The Laemmle Theaters' "Documentary Days 2002" continues Saturday and Sunday at 10 a.m. at the Sunset 5 with Gayle Ferraro's revealing and encouraging "Sixteen Decisions." Its title refers to a social charter for a Utopian community with precepts regarding respect for the environment, the importance of sanitation and hygiene and harmonious and mutually supportive community life. Instead it is a manifesto established by the progressive Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, founded by Dr. Muhammad Yunus, a socially conscious visionary who believed that poor people could be good credit risks and that receiving additional income of less than a dollar a day could transform someone's life.
Ferraro focuses on young Selina, a mother of two boys, ages 4 and 5, who has just joined a group of women in her rural village who have formed a collective to receive small loans from Grameen to buy livestock, open a tiny store or make improvements to their homes. Regular payments on the loans as agreed upon are mandatory if a woman is to stay a member of the collective. Selina has joined to obtain a loan so her husband can buy a rickshaw rather than rent one at high cost. Selina's parents were so impoverished that they sold her at the age of 7 into virtual slavery in a wealthy family; she was married at 12. In telling Selina's story sensitively, Ferraro discovers how the oppressive condition of Bangladeshi women is changing through the Grameen bank's program.


http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/printedition/calendar/la-000025744apr11.story