http://www.laweekly.com/publicspectacle/2014/03/18/to-fed-up-texans-pro-choice-doc-vessel-was-the-best-of-sxsw
LA Weekly
To Fed-Up Texans, Pro-Choice Doc Vessel Was the Best of SXSW
By Amy Nicholson
Tue, Mar 18, 2014
The Texas State Capitol is just three blocks north of the State Theater. If you stretch your legs between movies during SXSW, you could squint up the appropriately named Congress Street and see the small, green park that climbs to the Capitol's dome. And at the world premiere of Diana Whitten's Vessel, a rousing pro-choice doc about a Dutch activist who sails to countries that have outlawed abortions and gives women medical care in international waters, the audience made sure the legislators next door could hear their standing ovation.
Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, the star of
Vessel, founded Women on Waves in 1999. Now 47, she's still girlishly spry and as stubborn as a battle-tested general - which, in a way, she is. When she attempted to dock in Portugal, the government sent two battleships to block her entrance. When she landed in Valencia, Spain, ragtag pro-life pirates leapt onboard, tied her ship to theirs, and tried to drag her out to see. Gomperts grabbed a knife, cut their rope, and skipped around the deck waving at her supporters. By the second time we see Moroccan men scream in her face, we've stopped being scared for her: Gomperts is brave and ready to brawl.
If you watched Vessel in Los Angeles, you'd think it was a stirring film about trying to modernize religiously anchored countries like Ecuador and Ireland - you know, the others. Watching Vessel in Texas, however, feels immediate. The backhanded House Bill 2 has used concocted loopholes to shutter a third of the state's abortion clinics. Ninety-three percent of Texas counties don't have a clinic at all, and next year, when the second noose tightens, that number will get even higher. That means in the 15 years that Women on Waves' unrepentantly loud activism has convinced Portugal to legalize abortion and made pro-choice voters the majority in Poland, America has constricted the rights of women here at home.... MORE
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