Debutante film to premiere online at Galway Film Fleadh

Debutante, a short film about religious control and coming-of-age in a hostile environment, will have its online premiere at the Galway Film Fleadh on 24th July. Atheist Ireland are official partners of the film by Kamila Dydyna, a Polish filmmaker based in Dublin.
In Debutante, Meg’s simple life revolves around her duties as a Jehovah’s Witness and a platonic relationship with her boyfriend Sam. It all goes well until she is summoned to a judicial committee hearing, where three congregation elders shatter Meg’s carefully-constructed world.
Debutante stars Úna O’Brien, Arthur Riordan, Richard Neville, Sam McGovern, Gary Mullan, Noelle Brown, and Anthony O’Boyle. You can buy tickets to watch it on the Galway Fim Fleadh website.
In Debutante, Meg faces the ultimate threat of being ‘disfellowshipped’ or shunned by the community which she has grown up to believe to be the only route to salvation. Shunned people effectively become ghosts, with no interaction from their friends or even family members.
Filmmaker Kamila is a former Jehovah’s Witness. Her script is based on the collective experience of herself and many young Jehovah’s Witnesses that she knew. The Jehovah’s Witnesses religion controls its members by restricting their sexuality and shunning them if they don’t keep to the rules.
Each year up to 70,000 former Jehovah’s Witnesses have to start new lives and address mental health issues after being shunned or leaving the religion. But a dramatic short film like Debutante, by focusing on just one person, can be more powerful than any amount of statistics.
Debutante is more than a film about one religion. It is a coming-of-age drama about the disintegration of a teenager’s identity. Kamila hopes that it will bring comfort to anyone who has experienced shunning, for religious or other reasons.
This is Kamila’s third short film. The award-nominated Testimony is about a child testifying in a domestic abuse court hearing. The Betrayal is an LGBT drama about a wife who grapples with feelings for her best friend. Both films were screened in festivals globally and broadcast on RTÉ. Read online…

The Broadcasting Authority should not enforce respect for unethical religious beliefs

The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland has released its report about the RTE comedy sketch on New Year’s Eve, in which the police arrest the Christian god for sexual harassment against Mary, and the courts find him guilty but release him.
The BAI Committee found that the sketch breached three principles of the Code of Programme Standards. In this article, we will address one of these, Principle 5, which is about Respect for Persons and Groups in Society.
Principle 5 requires that persons and groups in society are represented in a manner which is appropriate, justifiable, and does not prejudice respect for human dignity, which includes showing due respect for religious views, images, practices and beliefs. Under Principle 5:

“The Committee noted the sketch effectively accused God of sexual violence and sexual crimes. The Committee concluded that this treatment of a religious figure did not show due respect for religious views and beliefs and did not constitute critical scrutiny of religion. The Committee decided that the programme did not comply with Principle 5 of the Code.”

• In Genesis 19, a mob wants to rape two angels who are staying in Lot’s house in Sodom. Lot tells them to rape his two virgin daughters instead.
• In Genesis 38, Onan refuses to impregnate his dead brother’s wife, instead pulling out before he comes, so God kills him for not impregnating her.
• In Exodus 4, God decides to kill Moses because his son is not circumcised, then lets him live when Moses’ wife Zipporah circumcises their son with a sharp stone.
• In Numbers 31, God directs Moses’ army to defeat the Midianites, and Moses instructs them to kill every man, woman and child apart from virgin women, who they should keep alive for themselves.
• In Deuteronomy 21, soldiers are told that if God delivers them captives, and they notice a beautiful woman among them captives, they can take her as their wife and shave her head and decide after a month if they want to keep her.
• In Judges 19, a mob gang-rapes a woman who dies, then her master chops up her body into twelve pieces and sends them to the twelve tribes of Israel.
• In 1 Samuel 18, David kills 200 Philistines and uses their foreskins to buy his wife Michal from Saul.
• In 2 Samuel 12, God is angry with David so he gets David’s son Absolem to rape David’s wives.
• In Mark 1, the Holy Ghost comes upon Mary and covers her with the power of God, so that she will become pregnant with the son of God.
• In Revelation, God says he will kill the children of Jezebel for the sexual sins of their mother.