| Campus hosts week of film festivals BY MIKE UNGER, MATT GETTY, and ADRIENNE FRANK 
Photo by Jeff Watts
Philippe Cousteau speaks while Chris Palmer, SOC, left, and Kevin Mohs of Animal Planet look on. The tale of an Ethiopian boy airlifted to Israel. The real-life story of slain journalist Daniel Pearl. Environmental shorts. Hollywood blockbusters. With high-profile film festivals and screenings all over campus last week, AU was center stage for cinephiles. At AU’s Center for Environmental Filmmaking’s Environmental Shorts: Student Film Festival, the subjects varied but a similar sentiment prevailed throughout. All the winners were well-made, professional-feeling films focusing on an aspect of nature that the filmmakers clearly held close to their hearts. One short centered on educating children about the Chesapeake Bay, another on ecotourism on a small island in Mexico, a third on sharks in Hawaii. All of the eight screened Wednesday touched the hearts and minds of the audience packed into the Wechsler Theatre in the Mary Graydon Center. “We’re thrilled that there are so many people excited by the environment,” said Philippe Cousteau, cofounder and president of EarthEcho International, which cosponsored the festival. “This is our small way of saying thank you.” Chris Palmer, CEF’s director, hosted the event and said the visitors the festivals draw to campus are beneficial to the university as a whole. “AU is very well connected to many film communities throughout the area,” he said. “It makes AU, and particularly the School of Communication, into a place that people recognize as one of the epicenters where important discussions occur.” The winning entry, Hands on the Future, was made by AU students Vicki Hayes, Irene Magafan, Jennifer Harris, and Daniela Echevarria. It featured some adorably cute kids in order to detail the importance of educating children about the Chesapeake Bay. As the first place winner, the film was awarded $500.
SOC’s fourth-annual Reel Journalism film festival crossed disciplines as it brought to campus four films that explored journalism on the silver screen. With a focus on “journalism that makes a difference,” the festival drew more than 1,000 moviegoers to screenings of such feature films and documentaries as Blood Diamond and The Journalist and the Jihadi: The Murder of Daniel Pearl. After exploring issues on screen, the festival gathered experts, filmmakers, and some of the documentary subjects themselves to discuss the complex relationship among reporting, filmmaking, and activism. “As journalism changes so rapidly because of new technology, it’s crucial that we discuss what it means to be a journalist,” said SOC professor Alicia Shepard, who organized the festival along with SOC director of strategic partnerships Bettina Fisher. Film, Shepard said, provides an excellent way to start that discussion, because “most people get their idea of what journalists do from the movies.” Jennifer Connelly’s portrayal of an idealistic reporter uncovering the ugly truth behind conflict diamonds in Blood Diamond prompted a conversation on the power of investigative journalism. Panelists, such as former Washington Post reporter Douglas Farah, whose investigation into the diamond trade’s terror ties produced the best-selling book Blood From Stones, helped give a real-world context to the film’s portrayal of his profession. “The way that journalists are portrayed is not always positive,” said Shepard, noting that Blood Diamond gives an interesting counterpoint to the common stereotypes. “Having this film festival is an opportunity to explain what journalists really do.” The Journalist and the Jihadi screening Thursday night did just that as it highlighted the motivations behind Daniel Pearl’s in-depth reporting, which led to his murder at the hands of jihadists in 2002. During the panel discussion that followed, Pearl family friend and former Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Nomani ’90 offered further insight into Pearl and the importance of understanding the truth about his death. Pearl’s murder “marked a turning point for journalists’ place in the world,” she said, noting that since then reporters have increasingly been targeted for abduction and assassination. Arguing that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s recent confession to Pearl’s murder seems highly suspect, she pledged to continue searching for the truth, which she hopes will shed light on the larger conflict between Islam and the West. “Even though we couldn’t find Danny,” she said, “we still have to find the truth that was left behind.” Other films in the festival, such as Invisible Children and God Grew Tired of Us, didn’t focus on journalism, but instead raised questions about the role documentaries play at a time when mainstream media provides less and less international news.
More than 160 people turned out for last Wednesday’s screening of Live and Become, sponsored by the Center for Israel Studies. Adina Kanefield, deputy director of the center, said the film, which chronicles the life of a young Ethiopian boy who was airlifted to Israel in 1984 during Operation Moses, offered “a great opportunity to learn about Israel and its many complexities in a way that was attractive to students.” “Films are a great way to teach and an enjoyable way to learn,” said Kanefield. “Live and Become features four different languages, so you really experience the culture; it gets to all your senses.” After the screening, which was cosponsored by nearly 10 campus groups, including the Africa Council and the Center for Social Media, Calvin Goldscheider, Polinger Scholar in Residence at the Center for Israel Studies, fielded questions from the audience about the status of Ethiopian Jews. “For the individual Ethiopian, the critical question is: ‘Who am I?’ They’re Israeli—they serve in the army—and yet, have often been treated as non-Jews. “They live very problematically,” continued Goldscheider. “And they also don’t have great options to go back, nor do they want to. So, they’re very precarious.” The audience included students from Goldscheider’s Israeli Society class, who were tasked with writing a reaction paper to the film—the first of many the center plans to screen. “We hope this will be a springboard for using film to learn about Israel,” said Kanefield. |
