After starting in festivals in Europe and the US, Our Schoolfinally had its premiere in Romania – a homecoming of sorts for the film and an event that we have been anticipating for almost six years.
We shot in a small town in Transylvania, a very real place in Northern Romania. Our intention was to begin to understand, and hopefully improve, race relations between majority Romanians and the Roma ethnic minority by showing under a magnifying glass the story of three spirited Roma children involved in a school integration project in Targu Lapus. After four years of production and two years of editing we ended up with a paradigmatic story of hope, squandered opportunities, and infuriating cultural and institutional inertia. And racism, quite a bit of racism. Some intentional, some merely reflexive, yet all of it profoundly familiar to all Romanians (ourselves, the filmmakers, included). This is precisely why we were bracing so hard and for so long for the Romanian premiere. We knew that in Romania, even more than in other places in Europe or the United States, Our School would be holding a mirror up to its audience – an unflattering one at that. And there are few things as counter-productive and virulent as unexamined, defensive racism.
We did what we could to prepare for the premiere in terms of press, NGO partners on the ground, and the main characters themselves. The NGO partners were as nervous as we were and chomping at the bit to use the film for their own purposes. The characters got to see the film on their own terms before the festival premiere, on the principle that it is cruel and unusual treatment to see your own story projected on a very large screen with a large audience before absorbing it privately. The kids had never been to the cinema before, so they were extra nervous. Our youngest participant, Alin, helped to lighten the mood by eating three ice-creams in rapid succession and contently throwing up right before the screening.
The press was lukewarm, understandably, since they had not seen the film, and the international success of the new Romanian cinema over past ten years has made them unimpressed with projects with the kind of international festival success that Our School has had). The online comments to the advance press coverage came exclusively from people who had not seen it, but assumed that no film on Roma would ever help. They made violent threats and personal attacks against our team for “destroying Romania’s image abroad.” We imagined they were people who had too much time on their hands, but we were still put on notice: Our School had the potential of generating a strong backlash, and that was the last thing we wanted to happen.
Matters were not helped much by the great folk at the Transylvania Film Festival who programmed us in the largest cinema they had: 750 seats. We worried that the seats would remain empty or would be filled with people who do not like what they seen on the screen.
We worried about everything.
Whatever fears we had were dispersed in the first five minutes of the screening. The huge audience laughed loudly at even the smallest jokes in the film. They clapped after particularly poignant lines, making the projectionist worried that they would not hear the soundtrack. They started sniffling, visibly moved towards the end. And, when the credits ended and we all lined up on the stage, we found them giving the children a standing ovation. For five whole minutes.
Alin turned to me and whispered: “Are all of these guys Romanian?” Yes, they were. And they were applauding the courage, resilience, spirit and sass of Alin, Dana, Beni – and all the Romanian friends they managed to make, despite all odds, along the way. The audience had connected to the kids, managing to see themselves in our film without defensiveness or rancor. They found ways to process and understand what they could change in themselves by the time the credits stopped rolling.
After the film…
A teacher confessed to treating her Roma students as inferior. I wanted to put her in touch with the New York teacher who confessed during our Q&A at the Tribeca Film Festival that she had been tracking immigrant children in special education programs because she herself lacked support and know-how to integrate them.
A local mentioned a case of segregation next door to the screening venue – an activist invited the audience to investigate the case, right then and there. A journalist mused about what the Ministry of Education should do with the film – we referred him to the principal in Our School, who despite an awareness that the film showed him in a light that was “a little too true” (his words), ended up generously saying that it is an extraordinary tool that should be used to train and inform people not only in Romania, but abroad.
There were also hugs – lots of them. Alin, Beni, and Dana said that they were treated, for that one night, better than they had been treated, cumulatively, their entire life.
The press reaction that came in response to the screening was no less enthusiastic. A journalist confessed an allergy to issue films and declared herself not only surprised, but cured. An editorial talked about how Our School is not only a film about Roma, it is a film about us. A reputed blog said the audience had come in with fixed ideas and had come out with the urge to apologize to Roma children on behalf of all Romanians.
We know this was an ideal audience in many ways – progressive, trained by ten years of challenging festival experiences, and moved by the presence of the children in the room. But having an initial reaction like this from hundreds of people gives us confidence in what this film can do. It gives us trust that the film can accomplish what we always intended: Point to a systemic problem, make us understand it in the most direct, human way, and do the hardest things of all – change hearts and minds and open up a some hope for the future.
Guest post by Mona Nicoara, Director of Our School.
In honor of International Women’s Month, Chicken & Egg Pictures and Working Films, in collaboration with Just Vision, present a Story Leads to Action screening of Budrus.
Thursday, March 17th at 7:30pm
92Y Tribeca
200 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10013
Tickets are $12 Click here to purchase tickets
“This year’s must-see documentary” — the New York Times
Budrus is an award-winning feature documentary film about a Palestinian community organizer, Ayed Morrar, who unites local Fatah and Hamas members along with Israeli supporters in an unarmed movement to save his village of Budrus from destruction by Israel’s Separation Barrier.
Success eludes them until his 15-year-old daughter, Iltezam, launches a women’s contingent that quickly moves to the front lines. Struggling side by side, father and daughter unleash an inspiring, yet little-known, movement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories that is still gaining ground today.
