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SAN JUAN ISLAND |
SJI student receives Kathryn W. Davis Peace Award
posted 04/28/2008
These awards came about in 2007, on Davis’ 100th birthday, when she committed $1 million to fund 100 grassroots projects by college students to, she said, "bring new thinking to the prospects of peace in the world." Davis has repeated her gift for 2008. Longley, a filmmaker who worked in the Iraqi war zone on the academy award-nominated film, "Iraq in Fragments," will be creating a film on the disenfranchisement of the homeless with her project, "Homelessness and Voting in a Democracy." "There is a great disparity between the homeless and those with homes," says Longley, "but this disparity does not come solely from the difference in the physical surroundings of what each group calls home. The disparity stems from the difference in how each group experiences their shared social environment: one as an accepted member and one as a disenfranchised outcast." To bridge this divide, Longley will spend the summer documenting the lives and struggles of members of the homeless community in Seattle, WA, focusing on those with compelling stories and those who have been active in gaining a strong political voice and rights for the homeless. A certified Emergency Medical Technician with interests in photojournalism and photography, Longley is dividing her time at COA between pre-med and film classes. Also receiving an award is COA senior Katarina Jurikova of Slovakia, with the project "Gardens for Women and Children in Fort Portal Uganda." For this, Jurikova will be returning to the eastern Ugandan town of Fort Portal where she had previously worked with children and women, many suffering the consequences of HIV/AIDS. She plans to create two Kathryn Davis Community Gardens, one for AIDS widows, women who traditionally have a great deal of agricultural knowledge but no access to land except through men. Jurikova hopes the women will find a place to talk and perhaps generate new ideas. The second garden is for children suffering from AIDS. In addition to the 100 undergraduates students from 81 college and universities receiving funding for their projects for peace, Davis is funding 20 graduate student projects through the global institution, International House. Among those receiving a prize is Nikhit d’Sa, a 2006 graduate of COA, currently enrolled at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College. For his project, "From Apathy to Action: Educating against Child Abuse in Jamaica," he will return to Jamaica to work with the street children he met during a Watson Fellowship in 2007. Davis is an internationalist and philanthropist, the mother of Shelby M.C. Davis, who funds the Davis United World College Scholar Program which provides grants to select American colleges and universities in support of students from all over the world who have completed their pre-university studies in one of the 12 United World College schools. These schools, located on five continents, are dedicated to promoting international understanding through education. "My many years have taught me that there will always be conflict," said Davis. "It’s part of human nature. But love, kindness and support are also part of human nature, and my challenge to these young people is to bring about a mindset of preparing for peace instead of preparing for war." College of the Atlantic is a small college on the Maine coast awarding a BA and MPhil in Human Ecology. It was founded in 1969 on the premise that education should go beyond understanding the world as it is to enabling students to actively participate in shaping its future. The collaborative, interdisciplinary, experiential approach ensures that students’ quest for scientific, spiritual, social and artistic knowledge comes with the depth of an individualized curriculum, developing creative thinkers and doers. Education is active, hands-on, often through original sources. Students are fully involved in the community, in governance, in their own education. For more information on the Projects for Peace program, visit www.davisprojectsforpeace.org. For more information on College of the Atlantic, visit www.coa.edu. Filmmaker heads to KurdistanStory by Sharon Kivisto posted 06/21/04
