Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Video full documentary film "We Were Children" directed by Tim Wolochatiuk


Watch "We Were Children" Trailer
Watch full film rent or buy "We Were Children"

"Truth contributes to healing. The endgame is peace within one's Self, and within society... How can we heal as a people if we are still blind to the facts."
- Dr Marie Wilson of Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC)

"We Were Children" gives voice to a national tragedy and demonstrates the incredible resilience of the human spirit. Truth contributes to healing - for over 130 years till 1996, more than 100,000 of Canada's First Nations children were legally required to attend government-funded schools run by various Christian faiths. There were 80 of these 'residential schools' across the country. Most children were sent faraway separated from their families and traditional land. These children endured brutality, physical hardship, mental degradation, and the complete erasure of their culture.

The schools were part of a wider program of assimilation designed to integrate the native population into 'Canadian society.'

Schools were established with the express purpose 'To kill the Indian in the child.'

Told through their own voices, 'We Were Children' is the shocking true story of two such children: Glen Anaquod and Lyna Hart. In this feature film, the profound impact of the residential school system is conveyed through the eyes of two children who were forced to face hardships beyond their years. As young children, Lyna and Glen were taken from their homes and placed in church-run boarding schools, where they suffered years of physical, sexual and emotional abuse, the effects of which persist in their adult lives.

Interview with filmmakers



"We were Children"
Directed by Tim Wolochatiuk
Written by Jason Sherman
We Were Children is produced by:
Kyle Irving for Eagle Vision Inc. 
and 
David Christensen for National Film Board of Canada (NFB). 
Produced by Laszlo Barna
Executive producer and producer David Christensen 
Executive producer and producer Kyle Irving 
Associate producer Jessica Lo 
Associate producer Loren Mawhinney 
Executive producer Lisa Meeches
Interview with filmmakers


Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Video Trailer Full Film: "SHADOWS OF LIBERTY" by Jean-Philippe Tremblay ~ Nominated for Most Valuable Documentary Film of the Year at the Cinema For Peace Awards

Video of the film's Trailer

Film description by Jean-Philippe Tremblay
"Shadows Of Liberty is dedicated to journalists, heroes of our time, who give their lives and freedoms for our information, the pillar of our society. Presenting the voices that are not heard or given a platform is what Shadows of Liberty is about. This film attempts to inspire change and accountability by championing the idea of an independent media where truth and integrity are the norm, and not the exception. In the film, we tell the stories of award winning journalists who are confronted by government and corporations because they are offending these power by revealing their corrupt practices. These journalists are trying to do their job, to hold power accountable while the government and corporate powers retaliate by steamrolling over these journalists and try to take them out of the picture all together. "

Click here to watch conversation between WikiLeaks' editor-in-chief Julian Assange, CorpWatch's executive director Pratap Chatterjee, filmmaker Jean-Philippe Tremblay, and the Bertha Foundation's director of legal advocacy Jen Robinson, discuss the disintegrating freedoms within the world press and media. Discussion followed the private U.K. premiere screening.

Nominated MOST VALUABLE DOCUMENTARY FILM OF THE YEAR by CINEMA FOR PEACE AWARDS

Click here to read the above full interview by Disarray Mag

Click here to watch Democracy Now's Interview with Jean-Phillippe Tremblay 

Shadows of Liberty Youtube Channel

Friday, April 19, 2013

Video Trailer: Revolutionary Optimist + Amlan Ganguly and Prayasam + "MAP YOUR WORLD" - TEDxChange Video

Video: "Revolutionary Optimist"

"Map Your World - TEDxChange Video" 

Amlan Ganguly  and Prayasam

About the filmmakers: Nicole Newnham is a documentary filmmaker and writer, currently co-producing The Revolutionary Optimists with Maren Grainger-Monsen as a filmmaker-in-residence at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics Program in Bioethics and Film.

About the Film: Children are saving lives in the slums of Kolkata. Amlan Ganguly doesn't rescue slum children; he empowers them to become change agents, battling poverty and transforming their neighborhoods with dramatic results.

Filmed over the course of several years, The Revolutionary Optimists follows Amlan and three of the children he works with on an intimate journey through adolescence, as they fight for the better future he encourages them to imagine is deservedly theirs. Kajal, a twelve-year-old girl, is one of 9 million Indian children who live and work inside a brick field.

When Amlan creates the first school inside the brick field, Kajal has a chance to have an education, and find her voice. But when her mother falls ill, she and Amlan must balance her desire to learn and make change with her need to work in order to survive.

 Priyanka is the sixteen-year-old leader of a dance troupe founded by Amlan to keep girls in school and dissuade them from early marriage. A serious dancer, she is also paid a tiny stipend by Amlan to teach dance to other children in her neighborhood. Now her parents are pressuring her to marry against her wishes, and she sees only one way out – to marry her young boyfriend. But if she elopes, she will be controlled by her in-laws, and risks losing her position in the dance group, her employment, and her chance at an education.


