The Creating Safer Space network has shown a series of films as part of the WOW Wales One World Film Festival in March 2024.
The WOW Film Festival is the only UK festival dedicated principally to films from Africa, Asia & Latin America, and this is its 23rd year of bringing international films to cinemas across Wales.
In March 2024 the WOW Film Festival included 9 short films that have been produced as part of Creating Safer Space research projects in Colombia, Nigeria and Palestine. The films were shown in Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Wales, and online via the WOW Film Festival website.
FILMS
La Fiesta is a theatre production performed by Harlequin and the Jugglers. It underscores the transformative power of art in communities affected by urban violence.
Let the rivers be for life! explores water conflicts around the rivers La Paloma (Argelia), Santo Domingo (San Francisco) and Dormilón (San Luis) in Colombia.
Survive among violence. Stories of the Nasa people in Colombia follows Ana Deida, a Nasa woman leader from Resguardo de Huellas Caloto, to understand the risks faced by the Nasa community and their historical resistance processes.
Minga explores the history and meaning of a community-based socio-cultural and political practice known as Minga, an indigenous form of protest and resistance.
Civil protection to stay on our land documents the experience of Palestinian farmers and shepherds with civil protection in the South Hebron Hills.
Caring for community life tells the story of how the Senú indigenous people in Colombia have been organizing to resist armed groups and to remain in their ancestral territories.
Inter-regional learning on UCP in Nigeria captures insights from an intergenerational and collective impact model adopted by the Jos Stakeholder’s Centre for Peace to reduce violence in the context of communal conflict.
Some of these films are already available on our website (see links above), and the others will be soon.
DISCUSSION
The WOW Film Festival also hosted two panel discussions to explore the meaning of the films, and the recordings are available online:
Water Conflicts, with Berit Bliesemann de Guevara (PI of the Creating Safer Space network), aim king (director of the film nodens), Sarah Reisz (activist and environmental campaigner), David Gillam (founder and artistic director of the WOW Film Festival), and Marwan Darweish (PI of the project that created the film Civil protection to stay on our land).
Stories of Unarmed Civilian Protection with Dr Marwan Darweish (PI of the project that created the film Civil protection to stay on our land), Dr Piergiuseppe Parisi (PI of the project that created the film Survive among violence), Prof. Berit Bliesemann de Guevara (PI of the Creating Safer Space network) and Mr David Gillam (founder and artistic director of the WOW Film Festival).