The two documentaries will be part of an eight-part series her brother James is creating. He has been working on the project for two years. They hope to be in an editing room in Istanbul in December finishing up the series which is being filmed cinema verité style. If all goes as planned, the series will be released in Spring 2005. Her goal is not to change minds but rather to provide a way for people to learn about another culture. "I want to create an intimate portrait of Kurdish village life," she said. "it is important for the citizens of each country to know each other's culture and history." Filming at the women's shelter in Arpel will be done first. The shelter houses teenage girls who can't return home, widowed women, and single women with children. "There are a lot of women, a lot of different stories," she said. James Longley knows the woman who runs the shelter. She is "very enthusiastic" about the film project, Margaret said. James, 32, is a respected documentary filmmaker. Margaret appreciates the opportunity to work on a project of this caliber. "It (documentrary filmmaking) is something I want to do," she said. "I became interested in photography when I was a kid. Film is an amazing form of art and documentary is quite an amazing form of cinema. I wouldn't be able to do this now, at my age and my level of experience if it wasn't for James." Asked if she was nervous about traveling to Iraq. She said she was but believes she will be OK. She intends to stay in Kurdistan and avoid Bagdad, Mozul and other dangerous areas. She will meet up with her brother occasionally but will be working mainly alone. While she is comfortable working the professional digital camera she's taking with her, "I'll have to become real good, real fast," she said. She has experienced living in another culture. She spent six months in Russia and was able to pick up the language. She noted the Kurdish language is more of an Indo-European language. Financing documentary films isn't easy. James is using the proceeds from his well-reviewed Gaza Strip documentary (see stories below) to finance the Iraq series. Margaret raised enough money through fundraisers and email subscriptions to cover her expenses for three months. She hopes to be able to raise enough to stay for six months. Donations can be mailed to:
San Juan Islander will be posting stories from Margaret on a twice monthly basis. Longley film reviewed in NY Timesposted 08/01/02
"Gaza Strip" documentary shown at UW labs
"Gaza Strip," a documentary by James Longley will be presented at 7 p.m. Friday, May 31, 2002 in the commons at UW Friday Harbor Labs on San Juan Island. Longley, who attended Friday Harbor High School as a freshman and sophomore, will answer questions after the showing. The film aired last month in Beirut. A reviewer from the The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Jan/Feb 2002 said, "Gaza Strip is an unflinchingly honest portrayal of a population under siege. As a perspective that is largely excluded from American attention, it deserves the widest possible audience." More information is available on www.littleredbutton.com Synopsis of the film"Gaza Strip" pushes the viewer headlong into the tumult of the Israeli-occupied Gaza, examining the lives and views of ordinary Palestinians. The documentary often sees the world through the eyes of young people. The central character is Mohammed Hejazi, a 13-year-old paperboy in Gaza City, one of the young "stone-throwers" who risk their lives throwing rocks at Israeli tanks across the barbwire fences. As the newspapers arrive announcing Ariel Sharon's victory in the Israeli elections, Mohammed offers up tirades against Arafat and Sharon alike. We also catch glimpses of his inner world: his sense of hopelessness, his sorrow at the IDF killing of his best friend, his conception of death. As the camera floats through the Gaza Strip, we encounter signs of the occupation everywhere: crowds of Palestinians are making their way along the beach on foot, donkey carts and tractor trailers when the Israeli soldiers close the roads. The Palestinians interviewed as they pass by reveal a common internal conflict, between anger at the Israeli occupation and the desire to live in peace. In the Khan Younis refugee camp, "Gaza Strip" documents an extremely controversial incident in February, which fell largely through the cracks of international scrutiny, when the Israeli Defense Forces used an unidentified, powerful gas during a firefight, hospitalizing over 200 Palestinians with severe recurrent convulsions. Inside a Red Cross tent near an Israeli checkpoint, a Palestinian mother and daughter debate the politics of their situation. As night falls on their camp, the mother describes how Israeli soldiers came with bulldozers, leveled their home and destroyed all of their belongings. The eye of the film is usually passive and watchful, sometimes almost invisible, even in the most intimate settings. When a Palestinian child is blown up in Rafah, we see the entire process of his internment, from morgue to mosque to grave, unblinkingly. The camera moves slowly over a Palestinian neighborhood being strafed by Israeli machine-gun fire, schoolchildren scattering. "Gaza Strip" culminates in a nighttime raid in April, when Israeli bulldozers stormed into the Khan Younis refugee camp under the cover of tank and helicopter fire, and destroyed the homes of 450 Palestinians - the first of many such armed incursions into "Area A" by the IDF. More information is available on www.littleredbutton.com |
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