The Sydney Feminists

Jehovah’s Witnesses is an exclusive and restrictive religion whose members claim to be on the path to an enlightening and everlasting life. However, women raised in this cult claim some of their practices represent a serious violation of human rights. For example, there is no gender equality, and women are prevented from advancing in their careers. Lara Kaput, a former Jehovah’s Witness, reveals the position of women in this organisation. Jehovah’s Witnesses is a millenarian evangelical religion founded in 1870 by Charles Taze Russell. The Witnesses believe their cult is a restoration of first-century Christianity and the doctrine is based on the entire Protestant canon of scripture, which is considered the inerrant word of God. Female members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses face multiple restrictions in their life. First, they have the lowest positions in the religious hierarchy and, most of the time, they are excluded from any governing decisions. “I [was] many levels down th...

Note: review tickets provided by Transmission Films. Review contains mild spoilers. I have to start this review by saying I am not religious. I may have missed the meaning of some scenes/themes as I know very little about religious stories and figures, but I was interested in how they would reimagine such an old story, e.g. Jesus’s crucifixion, in what’s being lauded as a feminist version. Basically,  Mary Magdalene  is a fictional story set around the time Jesus is rocking about performing miracles and being crucified, mainly from the perspective of Mary Magdalene. Before researching for this review, I thought Mary was a repentant sex worker, but this is apparently false, and the movie goes to lengths to tell us that this rumour was started and perpetuated by the church. That a woman, or woman figure, was slandered (at least in the eyes of those at the time) and revisionist history minimised her role and relegated her to the sidelines does not exactly surprise me b...