Budrus is the latest production by Just Vision, a nonprofit organization led by a team of Israelis, Palestinians, North and South Americans committed to increasing the power and legitimacy of Palestinians and Israelis pursuing nonviolent solutions to the conflict. The film has won numerous awards at top international festivals, including Berlin, Tribeca and San Francisco, and has been featured in major press outlets such as The New York Times, Washington Post, The Economist, Newsweek, Charlie Rose, MSNBC, and others. It is now playing before a variety of Israeli and Palestinian audiences in the region and is showing in theaters, campuses and communities across the US. Watch the trailer below:
After the screening, Director Julia Bacha will be joined by a panel of peace activists, educators and social media practitioners, including Ingrid Kopp of Shooting People, among others. We are planning a lively interactive discussion about the film’s strategic community organizing and engagement campaign in Palestine, Israel and the U.S., with a special focus on the upcoming campus and community organizing tour. The discussion will be moderated by Peabody-winning filmmaker, educator, environmentalist and co-founder of Chicken & Egg Pictures and Working Films, Judith Helfand.
What would it be like if you put your children in a school where the teacher spoke a foreign language? Speaking in Tongues follows the experience of 4 kids in language immersion grade schools.
Come watch this award winning film and support Californians Together, a statewide coalition of parents, teachers, education advocates and civil rights groups committed to securing equal access to quality education for all children. $4 from each ticket sold will be donated to their “Seal of Biliteracy” campaign.
September 12th 3:00pm – 5:00pm
@ Aero Theatre (1328 Montana Avenue)
Santa Monica, CA
Directions: http://bit.ly/buxwiC
Please share this exciting event with your networks. Special invited guests include: the filmmakers, community leaders, policymakers and more advocates from organizations at the forefront of multilingual education.
Missed last week’s invigorating Story Leads to Action at the 92YTribeca that we co-hosted with Chicken & Egg Pictures? Fear not, filmmakers Elizabeth Mandel and Beth Davenport have agreed to share their lessons learned from the evening for your benefit:
photo by Chicken & Egg Pictures
Three years after filming the reunion of a Congolese girl and her mother, separated by war in Congo, Rose & Nangabire (working title) is almost complete. The work-in-progress screening last Thursday was an exciting opportunity to share our work outside the edit room. With a focus on audience engagement, it was also invigorating to finally explore in a public forum how the film can be used to create change.
While many social-justice issues are covered in the film, our audience engagement strategy focuses on refugee rights and resettlement; peace-building and reconciliation; and women in post-conflict situations. The evening was moderated by Robert West of Working Films, with panelists Matthew Edmundson, Operations Officer, Mapendo International and Desiree Younge, Senior Manager, Global Philanthropists Circle, Synergos. Audience members included representatives from the International Rescue Committee, STEPS to End Family Violence, Witness, Human Rights Watch and The Safe Harbor Project, as well as filmmakers and film fans.
Ideas and thoughts generated by the post-screening discussion included the following uses for the film or modules created from the footage:
• Reaching policymakers and practitioners who are often, due to politicization, desensitized to the issues Rose and her family confront and challenge.
• Targeting schools, because the presence of a teenage refugee going to high school in the film will make the issues accessible to a youth audience.
• Partnering with the Department of Education to train teachers who work with refugees and other ESL populations.
• Bringing together diaspora communities, for example by creating a women’s-only discussion group, and/or a group for teens, where survivors of war can have a safe space to share their experiences.
• Working with women- and girls- leadership programs to provide a portrait of a strong, resourceful role model.
It was also pointed out that while embarking on our project we need to assess who is already doing this work and can program the film into their existing frameworks, and who can use the film to take their work to new places. This thought brings us to our next phase, solidifying relationships with organizations that address our three issue areas, and finessing the ways in which Rose & Nangabire can be used to help them in their work. As we finish up the film and begin to screen at film festivals, we’re also looking forward to using this momentum to inspire thinking and follow up action on the part of general audiences as well.
Stay tuned for announcements about our festival premiere and the launch of our audience engagement plan. In the meantime, if you are in any way involved with our issue areas — refugee rights and resettlement; peace-building and reconciliation; and women in post-conflict situations — please be in touch, we’d love to hear from you. We can be reached at elizabeth at artsengine.net or beth at artsengine.net.
I was invited to be on the jury for the Matter Documentary Award at the Branchage Jersey International Film Festival this past weekend. (That’s the Jersey that is a British Crown Dependency off the coast of Normandy, France – not New Jersey in the U.S.) The Matter Award goes to the “best socially conscious” documentary film in the fest. It includes £2000 to the filmmaker, plus £1,000 to a charity of the winner’s choice.
The nominees were quite extraordinary, including Burma VJ, The End of the Line, Only When I Dance, Rough Aunties, and The Yes Men Fix the World. The jury felt one film – Burma VJ – reflected a unique moment in time for film and activism, and named it the winner. The “citizen” and professional Burmese journalists in the film risked their lives to fight back against an oppressive and repressive regime, sending their stories of street-to-street resistance to audiences outside their borders with the use of new technologies – including handycams and in some cases cell phone connectivity.
The filmmaking team has built a campaign around this film, including primary partners Amnesty International UK and the Burma Campaign, supported by the Cooperative. Together they have built an audience engagement strategy that will take this film to thousands of audiences members, giving them relevant and urgent direct actions of response when the lights come up and the film’s credits roll. Built into the campaign are new connections to viewers through social media tools and networks, including Twitter and Facebook.
And as important as the subjects of this film, the individual struggles and reports that brought new attention to a criminal regime in Burma, is the model they offer us. With video cameras embedded in most cell phones, stories from the frontline will now have a reach and immediacy never before possible. It is increasingly clear that activists now have a tool for spotlighting and pushing back against oppression while building global coalitions for resistance – no matter how isolated the place from which they are reporting. The immediacy of their message will now be measured in seconds. I am confident that future struggles for human rights are strengthened by our interconnected paths and new routes of truly mass communication; we saw it first in Burma VJ.
I was invited to be on the jury for the 
