Pgh Premiere of Beyond Belief

Tue. Nov 9, 2010 at 7:30pm EST
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Price: Free
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Pgh Premiere of <i>Beyond Belief

WIDOWED BY 9/11 ATTACKS, BOSTON MOTHERS EMBRACE AFGHAN WIDOWS

Pittsburgh Premiere of Beyond Belief, With Q&A by Susan Retik, Co-founder of Beyond the 11th


The New Hazlett Theater will host a screening of Beyond Belief, a documentary about the extraordinary humanitarian efforts of two suburban Boston mothers who both lost husbands in the attacks of September 11, 2001 and turned their grief to a mission of compassion and peace on behalf of Afghan widows.

Susan Retik, co-founder of the charitable foundation Beyond the 11th and winner of a 2010 Presidential Citizen’s Award, will answer questions after the film.

Retik and Patti Quigley, each pregnant and the mother of toddlers at the time, lost their husbands on the two planes from Boston that hit the World Trade Center.

Strangers until shared tragedy forged their bond, the women realized that imminent U.S. war with the Taliban – thought to have harbored the 9/11 attackers in Afghanistan – was certain to produce more widows like themselves.

“We couldn’t bear the thought,” says Retik. “We knew that unlike us, Afghan widows would receive no outpouring of love and support. In fact, they are often rejected by their in-laws and turned out onto the street. There is no life insurance, no social safety net,” Retik explains.

Beyond the 11th, the foundation Retik co-founded in 2003 with Quigley, who has since stepped down, began with the notion of helping just one Afghan widow. To date, it has helped thousands of widows -- and their children – through intensive job training and literacy classes.

“For these women, the first time they generate and control their own income is also the first time they control their own destiny,” says Retik.

Beyond Belief, Boston filmmaker Beth Murphy’s stirring documentary of Retik and Quigley’s 2006 Afghanistan trip to meet the women Beyond the 11th serves, will have its Pittsburgh premiere at the north side’s New Hazlett Theater.

View a trailer of the film at www.beyondthe11th.org/documentary.
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New Hazlett Theater Allegheny Square East
Pittsburgh, PA 15212
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