Drumming up awareness

Melnitz Movies is about to get louder, and it’s not because of THX. African drummers will be performing at Melnitz as part of a screening of “War/Dance,” the award-winning documentary about Uganda’s refugee population.

“War/Dance” screens tonight at the James Bridges Theater in Melnitz Hall. The screening is sponsored by Meaningful Media, a nonprofit organization that is working with Melnitz Movies to organize quarterly showings of movies intending to promote social consciousness. After the screening, viewers will have an opportunity to ask questions and sample East African cuisine.

Winner of the Documentary Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival, “War/Dance” follows the lives of three Northern Ugandan children living in an Internally Displaced Peoples camp in Patongo.

As the children cope with the harsh circumstances around them, they and their schoolmates prepare to perform in an upcoming national music and dance competition. The film explores the effects of Uganda’s civil war and delves into issues such as child abduction, the use of child soldiers and the loss of homes and loved ones in a nation torn by conflict.

This film is the first feature documentary production from married couple Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine. The pair met while working as filmmakers for National Geographic, but the concept for “War/Dance” came from another source.

“It started with a phone call from a man named Albie Hecht and his wife Susan MacLaury,” Sean Fine explained. “They called us because they (had) just started a nonprofit group called Shine Global. The nonprofit’s mission was to end the exploitation and abuse of children through documentary film.

“They called us and said, “˜Hey, we’re thinking about doing a documentary on Northern Uganda. Would you be interested in trying to figure out how to do a documentary on the child soldier crisis going on there?'” Fine said. “(We) couldn’t believe: 1) that we didn’t know about this, and 2) that at that time, there wasn’t more out there about this situation. … So we immediately said, “˜We have to make a film about this.'”

Fine and his wife took a scout trip into Uganda that quickly became filming for the documentary.

The two filmmakers lived in the Patongo camp in Northern Uganda for 12 weeks, filming, having rocket-propelled grenades shoved in their faces and also playing Uno with the kids and government soldiers.

“We stuck out like a sore thumb,” Fine said. “Yet we spent lots of time with them. We spent time eating before we filmed, we spent time at the school watching them without the camera, we spent time sitting down eating with families and getting to know them.”

The film focuses on three children in particular, using interviews with them to illuminate the horrors of war through the alarmingly direct words of the children.

“They speak directly. I also think these kids are old souls. … They’re very different; they’ve had a different life. They also understand that their stories ““ it matters that someone hears what they have to say, so they’re very poignant in their answers,” Andrea Nix Fine said.

Meaningful Media is sponsoring the screening at Melnitz in the spirit of making the voices of the Ugandan children heard. The organization is the brainchild of Emily Meyers, a film professor in the producers program at UCLA. Meaningful Media is a collective of film and business students and faculty committed to promoting social consciousness through media.

“There needs to be one place for people to go for resources (for socially conscious media), as well as ““ and this is the critical part of things ““ it needs to span across platforms, because the nature of media now is it’s merging together,” Meyers said.

In addition to promoting socially conscious films, Meaningful Media also provides funding. “We offer a fiscal sponsorship program where we allow film projects that have a charitable orientation to accept tax-deductible charitable contributions through our organization,” Meyers said.

“We vet them: the nature of the project, how the funds will be used, that they’re staying on track. And that is a benefit for everyone involved: the people that want to donate, the filmmakers and the nonprofit.”

Although the production of “War/Dance” was not funded by Meaningful Media, the organization has several other sponsored projects in production, including “No Impact Man,” an upcoming documentary about a New York couple committed to living without electricity for a year.

Meaningful Media has not yet decided what film Melnitz will screen next; in the meantime, the organization will continue to focus on raising awareness through socially responsible media.

“We’re putting all of our modest resources into building education curriculums that we can take to schools of communication, to film schools, and to business schools, to raise awareness about how people from all disciplines can use media and work together to create positive change during their education and then beyond in their career,” Meyers said.

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