Malden Reads Movie "Rain in A Dry Land"

 Rain in A Dry Land, the third in a series of thoughtfully selected films for the Malden Reads: One City, One Book program, will be shown Friday, March 30th at 7:00 pm at the Malden Senior Community Center. This 82-minute film by Anne Makepeace chronicles the fortunes of two Somali Bantu families, transported by relief agencies from years of civil war and refugee life to Springfield, Massachusetts and Atlanta, Georgia.

 According to Gerald Peary of the Boston Phoenix, the film “is about time travel, culture shock, a leap from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century as two devout Muslim families find new homes in urban America. We meet these families in their ‘cultural orientation class’ in a refugee camp in Kenya, where they are preparing for their new lives. In the classroom they discover ice, a refrigerator, a bathtub, and learn about elevators, stairs, and buildings taller than one story. As their awe and excitement grow, we fear for them. How will these illiterate Muslim farmers who speak no English manage to survive in American cities?” Stephen Holden of the New York Times notes, “The particular strength of this film is in its intimacy, its insistence on portraying immigrants as complicated, high-strung people negotiating the personal boundaries between their traditions and western modernity.”

 The Malden Reads Committee invites you to the free screening of this critically acclaimed film. Please stay for the discussion and refreshments. The film is recommended for mature high-school students and up. The co-sponsors are the City of Malden, Malden Public Library and Malden Reads. Please go to the Malden Reads website (www.maldenreads.org) for information on the film screening series, as well as many other Malden Reads events.