Meet Souleymane Guengueng (pictured above.) Twenty-five years ago, he was jailed and tortured by the ruthless regime of Chadian dictator Hissène Habré, who was supported by President Reagan and a number of European countries. A 65-year-old devout Christian, he promised God that if he got out of prison alive he would bring Habré to justice. Souleymane is one of SEEKING REFUGE’s main characters.
INTRO SEEKING REFUGE is a character-driven film that is being shot in five countries over six years. It is the first longitudinal film to introduce audiences to torture survivors who are on a life-long journey to overcome unimaginable cruelty. The film goes below the surface to intimately reveal the emotional, psychological and intellectual vicissitudes of the healing process, and in so doing, contextualizes the social and political forces that give rise to a culture of human rights abuses.
Through its finely textured, multi-dimensional storylines, SEEKING REFUGE dramatically and compassionately explores torture in concrete human terms by following the trajectories of five main characters (two are primary and three are secondary.) While the heart of their stories takes place in the U.S., the film interweaves vérité footage, archival material and impressionistic imagery with inner monologue and an evocative soundtrack to traverse between the horrors of our survivors’ pasts and their present-day challenges. To gain insight into their backstories (when safe to do so), the follows them back to the countries they once called home, thus bringing the past full-circle to the present.
WHY NOW One of the most efficient means of control is to terrorize individuals and communities into passivity, submission and silence. One way to exert t...
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...ection of Ibero-American Cinema in North America. In the process she created one of thee Miami Encuentross, a program to help emerging Ibero-American producers.
During the last six years Guillemet has been the Program Director for both the Dominican Republic Global Film Festival and the Costa Rica International Film Festival. She has also worked as an executive consultant for various international festivals such as the Middle East International Film Festival, Bahamas International Film Festival, and ESAV, the Marrakech School of Film and Design, which supports new Arabic cinema.
She serves on national boards of a number of arts organizations including Women Make Movies and is a frequent juror and panelist for a wide range of international festivals. Guillemet has participated on funding panels including the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rolex Foundation.
[1] How I came to choose Missing as the focus of my project is as a result of the learning experience I have been engaged in during my college career. Having first seen the film for a class, I thought of it as nothing more than a movie about something monumental that happened in Chile more than two decades ago. I watched it, unhappily, thinking about all the other things I could be doing, and even falling asleep during some of it. In the time between my first viewing of Missing and embarking on this most recent project, I have learned a great deal about history, politics, and people. My views on all three of those subjects are constantly changing, with each new piece of information I receive further complicating my thoughts. Missing has gone from a movie, the title of which I had difficulty recalling, to being a thought provoking exposition that has forced me to examine, evaluate, and reevaluate almost everything that had once been certain in my own mind.
14 million refugees, men, women, and children are forced to flee their homes, towns, and family. The refugees are scared to stay but have to leave (Gervet). Refugees have to face losing a loved one to losing a little thing like a doll both hurts them greatly. Like many refugees, Ha the main character in the book “Inside out & Back again” by Thanhha Lai, have to face the similar losses as other refugees.Many refugees, like Ha, face the feeling of turning “Inside out” when they mourn the losses of their loved ones and their precious belongings, then they are able to turn “back again” with acceptance and support from their communities and friends.
Film making has gone through quite the substantial change since it’s initial coining just before the turn of the 19th century, and one would tend argue that the largest amount of this change has come quite recently or more so in the latter part of film’s history as a whole. One of the more prominent changes having taken place being the role of women in film. Once upon a time having a very set role in the industry, such as editing for example. To mention briefly the likes of Dede Allen, Verna Fields, Thelma Schoonmaker and so forth. Our female counterparts now occupy virtually every aspect of the film making industry that males do; and in many instances excel past us. Quite clearly this change has taken place behind the lens, but has it taken
Lisa Cholodenko grew up in Los Angeles and she began her film careers working as an assistant editor; however, she then moved to New York and earned an MFA in screenwriting and direction at the Columbia University School of arts. At Columbia University School of Arts, Cholodenko filmed her first short movie Dinner Party. Besides being a director, Lisa Cholodenko also was a film professor at Columbia University, an advisor and is currently on the Board of Governs of Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science. It was surprising to be able to find out how active Cholodenko is in the film industry and in the university she attended. This portrays how committed Cholodenko is to creating successful movies and to be a part of others film victory.
