Courage and hope arrive this weekend in the visage of the late Sergio Vierra de Mello, the charismatic UN humanitarian who spearheaded miraculous recoveries in places like post-Khmer Rogue Cambodia and civil-war-stricken Mozambique. The same qualities also appear in the eyes of young Kenyan children as they explain how to comfort fellow kids orphaned by AIDS. And they’re vividly visible in the determination of a Kyrgyz woman who refuses to bow to her countryman’s tradition of kidnapping his bride-to-be.

Best of all, says Jasmina Bojic, Stanford Professor and film critic, and founder of the United Nations Association Film Festival, these affecting accounts of courage and hope are transferable. Bojic hopes that audiences who attend the UNAFF’s free traveling film festival at the Monterey Institute of International Studies this Friday through Sunday will come away inspired.

“Every [viewer] can translate the courage of these people into a wish to find more facts,” she says, “to continue their process of learning. You have to learn before you can act.

“Hope is in the knowledge and the education.”

Individually, each of the 13 films handpicked by the Monterey chapter (from 32 films that the Palo Alto-based UNAFF will show this year) offers a free, in-depth education on issues like human rights and civil war often overlooked by mainstream media.

En Route to Baghdad illuminates all that is right about the UN—qualities exemplified by de Mello. It also lays out problems that threaten the UN’s legacy, and lead to de Mello’s tragic death in Iraq: unclear mandates and suspect security. Speak Luvo Speak Jane shows the AIDS epidemic from a uniquely touching perspective: a camera held by an 8 year old. Bride Kidnapping in Kygyzstan explores love and marriage hatched by abduction.

“They each reflect diverse themes, cultures and moods,” says Larry Levine, president of the UNA’s Monterey Bay chapter. “They’re five minutes to 93 minutes, and form a very eclectic and interesting international film festival.”

As a whole, the films offer striking illustration of this year’s theme, a saying Bojic says she borrowed from a speech UN Secretary General Kofi Annan gave in 2001 as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize: “a statement of hope and courage.”

They also offer us the world—at turns inspiring, at turns troubling, always real. Bojic wouldn’t have it any other way.

“This is life—this is real life,” she says. “Do you have everything in your life perfect? You have to see these things, particularly the young people and the children. Without this knowledge, life is empty and artificial.”

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Here, the whens and whats of a world of moving documentaries as the traveling edition of the eighth UNAFF returns to the site of its first stop ever, Monterey:

friday 11|11 7pm

GOD SLEEPS IN RWANDA | (29 minutes) | By Kimberlee Acquaro and Stacy Sherman in Rwanda and the US

Sweeping genocide in 1994 left a crippled society in its wake—and one that’s nearly 70 percent female. This film follows five women as they grapple with lingering grief and loss and the challenge of rebuilding their lives. Theirs is a courageous, demanding effort that will forever redefine women’s roles in Rwanda.

BRIDE KIDNAPPING IN KYRGYZSTAN | (51 minutes) | By Petr Lom in Krgyzstan, the UK and the US

Kyrgyz men snatch their chosen woman from the street, throw her in a rented car with the help of friends, and hold her while wedding negotiations with her family begin. Despite a 1994 law that forbids it, one in three rural Kygz women are still forced into marriage by way of this extreme social custom. This film talks to the families affected, looks at its deep cultural roots and analyzes how it will change in an ever more modern society.

TOO BRIEF A CHILD: VOICES OF MARRIED ADOLESCENTS | (14 minutes) | By Robin Cobyln, Nancy Camp and Andrea Kalin in India, Phillipines and the US

Eighty-two million girls around the globe are married before they leave adolescence. This is their tale—one of forced marriage, motherhood and servitude, of lost innocence, youth and childhood, of the root causes and the cycle of poverty perpetuated as a result.

