There is a new documentary coming out very soon. It's called Encounter Point, and you can read about it here. It's the story about how Palestinians and Israelis who have lost a family member in the ethnic violence coming together in conversations to build a coalition for peace and healing. Kirsta Tippett also interviewed these two people for an episode of her radio program called Speaking of Faith. Check out the radio program here.
You can also read Christian Science Monitor's article from today about this documentary.
This story is truly amazing. If you are at all interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how ordinary people can be a force for peace in ways that governments cannot, you owe it to yourself to listen to Krista Tippett's interview at the very least. I'm going to see about hosting a screening of this documentary.
Another instance of people becoming a force for peace through the visual medium is the Video Letters Project (http://www.videoletters.net/). For a brief overview read this NYT article archived on their website (http://www.videoletters.net/article-1030.106995-en.html).
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Five years ago, having already made several movies about the aftermath of the Balkan wars of the 1990's, the Dutch couple embarked on an extraordinary project called "Videoletters, " designed to further reconciliation among people from the former Yugoslavia who had once been friends and who had been separated and even alienated by the bloody nationalist conflict.
The idea was simple: someone who had lost touch with, say, a childhood friend or a lifelong neighbor from a different ethnic group was invited to record a message. The directors then traced and showed the video letter to the "lost" friend, who was usually eager to reply. In most cases, the exchange resulted in an emotional reunion.
What has given these experiences political weight, however, is that since April, nine of these video letters have been broadcast by television stations in each of the seven nations that were once Yugoslavia - Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzogovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Macedonia.
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Posted by: Striker_21 | January 12, 2007 at 06:50 PM
Thank you Ryan for scanning the internet to alert us about stuff like this. Can't wait.
Posted by: Samir Selmanovic | January 18, 2007 at 08:47 PM
Thank you Ryan for scanning the internet to alert us about stuff like this. Can't wait.
Posted by: Samir Selmanovic | January 18, 2007 at 08:47 PM
Very cool!!
Posted by: Johnny | January 18, 2007 at 10:53 PM