Many characters in For Whom the Bell Tolls say that they would prefer suicide to being tortured after becoming captured, or being a prisoner of war. In wartime, when someone is captured, they may be tortured so the enemy can get intell...
Jacobs, Diane. Hollywood Renaissance: The New Generation of Filmmakers and their works. 1977. New York. Dell Publishing.
The author of this paper disagrees with this assessment. TWE is more than that; it is an informed way out of a psychological deadlock, cannot be resolved in any other way. It is an attempt to stop a severe form of subjugation and degradation that focuses on the wellbeing of the oppressed. The only player in the “Manichean game” that was willing to end it. Fanon’s “regression” to violence is not a sign of resignation, nor of radicalization. It is a well-informed recourse to get rid of an abuser that has proven to be hopelessly egocentric, unsuited to live in a truly humanist society, even less so in bringing it about. Hence, Fanon was to the very end committed to improve the lives of the
Back in 2001 while shooting “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in Cambodia” movie, Angelina Jolie became aware of the people suffering in the war-torn country - “my eyes started to open,” she would later say (O’Hanlon, D2). That experience gave her a better understanding of a worldwide humanitarian crisis which led Angelina Jolie to contact the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In her essay “A new level of refugee suffering: Complementary”, Angelina Jolie claims that she had visited Iraq five times and witnesses suffering, which she had never seen before: people with no home, unspeakable brutality, struggling to survive, violence, children are out of school, poverty (Jolie,
Rosa Linda Fregoso. The Bronze Screen: Chicana and Chicano Film Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993
Coercion, and subsequently the right to use violence, is the state’s sole method for functioning and existing. Without it, the state is powerless to exist credibly. Thus, at the core of political theory is the argument to justify the state’s use of coercion; without this, the state cannot be ethically justifiable. However, can a violent, or otherwise morally dubious act such as coercion, ever be truly justified? If enough good comes of it, surely it could be mitigated, but how much ‘good’ is enough? And can we really ever justify the indefinite use of coercion based solely upon favorable outcomes that have occurred in the past? If we cannot, then the only option that may be justified could be anarchy.
Very few are lucky enough to shake free of this vicious clutch. On October 25, 2013, three women (69-year-old Malaysian woman, a 57-year-old Irish woman, and the 30-year-old British woman.) from were about to escape 73-year-old Aravindan Balakrishnan and his 67-year-old wife Chanda’s wrath after 30 years. They were described as “deeply traumatized” after they suffered through the ordeal of abuse and isolation. What little freedoms they had led one of the victims to watch a movie on forced violence, which gave out the number of non-profit Freedom Charity, an organization that dedicated themselves to contacting the police after gaining the women’s trust. Later details of the story report that the three women were apart of a left wing...
Schwartz, Leslie. Surviving the hell of Auschwitz and Dachau: a teenage struggle toward freedom from hatred.. S.l.: Lit Verlag, 2013. Print.
Most refugees have to shift and alter their lives to survive because war is so common in today's society. Even women and children are not exempt from the ravages of war. This is generated in the story, "My Parents Bedroom," where the author, Uwem Akpan explains in a first person's point of view a cultural clash in the main character's country. The author focuses on the genocide in Rwanda, which created a clash between cultures. Akpan reveals that the main character, Monique, faces hardships and difficulty in understanding her parent's fears. Similarly, in the "Lost Boys of Sudan," Sara Corbett interviews a group of boy refugee that attained political asylum in the USA. These boys expressed to Corbett their experiences, fears, and concerns.
Political prisoners and criminals alike were subject to brutal conditions in the Soviet gulags at Kolyma in the 20th century. In Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales, the stories of many different prisoners are told and much is revealed about how humans react under these pressures, both naturally and socially. Being in an extreme environment not only takes a toll on one’s physical well-being, but on one’s mental and emotional state as well. The stories show that humans can be reduced to a fragile, animalistic state while in the Kolyma work camps because the extreme conditions force many men to focus solely on self-preservation.
Escape from Sobibor, is a reverent account of prisoners from the concentration camp Sobibor, who made one of the most daring and courageous escapes in World War II history. Following real accounts of eighteen individuals who survived the escape, the author, Richard Rashke, tells the story of cruelty, desolation and ultimately the will to live so that others could know what happened.