OIL ON ICE | (57 minutes) | By Dale Djerassi and Bo Boudart in the US

Increasingly urgent issues like fuel efficiency standards, alternative energy sources, conservation and consumption are explored in an exhaustive and vivid manner in the stunning context of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

saturday 11|12 7pm

SPEAK LUVO SPEAK JANE | (14 min) | By Peter Jordan and the Bernard van Leer Foundation in Kenya, South Africa and the US

From behind a plastic video camera one young child asks another, “What can you give a kid who has lost his parents?” The answer that comes in this Umtata, Africa community plagued by AIDS speaks to the way the epidemic is addressed by families and their children alike. Eight-year-old Luvo and his 5-year-old sister Jane narrate much of the footage; their voices linger even longer than the images of their bright-eyed, orphaned friends.

EN ROUTE TO BAGHDAD | (56 minutes) | By Simone Duarte, Ana Soanes and Kristine Candeso in Brasil, Cambodia, East Timor, Mazambique, North Korea, Iraq and the US

Charismatic visionary Sergio Viera deMello brought light and development to some of the darkest and disorganized corners of the globe as one of the highest-ranking but most down-to-earth diplomats in the United Nations. This film traces his simply exceptional and inspiring success at cultivating cooperation and progress in once-demonic and unstable spots like East Timor, post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia, and Iraq, where his tragic death highlights critical issues the UN must face.

SOMETHING OTHER THAN OTHER | (7 minutes) | By Jerry A. Henry and Andrea J. Chia in the US

Multi-racial parents and filmmakers Jerry Henry and Andrea Chia take an innovative, animation-like angle on racial identity and discrimination by filming the pregnancy of Chia and her eventual birth of their child Quin on Super 8mm, frame by frame.

THE OIL FACTOR BEHIND THE WAR ON TERROR | (93 min) | By Gerard Ungerman and Audrey Brohy in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and the US

Comprehensive and well-sourced, this documentary studies the shrinking oil reserves, the world’s escalating dependence on oil and how heavily both bear on US movement to war in areas where three-quarters of the world’s reserves lie beneath the sand.

sunday 11|13 2pm

CHAVEZ RAVINE: A LOS ANGELES STORY | (26 minutes) | By Jordan Mechner, Don Normark, Andrew B. Anderson and Mark Moran in the US

Sure, Chavez Ravine is a nice ballpark. This film shows how it was once a beautiful Mexican-American community that was evicted by the city of LA in favor of a low-income housing project that never came. Instead, the city sold the stadium to baseball owner Walter O’Malley.

HEART OF THE CONGO | (57 min) | By Tom Weidlinger in Congo and the US

This film offers an accessible, real-world understanding of missionary work in a massive country still at war by tracing the work of three ex-pat volunteers who take on the formidable foes of malnutrition, health education and clean water in some of the poorest parts of the world.

KUMARI: THE LIVING GODDESSES OF NEPAL | (26 minutes) | By Tassia Kobylinska in Nepal and the US

Until she hits puberty, little Kumari is believed to be the human incarnation of the goddess Taleju. As such, she lives alone in a temple, worshipped and beloved by her country as its defender. Via numerous interviews, this visually dazzling doc takes a candid and intimate look at her life—and how it changes come menstruation.

ARMENIAN LULLABY | (5 minutes) | By Irina Patkanian in Armenia, Russia and the US

This stirring video by Patkanianinter—which floats from scenes of quaint rural movement to haunting war sequences—weaves wonderfully with an angelic poem written by her great great grandfather (and sung here by Lilit Pipoyan) about a baby who can only sleep to the battle songs of a war-torn nation. 

OCCUPIED MINDS | (57 minutes) | By Jamal Dajani and David Michaelis in Jerusalem

Producers, friends and colleagues Dajani, a Palestinian Muslim from East Jerusalem, and Michaelis, an Israeli Jew from West Jerusalem, return together to their hometown to share with one another “their” city and explore not only the physical occupation experienced by Palestinians, but also the prevailing mindset of both sides. This film is a special non-UNAFF addition by the local UNA chapter.

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