Reporting on Conflict | Media Watch BlogPeacemakers Trust posts news, reports or announcements of interest to people studying or working in the field of dispute resolution, conflict transformation and peacebuilding. Inclusion of an item on the media watch blog does not imply endorsement or agreement of Peacemakers Trust with views expressed by authors of posted items.
Arn Chorn-Pond was a child in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975. Born into a family of artists and musicians, he was sent to a children’s labour camp where he escaped death by playing his flute for the camp guards…
As a Cambodian-American, he considers the festival his personal answer to the US bombing of Cambodia. “The US bombed Cambodia,” he says. “I am carpeting New York with artists.”
(...more)IN 2005 Emad Burnat was given a video camera to record the birth of his fourth son, Gibreel. It was while he dutifully chronicled the formative years of his son that Mr Burnat unexpectedly became the film-maker behind “Five Broken Cameras”, a sombre documentary about the struggle of his native West Bank village of Bil’in against Israel’s construction of the separation wall.
The film’s premiere in the Palestinian territories took place recently at the Ramallah Cultural Palace, a multimillion-dollar centre unmatched in its size and facilities in the territories. The audience featured mainly young Palestinians and foreign expatriates, a common mix in a city that has become the West Bank’s administrative capital.
(...more)Landfill Harmonic is an upcoming feature-length documentary about a remarkable musical orchestra in Paraguay, where the musicians play instruments made from trash.
When The Water Ends: Africa’s Climate Conflicts is a 16-minute video that documents conflicts driven by climate change in Eastern Africa.
(...more)Documentary-maker John Pilger has returned to a subject that can’t be revived often enough: the grotesque untruth of “weapons of mass destruction”: a cloudy concept, eagerly amplified and lent credibility by credulous and submissive journalists who, after 9/11, lost their nerve en masse. Pilger’s contention is that on Afghanistan, on Iraq and on Israel and the Palestinian territories, the mainstream media simply take the official line.
(...more)Cynthia Cohen, innovative director of the film Acting Together and peacebuilding scholar/practitioner will be appearing at two Vancouver-area events. Both are free, but pre-registration is required. Details below.
UBC/Vancouver area: Peter Wall Institute event on March 21.
New Westminster area: Justice Institute of BC March 22 event.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Acting Together on the World Stage, Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict
Director Allison Lund. Producer Cynthia Cohen.
Commentators: Dr. Michelle LeBaron, UBC Faculty of Law; Professor Rena Sharon, UBC School of Music; and Professor Maureen Maloney, Public Policy, Simon Fraser University
Location: PWIAS Conference Rooms, UBC
Time: 4:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Discussion and a reception with refreshments to follow the film presentation.
To register, contact the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at pwias.assistant[at]pwias.ubc.ca
Thursday, March 22, 2012
6:30-8:00 pm (6 pm registration)
JIBC New Westminster Campus
Fee: no cost, but registration is required
Acting Together: Join the Conversation – Free Community Event
Join us for the free screening of “Acting Together” an internationally acclaimed film, featuring artists, peace builders, and community leaders from every continent, whose rituals and theatrical works speak truth to power and support communities to mourn losses and build bridges of reconciliation.
Project Director Dr. Cynthia Cohen will lead a discussion after the screening. Registration is required for this free event. Email scsj[at]jibc.ca, or call 604.528.5608 to secure your seat.
For more information about these special events, call 604.528.5608 (toll-free 1.888.799.0801), email scsj[at]jibc.ca, or visit the event website www.jibc.ca/actingtogether.
Dr. Cynthia Cohen is director of the program in Peacebuilding and the Arts at Brandeis University’s International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life. She is an internationally recognized educator, peacebuilding practitioner and researcher who focuses on the contributions of the arts to conflict transformation.
The educational documentary Acting Together on the World Stage highlights courageous and creative artists and peacebuilders working in conflict zones. It features theatrical works and rituals that reach beneath people’s defenses in respectful ways that support communities to configure new patterns of meaning and relationships. The documentary grows out of a five-year initiative of Theatre Without Borders, Brandeis University and filmmaker Allison Lund. Dynamic footage of performances, rituals, and candid interviews with artists and peacebuilders place case studies in their socio-political and cultural contexts. The documentary is designed for students, practitioners, educators, and policymakers in fields related to performance and to peace and conflict studies, and for others who believe—or who want to be convinced—that human communities have the creative capacities to transform conflict non-violently.
