Former Portlander Penny Allen on the Attacks on Paris and What Life is Like There

Host Joe Uris interviews French-American film director Penny Allen about the recent attacks on Paris and reaction to them. Penny is a former Portlander, whose first feature Property, made in Portland, was a prize-winner at the first Sundance festival in 1978.  In 2008, she finished The Soldier’s Tale, a prize-winner at the 2009 festival Visions du Réel in Nyon. In 2013 came Late for My Mother's Funeral, a feature about a family adrift after the death of their mother, an Algerian smuggler. And also The Didier Connection, a documentary short about a little French boy arriving in Portland.  Allen is also a writer (A Geography of Saints, Metaphors for Change), author of photo strips (War is Hell, La Guerre c’est l’enfer), and she worked on environmental issues from 1987 to 2002. Earlier, she was a social worker,  a university instructor, a journalist, and a community organizer in land-use planning. She lives in Paris.