If you’re feeling guilt pangs for missing World Refugee Day last month, or if you didn’t even realize there was such a day, don’t dismay — Louisville-based Kentucky Refugee Ministries (KRM) is honoring the day belatedly with a film series this month. The inaugural World Refugee Film Fest aims to share the experience of refugees through three films, each to be shown on one of three consecutive Sundays during July at the Elaine L. Chao Auditorium in the University of Louisville’s Ekstrom Library.
Carol Young, director of Kentucky Refugee Ministries, hopes the festival will connect with the local citizenry. “(We want) the community to gain a global perspective of what Louisville is becoming,” she says. “The films provide a point of reference about the refugees that are coming here and what they hope to accomplish.” For this reason, each of the films to be screened addresses the experience of major groups of refugees in Louisville — Cubans, Somalis and Sudanese.
Aside from their cinematic value, the films will serve as conversation starters, as Young plans to have a number of KRM’s current or former refugee clients participate in a question-and-answer period following each screening. “Refugees can tell their stories or compare their stories to what’s on the film,” she says.
Mark your calendar for these films:
July 9. Balseros. The film begins with 1994 interviews with several Cubans before they set sail on homemade rafts headed for the U.S. coast. The movie documents the balseros’, or rafters’, journey on the ocean and their confinement at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base before they were permitted into the U.S. Filmmakers reunite with the refugees seven years later and learn the remaining details of their survival stories.
July 16. The Letter: An American Town and “The Somali Invasion.” This 2004 documentary depicts the influx of 1,100 Somali refugees to the small town of Lewiston, Maine, and the reactions of townspeople — especially the mayor, Larry Raymond. Raymond writes an open letter to the new residents telling them they are a burden on the town’s resources and requesting that they tell other Somalis not to move there. The film follows the instigation of white supremacist and anti-immigrant rallies as well as counter-demonstrations supporting the refugees.
July 23. Darfur Diaries. Released earlier this year, this film provides a firsthand account of the humanitarian and political calamity in Sudan. The video-diary approach allows individuals and families living though displacement, war and immeasurable personal loss to speak for themselves. It highlights the culture and heritage of the people caught in the crisis — a story often lost in the media coverage of Darfur.
Each showing begins at 3 p.m. and will be followed by a Q&A panel with refugees in Louisville. Admission is free, but donations to KRM will be accepted. For more information contact John Whitaker at 479-9180, ext. 41, or visit www.kyrm.org.