Salim is an eleven-year-old boy who is fighting to make change in one of Kolkata’s worst slums, but his family faces many hardships—including having to leave their home at 4:30 every morning to steal water from a neighboring slum, as there is no water in their colony.

By mapping their un-mapped community and collecting data about the problems that they face, Salim and his fellow child activists hope to convince the government to give them a water tap. Can these child activists bring about desperately needed change in their own community?


Hot-headed, theatrical, but astonishingly dedicated and sincere, Amlan left a successful law career to try to make meaningful change where the law and other NGO's had failed. A dancer, choreographer, and costume designer, he brings creative expression to subjects that can otherwise be difficult for film audiences to approach.

The Revolutionary Optimists will leverage this artistry, to reveal to the audience both the desperate, flawed world he is trying to change, and the vibrant, colorful world that his optimism generates.  As the centerpiece of a multi-platform advocacy campaign, The Revolutionary Optimists will leverage Ganguly’s story to bring attention to the urgent need to solve the treatable health problems in the developing world, and how education and child empowerment are a crucial key to reaching that goal.

Through our online tool, Map Your World, we hope to give these youth a powerful technological tool to advance their dreams of change for the neighborhood and inspire other kids around the world to make their worlds a better place.



A qualified lawyer, Amlan began his career as an apprentice to the most reputed criminal lawyer in Calcutta. He was soon disillusioned with a legal system that provided little justice to the poor unable to pay fees and withstand the long drawn legal process. In 1996, Amlan decided to make a complete switch and joined Lutheran World Service India.

In 1999, Amlan registered Prayasam with a few friends with the intention of enabling children to participate in the decisions and factors that affect their lives. Under Amlan’s leadership, Prayasam has emerged as a regional expert and trailblazer in child rights programming and workshops. Amlan is best known for his use of popular media to engage and educate children in an interactive, problem-posing approach. A self-taught choreographer and fashion designer, Amlan incorporates both contemporary and traditional art forms into Prayasam’s alternative education models, which range from song, dance and comics to puppetry and storytelling.

The Board of Directors of Prayasam is composed mostly of children


Amlan has made mentorship a hallmark at Prayasam, which has become a platform for introducing young people of diverse backgrounds to the social sector. Amlan is best known for his use of popular media to engage and educate children in an interactive, problem-posing approach. Amlan’s ideas about education have been recognized worldwide as both timely and important.

In 2006, he became an Ashoka Fellow, part of an association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs.

In July 2007, Amlan was invited by the Rockefeller Foundation to attend the Global Urban Summit on Innovations for an Urban World in Bellagio, Italy.

In 2011 Amlan was awarded the Ford Fellowship by the Ford Motor Company Fund and the Picker Center for Executive Education at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Prayasam continues to introduce its peer education and child empowerment concepts to impoverished sectors of society. Notably, Prayasam is working with the West Bengal government to uplift brick kiln migrant worker communities – the first such collaboration between government and NGO in India – through its signature “Multiple Activity Centres.”

In addition to his work in West Bengal, Amlan facilitates leadership, soft skills and gender trainings across India, most recently with World Vision India in all over West Bengal and under the aegis of the Xavier Institute of Social Sciences in Bangalore, India.


Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Video Photography and TED Talk "Viewing Humanity" by Lisa Kristine

Watch Ted Talk "Lisa Kristine: Photos That Bear Witness to Modern Slavery"

Since I first met her, I have admired Lisa Kristine. She is a San Francisco based photographer specializing in indigenous peoples worldwide. Through her work, Lisa wishes to encourage a dialogue about the beauty, diversity and hardship of our inter-locking world. The more meaning born in the images, the deeper that dialogue may be. Lisa Kristine's photography is stunningly beautiful portraits of truth in Soul.



- VIDEO (vimeo) 2013 honoured with a Lucie Humanitarian Award at Carnegie Hall

- VIDEO (YouTube) 2013 LA TEDx Lisa Kristine Talk

Video: Lisa Kristine TED Talk Website 
"For the past two years, photographer Lisa Kristine has traveled the world, documenting the unbearably harsh realities of modern-day slavery. She shares hauntingly beautiful images — miners in the Congo, brick layers in Nepal — illuminating the plight of the 27 million souls enslaved worldwide."

Video: Lisa Kristine's website and Vision Mission
- Video Trailers for her Books
- Image Library
the Humanity Series ~
the Slavery Series ~
Mission, Values and Vision

Lisa Kristine aims to enhance her viewer’s awareness and engage them in a visual journey that is also a questioning of our existence. She wants to welcome them into the exploration of our mysterious existence with a spirit of importance, astonishment and hope.

For more than twenty-five years, Lisa Kristine has explored the globe, looking for the peoples, cultures and places that time forgot, creating indelible and unforgettable images. She brings the distant and the ancient and the rare into clearer focus.

Best known for her evocative and saturated use of color, her fine art prints are among the most sought after and collected in her field. Lisa’s work has been auctioned by Christie’s New York for the United Nations with Kofi Annan; she works with foundations , educational venues and museums.



Click here to go to the website of Free The Slaves