prove the fact that perhaps women of today deserve such kind of treatment based on their own behaviors. But does two wrongs makes a right? Is violence the best remedy to understanding? It is therefore to give a voice to women who have are such situations by advocating a simple plan of action-Run! Running away from the situation to seek help, running away to seek counsel and shelter, running away to save their own lives.

To body deserves to be mistreated. The woman is the man's reflection and as he is, so she is. She is an embodiment of his love. If she is treated well, she blooms.

Now the short film... Half a song is a poetry coexisting with fine art, short metaphorical story of a black woman who in an abusive relationship. The true status of her relationship is left silence even though at the end of her lines she says “he is my husband". This is to use her as representative to most women out there living with men who have to legal marital claims on them. Most women believe that men automatically become their husbands when they move in to stay with them which in my own point of view can also be an obstacle to wanting to free yourself from such a situation.

Many of these woman think it could simply just be a “waste" of time trying to come out from such a relationship. The blend of poetry and motion picture is the joy of trying something different but not new in the language of filming. Using only three minute to tell a story made us think outside the box to come with such concept which will not only entertain our eyes but inform us of a very important problem we can all be a voice to speak against no matter the platform, even if it has to be only three minute short film.

This is the link to watch and cast your vote for “Half a Song to Sing”

(http://www.rode.com/myrodereel/watch/entry/2607)