TED Talks In politics, it seems counterintuitive to engage in dialogue with violent groups, with radicals and terrorists, and with the states that support them. But Jonas Gahr Støre, the foreign minister of Norway, makes a compelling case for open discussion, even when values diverge …
(...more)The capstone of Women, War & Peace, War Redefined challenges the conventional wisdom that war and peace are men’s domain through incisive interviews with leading thinkers, Secretaries of State and seasoned survivors of war and peace-making… Narrated by Geena Davis.
Watch War Redefined Promo on PBS. See more from Women War and Peace.
(...more)In the last decade, guards have killed hundreds of people in the border region between India and Bangladesh.
However, the opening of a market for traders from both countries to sell their wares could help to ease tensions.
(...more)The middle of the summer isn’t the most likely time for a probing documentary film on inner-city violence. But the recently-released movie “The Interrupters,” an official selection of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, is drawing attention and winning positive notices from critics.
The film, directed by Steve James of “Hoop Dreams” fame, is an intimate look at the lives and work of Chicago-based anti-violence organization CeaseFire. The movie avoids a traditional narrative structure, and instead follows three of the crime “interrupters” in a year of violence mediation on the streets of some of Chicago’s most dangerous neighborhoods.
(...more)Tuesday, 26 July 2011 to Sunday, 18 September 2011
The Singing Revolution film shares how, between 1987 and 1991, hundreds of thousands of Estonians gathered publicly to sing forbidden patriotic songs and share protest speeches, risking their lives to proclaim their desire for independence.
Public Broadcasting Stations around the U.S. have begun to announce their schedules, and starting July 26th through September airdates have been scheduled. Check the list of stations for dates/times in your area on the TSR website, you can search by STATION or CITY: http://www.singingrevolution.com/cgi-local/screenings.cgi
First occupied by the Soviets in 1939, then by the Nazis, and then by the Soviets again, Estonia lived through decades of terror. By the end of World War II, more than one-quarter of the population had been deported to Siberia, been executed, or had fled the country. Music sustained the Estonian people during those years, helping to maintain the Estonian language and sense of culture. It was such a crucial part of their struggle for freedom that their successful bid to re-establish their independence is known as the Singing Revolution.
The Singing Revolution tells the moving and dramatic story of how the Estonian people strategically, willfully, sung their way to freedom–and helped topple an empire along the way.
HOW TO START A REVOLUTION is a new documentary film revealing how one man’s work has helped millions of people achieve freedom in the face of oppression and tyranny.
Gene Sharp is a shy, modest and little-known man. But his work has inspired a generation of people to challenge dictators through non-violent action in a tidal wave of revolutionary spirit and reform that has swept from Eastern Europe, though Asia and to the Middle East and North Africa.
(...more)With a camera, a dedicated wheatpasting crew and the help of whole villages and favelas, 2011 TED Prize winner JR shows the world its true face.
(...more)“Survival, Strength, Sisterhood: Power of Women in the Downtown Eastside” is a short film that documents the 20 year history of the annual women’s memorial march for missing and murdered women in Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories. By focusing on the voices of women who live, love, and work in the Downtown Eastside this film debunks the sensationalism surrounding a neighbourhood deeply misunderstood, and celebrates the complex and diverse realities of women organizing for justice. (32 mins)
Survival, Strength, Sisterhood: Power of Women in the Downtown Eastside from Alejandro Zuluaga on Vimeo.
(...more)It seems slow to start. An initial test bomb in the desert of the southern United States. The nuclear explosions in Japan in 1945, a slow and horrible one-two. Two tests in the Pacific Ocean in quick succession in 1947. From here it escalades slowly.
In the above 14:25 minute video created by Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto titled “1945-1998?, the viewer is exposed to a time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions that took place between 1945 and 1998.
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