Archive for the 'In The Press' Category
Film Tells the Story of Conflict and Deaths in Darfur
By Gary White | The Ledger
Most Americans who pay even cursory attention to the news have probably heard of Darfur. But the name remains largely an abstraction, its people collective victims rather than individuals. Jen Marlowe has been striving for three years to introduce the people of Darfur to the world, and her efforts continue tonight in Lakeland with a screening of the documentary “Darfur Diaries: Message From Home” at Harrison Arts Center.
From Boys to Men: Jen Marlowe interviewed on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum podcast
In May 2007 filmmaker Jen Marlowe and journalist David Morse accompanied several southern Sudanese ‘lost boys’ back to their homes. The ‘lost boys’ were children who were forced to flee attacks on their villages in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Jen Marlowe (co-director of “Darfur Diaries”) speaks with Jerry Fowler about the current political landscape of southern Sudan and the connections to the crisis in Darfur. Samuel Mayoul Garang, one of the ‘lost boys,’ highlights his experience as a refugee living in the United States, his reunion with his family after 20 years of separation, and his future plans to provide a water system in his village in southern Sudan.
Listen to the program or download it here.
Local kids’ words help those a world away
By Matt Van Tassel
Loudoun Times-Mirror
![Angelo Manger Maker, a Sudanese orphan, speaks at Ashburn Library June 14 about his experiences in Sudan. [Times-Mirror Staff Photo/AJ Maclean]](http://darfurdiaries.org/multimedia/loudountimesmirror.jpg "Angelo Manger Maker, a Sudanese orphan, speaks at Ashburn Library June 14 about his experiences in Sudan. [Times-Mirror Staff Photo/AJ Maclean]")
Angelo Manger Maker, a Sudanese
orphan, speaks at Ashburn Library
June 14 about his experiences in
Sudan. [Times-Mirror Staff Photo/
AJ Maclean]
About 40 10-year-olds lined up behind a podium to read their poems about the genocide in Darfur at Ashburn Library June 14. As their words began to flow, the line ratcheted forward in front of a projector, and the profile of each student’s face was cast upon a screen, upon which read, “A voice of hope for Sudan’s future.”
The silhouettes of the boys and girls were in stark contrast to the savage topic of genocide. The innocent voices that projected words such as “hope,” “fear,” “death” and “courage,” reaffirmed the seemingly contradictory image.
Filmmaker brings Darfur Diaries to Greensboro
by Jeanna Covington, Carolina Peacemaker
Independent filmmaker Jen Marlowe visited the campus of UNC-Greensboro, Tuesday night, to talk to students about her experiences in the war torn Darfur region of Sudan. Marlowe was here as part of a statewide tour coordinated through the STAND (Students Taking Action Now: Darfur) national leadership.
Marlowe and two other independent filmmakers—Aisha Bain and Adam Shapiro—snuck across the border between Chad and Sudan in mid October 2004. At the time, the conflict in Darfur had been ensuing for more a year.
According to SaveDarfur.org, since 2003 there has been an ongoing conflict between the Sudanese government-backed militia known as the Janjaweed, and the two rebel groups of Darfur; Sudanese Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).
Darfur Diaries Interview with Gayle Smith
As a follow up to the Center for American Progress’ screening of Darfur Diaries, Anne Shoup and Paige Fitzgerald interviewed Gayle Smith, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, who had introduced the Center’s screening of the film. Full audio is available here. Gayle Smith served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from 1998-2001. She has spent much of her career in international affairs in the field and in 1999 won the National Security Council’s Samuel Nelson Drew Award for Distinguished Contribution in Pursuit of Global Peace for her role in the successful negotiation of a peace agreement between Eritrea and Ethiopia.
Reel Progress: Please describe the situation in Darfur and whether you think it deserves to be called a “genocide.”
‘Darfur Diaries’ Shows Plight of Sudanese Victims of Government-Backed Violence
By Carolyn Weaver
Voice of America News
New York City
Activists Aisha Bain, Adam Shapiro,
and Jen Marlowe documented the
crisis in Sudan.
