November 1 , 2006 == MEDIA ADVISORY
As one in a series of refugee awareness events, a Calvin College professor's award-winning documentary, "Drawings and War: The Testimony of the Children of Uganda" will be shown at 8 p.m. on Nov. 4 in the college's Robert L. Bytwerk Video Theater.
The 30-minute documentary will be preceded by a panel discussion about film and activism and followed by a conversation with Grace Akallo, a former child prisoner in Uganda’s civil war.
The event is a collaboration of several Calvin organizations: the Student Activities Office, the department of communication arts and sciences (CAS), the Social Justice Coalition, the Organization of Students in Social Work, the Film Arts Committee and the African and African Diaspora Studies minor.
The film*which won as "best documentary" at the Route 66 Film Festival*is the creation of Calvin CAS professor Daniel Garcia, a native of Peru.
It distills the many interviews he did in the summer of 2005 with children kidnapped and forced into the service of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a paramilitary group waging a 20-year civil war against the Ugandan government.
"The rebels use children as carriers of goods, mules," Garcia says. "They train them to become fighters. They force them to go to their own villages to abduct other children and even to kill their own relatives in order to cut all links with their past."
Garcia notes that the LRA does not make any distinction between boys and girls. Girls can also be given as "wives of the commanders," another term for sexual slavery.
The documentary follows Akallo, who was abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army in Lira, Uganda when she was 15 years old. Her story is intertwined with those of three other characters: James who was a soldier with the LRA for seven years; Agnes, who was given as a wife to one of the rebels and is now young mother trying to find a future; and Alex, who was able to escape and go back to his village, only to witness the killing of his parents.
The film also uses the drawings of abducted children to reconstruct the experience of a generation living in the midst of war.
Contact Garcia at 616-526-7306 or deg3@calvin.edu
For the complete story see http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2006-07/garcia-film.htm
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Received on Wed Nov 1 11:30:44 2006
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