Young Filmmakers Focus on Reconciliation

The Angelus Student Film Festival in Prague
by Mary V. Cass

There couldn’t be a better place in Central Europe to hold a minifilm festival than Prague, city long involved in filmmaking. In the early days of movies, major international stars performed in this city immersed in its mystical, Gothic beauty. So it was no surprise that Father Willy Raymond, founder of Angelus Student Film Festival and director of Family Theater Productions, chose Prague as the site for screening the award-winning short films of 2008.

Angelus and NetOne, the Focolare center for the media, partnered with Windrider Forum, founded by John and Ed Priddy to inspire conversation on profound human issues between filmmakers and film lovers, and with the National Academy of Film and Television (FAMU), one of Europe’s oldest and finest film academies. They jointly organized seminars, master classes and screenings around the timely topic, “Cinema: Going Beyond the Barriers,” echoing the United Nations theme for 2009 — reconciliation.

On March 7, the historical Svetozor Theater was host to the opening event, a first-time screening in the Czech Republic of the international award-winning documentary To Die in Jerusalem. In the movie, after two 17-year-old girls — one an Israeli, the other a Palestinian suicide bomber — die in a Jerusalem market, their mothers confront each other, revealing a microcosm of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the complexity of reconciliation.

The Israeli-born director, Hilla Medalia, and producer John Priddy discussed the film and shared their personal commitment to build peace and foster reconciliation. “I think that the power in media, and in film in particular, is tremendous,” Medalia commented. “It reaches so many people and opens so many windows onto cultures and issues that would otherwise remain foreign to us. It also allows us to present both sides of a conflict in a film which has been a catalyst for a bigger, more profound discussion on hope and dialogue.”

NetOne’s professionals and students in the field of communications and cinema hosted a seminar at the Focolare conference center outside of the city for the filmmakers and producers participating in the Prague event. In addition to screening three powerful films concerning the intricate challenges of reconciliation, a panel of filmmakers from Italy, Spain, Belgium and the U.S. explored the theme by relating how they personally apply it in exercising their craft. NetOne which focuses on the great potential that the media have for dialogue had already collaborated with Angelus last year for a similar project in Rome.

“One year ago a TV producer asked me what was an important theme to illustrate in today’s world,” shared John Priddy. “I replied, ‘Reconciliation.’ He responded: ‘That’s a weak theme for weak people …’ I was shocked to hear that reconciliation could be considered a marginal topic, an expression of a weak culture. In my production company we have found that it is very important to speak openly about reconciliation, as we have done in ‘To Die in Jerusalem’. To confront this topic through film in today’s society means [to some] that you’re a loser. Instead, it’s a clear sign of courage and fortitude.”

The seminar became a day of “enlightening and fruitful dialogue,” just as Focolare’s president, Maria Voce, had hoped for in her message to participants. “This sort of dialogue influences me in the sort of films that I will make in the future,” shared Anna McGrath, a filmmaker from Australia, “and reminds me why I have chosen such a crazy, unpredictable, but overall enormously rewarding career of filmmaking.”

One of the highlights of the Prague event was a day at FAMU which has played an essential role in Czech cultural history for the last sixty years fostering the New Wave of the 1960s and serving as headquarters for the student-led Velvet Revolution. FAMU provided a vibrant environment for master classes for young directors and students with renowned directors Krzysztof Zanussi from Poland and Petr Zelenka from the Czech Republic.

A special guest of the American delegation, producer Ralph Winter of Star Trek and X-Men fame, offered insights to film students from Eastern and Central Europe. “Movies ask great questions,” he said. “I look for stories which offer a redemptive aspect that point to a deeper meaning, that can stimulate great discussion. This is what the art of filmmaking is all about. Today American studios are mainly run by large corporations which stress that the efficiency of making the movies dictates the process. There are some of us in the industry, however, that feel the process of making a film is as important as the film itself, in other words, how we treat one another as we develop the truth of the story.

“While working on one of my first blockbusters,” he recalled, “I did not agree with the script that said the protagonist would kill a policeman, and asked some of the staff, ‘Is this the message you really want to convey?’ At first the director was reluctant to change the script, but in hearing another point of view he was motivated to change the scene and resolve the conflict in another way. It was a confirmation for me that building positive relationships on the set (between director, producer and writer) is just as important as the end result.”

Prague’s municipal library, which has fostered cultural activities since its foundation in 1891, provided a wonderful setting for “Angelus night in Prague,” an evening with Angelus films and filmmakers before an audience of 400. “You will be taken on a different journey by each film, one of light, inspiration, challenge and hope,” Monika Moreno, director of the Festival, announced in a TV interview. It was in fact a journey, through images and stories, into themes of universal meaning.

Mary Cass is co-director for Cinema/TV at NetOne, the Focolare communications center (net-one.org).

18 Living City, the magazine of the Focolare Movement www.livingcitymagazine.com, August/September 2009