Fresh off a screening at the United Nations, Rooftop’s parters at DCTV’s Beyond Bullets are hosting a free show of Oxfam’s “Shooting Poverty” short films. During the summer of 2010, Rooftop screened the short film A Harlem Mother, a movie that has been incorporated into the Beyond Bullets program: “Americans Using Media to Stop Gun Violence.” It’s a fantastic program, and this is sure to be an thought-provoking event, linking seemingly disparate local and global issues of violence through one common item: the gun.
Thursday, October 28, 2010 – 7:30PM
at DCTV
(87 Lafayette Street, NYC)
FREE
As DCTV wrote, “Earlier this year, aid agency Oxfam launched the Shooting Poverty competition, created to expose the true cost and impact of the arms trade and armed violence on poor communities around the world. More than 60 young directors from 9 countries submitted their documentary film ideas. A panel of judges selected 3 projects to be given mentoring, financial and hands-on production support to make their film a reality.”
Watch the trailer, and read more about the films below.
Shooting Poverty Trailer from ShootingPoverty on Vimeo.
Bang for Your Buck (Burundi)
Bang for Your Buck is set in Burundi, a post conflict country that is the fourth poorest country in the world, where one thing remains affordable to all: the grenade. Not one week goes by without a grenade attack and the film follows journalist Teddy Mazina who reports these news from the TV Renaissance studio in the capitol Bujumbura.
Beyond the headlines, the film will take us to meet the actual victims of the attacks who share with Teddy how it is impossible to have a semblance of unity when it is so easy to solve problems by throwing grenades, rather than working through issues peacefully. We meet maimed survivors of attacks, which punctuates the broken and deficient relationships in the community. The film shows how the personal accounts are living breathing statistics resulting from the greater problem of illegal arms transfers which has handicapped a nation from moving forward in a mature, functional, healthy manner.
Grosso Calibre (Brazil)
Grosso Calibre is a documentary that uses forbidden funk music (funk proibido) to address the impact of arms on the violent environment in Complexo do Alemão, a huge group of favelas in the northern part (Zona Norte) of Rio de Janeiro. Mc Smith, a funk music star of the community, provides the voice and music that runs like a thread through the film. He shows how people live amid the fighting between the heavily armed traffickers and a police often accused of generalized human rights violation. The aim is to look closely at the social damages caused by the banalization of the massive presence of high-caliber weapons in these people’s lives. Due to this situation Grosso Calibre suggests the necessity of an international arms trade treaty to solve this problem.
April 6th (India)
April 6th is a film about Takhellambam Renu, a 28 year-old widow who lost her husband three years back when he was shot dead by the State security forces on April 6, 2007. Since that tragic incident, Renu has been trying to piece together her shattered world. She has established her own organization called Extra Judicial Execution Victims Families Manipur (EEVFAM) to fight against the armed violence.
Renu married her husband – Mung – on April 6, 2005. The marriage was opposed by her family as it was an interreligious & intercaste marriage. From that moment on, Renu never turned back to her parent. April 6 is Renu’s landmark, because it was the day she married, the day her husband was shot dead and the day she decided to start a new and courageous life fighting against the human suffering caused by armed violence.
Watch these powerful films FREE on Thursday, and get involved with the inspiring Beyond Bullets program here in NYC.