As part of the WOW Wales One World Film Festival the Creating Safer Space research network will be showing films from our research projects around the world. The films will be shown at Aberystwyth Arts Centre in Wales on the dates specified below, and will also be shown online from 22–31 March (booking opening soon).
La Fiesta
10.00 am on Wednesday 20 March, Aberystwyth Arts Centre
La Fiesta is a piece inspired by the findings of the research project Art That Protects and performed by Harlequin and the Jugglers. Witnessed by 600 spectators at the renowned Pablo Tobón Uribe Theatre of Medellín on 17 May 2023, this magical piece transported the audience into a realm of wonder. Among them were members of artistic-cultural organizations from vulnerable urban areas, underscoring the transformative power of art in communities affected by urban violence.
Water Conflicts
4.00 pm on Friday 22 March, Aberystwyth Arts Centre
We will show short films that explore rivers and the filmmakers’ relationships with them, the social / environmental problems that surround them, and our responses to this. The event will include screening of the films and an informal discussion between filmmakers, artists, and activists.
Water Conflicts
These three films emerged from a research project that explored water conflicts around the rivers La Paloma (Argelia), Santo Domingo (San Francisco) and Dormilón (San Luis) in the Oriente region of the department of Antioquia, Colombia. Peasant communities and organizations in the region have a history of social mobilization against extractivist projects such as hydroelectric power plants, mining, and construction works in protected areas. These projects, often backed by armed actors, have changed the landscape and agricultural lifestyle of many municipalities. Community self-protection in these contexts includes cultivating social practices and relationships aimed at caring for water and life. These films were produced as part of the research project Water conflicts, violations and forms of self-protection.
Cutting the Crap
This session will also include a showing of Cutting the Crap, which was produced independently of the Creating Safer Space network. Details TBC.
nodens
This session will also include a showing of nodens, which was produced independently of the Creating Safer Space network by aim king, PhD student at Aberystwyth University’s Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies. nodens (2023) follows Afon Hafren from source to mouth, exploring what is both strange and familiar through walking with river ecologies. It expresses the feeling of knowing and unknowing, continuously, and simultaneously, with the ever-changing iterations of water.
Exhibition
Participants are welcome to join a Special Event of the Creating Safer Space Exhibition that will take place directly afterwards.
Stories of Unarmed Civilian Protection
2.30 pm on Sunday 24 March, Aberystwyth Arts Centre
This series of films is about civilians harnessing the power of nonviolence to create safer spaces for a dignified life. Drawing from real-life experiences in Colombia, Nigeria, and Palestine, these films are born from projects commissioned by the Creating Safer Space research network. Developed collaboratively by academics, communities, and accompaniers, they delve into the practice of unarmed civilian protection, showcasing historical resistance and innovative approaches to imagining, implementing, and sustaining peace. We are excited to also be hearing from two of the principal investigators who initiated the creation of the films:
Dr Marwan Darweish is the Principal Investigator of the project Safety and dignity: Enhancing unarmed civilian protection amongst Palestinian communities in the South Hebron Hills (Masafer Yatta).
Dr Piergiuseppe Parisi is the Principal Investigator of the project ‘Ritualising’ protection in conflict: A collaborative visual ethnography of the cultural and spiritual protection practices of the Nasa people in Colombia
Survive among violence. Stories of the Nasa people in Colombia
The Nasa ancestral people of Colombia have lived amidst the Colombian armed conflict for decades. Armed groups, illicit economies, and economic conglomerates target them, jeopardising their survival, and endangering their ways of life. Through Ana Deida, a Nasa woman leader from Resguardo de Huellas Caloto, the Ritualising Protection project team journeys to understand the risks faced by the community and their historical resistance processes. This film was produced as part of the research project ‘Ritualising’ protection in conflict.
Minga
This film explores the history and meaning of a community-based socio-cultural and political practice known as Minga, an indigenous form of protest and resistance. The film looks at Minga in the context of armed conflict through the experiences of resistance of the Nasa indigenous communities in the department of Cauca, Colombia. It was created by a group of local researchers from the Indigenous Community of Caldono, Resguardo San Lorenzo, Ancestral land Sath Tama Kiwe in 2023. This film was produced as part of the research project Community strategies for Unarmed Civilian Protection in South-West Colombia.
Civil protection to stay on our land: Palestine
Produced by local film makers, this film documents the experience of Palestinian farmers and shepherds with civil protection in the South Hebron Hills (Masafer Yatta). It explores the efficacy of unarmed civilian protection and how to strengthen self-protection against the threats of expulsion and dispossession by Israel and the settlers. This film was produced as part of the research project Safety and dignity: Enhancing unarmed civilian protection amongst Palestinian communities in the South Hebron Hills (Masafer Yatta).
Caring for community life
In Caring for Community Life, the Senú indigenous people of the Almendros 2 reservation in El Bagre, one of the municipalities hardest hit by armed violence in Colombia, tell how they have been organizing to resist armed groups and remain in their ancestral territories. This film was produced as part of the research project The Social Process of Guarantees of Antioquia, Colombia, an experience of unarmed civil protection with indigenous and peasant communities of Bajo Cauca.
Inter-regional learning on UCP in Nigeria (Online Only)
This video captures insights from an intergenerational and collective impact model adopted by the Jos Stakeholder’s Centre for Peace in Jos, Nigeria, to reduce violence in the context of two communities, Angwan Damisa and Balakaze, that have witnessed several episodes of communal conflict. The insights could help other Nigerian communities adapt the model to reduce or prevent violence in their specific context, such as in Maiduguri where ex-Boko Haram fighters and internally displaced persons (IDPs) are returning and changing the composition of the communities. This film was produced as part of the research project Unarmed civilian protection through collective impact.
For more information and to book, please see the WOW Film Festival website. Please contact creating-safer-space@aber.ac.uk with any questions.