In the spring of 2004, three young activists embarked on a mission to a part of the world they’d scarcely heard of before: Darfur, a region in western Sudan. They wanted to make a film from the perspective of Darfurians who’d fled attacks by Sudanese government- supported militias. The resulting film, Darfur Diaries, and a book of the same title, are meant to draw more international attention to the crisis in Sudan, which the United Nations says has displaced nearly two million people, and left 200,000 dead.
“Those who died, died over there,” an old woman matter-of-factly tells the camera in Darfur Diaries. “Some of our people were killed there. Some ran away. We took our kids by the hand to come here. We ran away. We carried nothing with us. We left everything there,” she says, “our cows, our animals. We ran by ourselves.”
Darfur Diaries on Democracy Now!
On Friday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights – Louise Arbour – warned that unless the Sudanese Government disarmed militias operating in West Darfur, there would be more attacks like those that occurred last month. Those attacks left over 50 people dead – including 27 children under the age of 12. Thousands more were displaced.
The United Nations said in a report last week that there were indications that Sudan’s military participated in the attacks. It said witnesses identified the 300 to 500 attackers as Arabs riding on horseback, wearing green camouflage military uniforms and armed with AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.
More than 200,000 people have been killed – and 2.5 million displaced – in fighting between rebels and government-backed militias since early 2003. A 7,000-strong African Union contingent is conducting a peacekeeping mission in the region with logistic support from NATO. The U.N. Security Council voted in August to send over 20,000 peacekeepers to Darfur to replace the African Union force — but Sudan has rejected the decision.
Adam Shapiro on Uprising Radio
In October 2004, a team of three independent filmmakers – Aisha Bain, Jen Marlowe and Adam Shapiro – went to Darfur, Sudan and eastern Chad. Darfur is the focus of an on-going genocide that the world has recognized but failed to do anything about. The film makers monitored the worsening political and humanitarian crisis for months and recognized that the mainstream media was not doing a very good job of covering the crisis. So they made a film to provide a platform for the people of Darfur to express themselves – it’s called Darfur Diaries.
Stream audio by clicking here (.m3u file).
Horror of Horrors
‘Darfur Diaries’ tackles the dirtiest deed of all
By Brett Ascarelli, bohemian.com
In February 2005, two Human Rights Watch researchers traveled to the troubled region of Darfur, Sudan, to gather information about the ongoing genocide. To keep the children occupied while interviewing their parents, the researchers gave the kids paper and crayons. But instead of flowers and smiley faces, the children drew violent scenes of their villages under the attack of Janjaweed gunfire and government air strikes–scenes to which they had become accustomed.
To give children like them and other persecuted Darfurians a voice, filmmakers Aisha Bain, Jen Marlowe and Adam Shapiro (About Baghdad) have recently finished Darfur Diaries: Message from Home, an independent documentary about the genocide in Darfur. They allege that the Sudanese government is sponsoring the killing under a smokescreen of ethnic tensions between Africans and Arabs. Since the violence plateaued in February 2003, the conflict has caused between 200,000 and 400,000 deaths and has displaced 2 million people from their homes.
“Darfur Diaries” Shares Stories of Victims of Genocide
by Lily March, Vermont Cynic
Thursday night, students packed into Williams 301 to view S.T.A.N.D’s (Students Taking Action Now: Darfur) presentation of “Darfur Diaries: Message from Home.”
The viewing began with one of the three filmmakers, Jen Marlowe, making a presentation about the background and motivation of the piece. Marlowe spoke of the importance of this film as activism.
Making the film was difficult due to the fact that they were filming in Sudan, a country that was then, as it is now, war stricken. But, Marlowe noted, the film “had to be done.”
The mission was to cover a genocide that no one knew was happening.
Marlowe expressed frustration with how the media has presented the genocide that is taking place in Darfur. The media “simplifies” the story, which is often called “ethnic conflict.”
In reality, the Sudanese government is killing its own people, using an ethnic group, the “Arabs” as their weapon.
