Mary Shelley: A Conversation With Writer/Director Haifaa Al-Mansour

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While 19th century Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley easily comes to mind as a towering literary figure, his wife Mary Shelley much less so - though the opposite is now actually true. Just a teenager at the time, scorned and pressured to write under a name not her own because she was a female - yet her monumental work 'Frankenstein, Or The Modern Prometheus' has not only endured as other literary giants have faded into relative obscurity. But whose core substance and meaning within her novel have made Mary Shelley's work more popular then ever nearly 200 years later - in movies and related works.

And what is it about the mythic power of Frankenstein. Many theories and debates have ensued - most prominently that this young girl foretold in the tragic, distorted figure of Frankenstein, a cautionary prophesy pertaining to emerging science and technology, and their misuses. But there's another aspect less considered, and which is the subject of the biopic Mary Shelley. That is, how women - Shelley included no less than the monster that may have in fact been herself - have been abused and misunderstood throughout history.

And whom better to delve into this controversial topic, than a woman today subjected to an even more oppressive culture - namely the writer/director, Haifaa Al-Mansour. And actually the first Saudi Arabian woman to ever be allowed to direct a movie. A feature at the Tribeca Film Festival.

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** "The public works administration came into the integrated neighborhood that Langston Hughes grew up in, demolished housing there, and created two separate projects - one for whites and one for African Americans."

Book Corner: The Color Of Law: A Forgotten History Of How Our Government Segregated America. The West Bank Wall in Palestine as a new idea? Think again. The US government created public housing for the poor and people of color to deliberately - and actually openly - segregate them everywhere. Surrounding them by highways and walls - how about the infamous 8 Mile wall in Detroit - preventing black access even to walk through the white neighborhoods. Jack Shalom in a conversation with The Color of Law author and historian, Richard Rothstein.

** The Cleaners: Who are they, and what are they doing on the other side of the world. Somehow deeper than the Dark Web and potentially with more power than heads of state - officially assigned by corporations and governments to police cyberspace.

This simultaneously sinister and fascinating documentary - or rather documentary noir - delves into who exactly is controlling what they want you to see and believe - or not. Welcome to the outsourced secretive industry of digital cleaning - a feature of this year's Human Right Watch Film Festival. An analysis and commentary.

Arts Express: Dare To Be Different Radio.