November 1, 2005 Source: Concordia University:
http://publicaffairs.concordia.ca/mediaroom/pressreleases/2005/11/005277.shtml Daresalam On Thursday, November 3, Concordia’s Peace and Conflict Resolution lecture series will screen the film Daresalam, the third of 8 films in the sub-series Exploring Conflict and Its Resolution on the African Continent through Film. The film will be shown at 8:30 p.m. in room H-937 in the Henry F. Hall Building (1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West). It will be followed by a response by Dr. Khalid Medani, of the Department of Political Science and the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill and conclude with an open discussion session. Daresalam (2000) is the first African feature film to focus on Chad’s civil war, one of Africa’s oldest. It provides compelling insights into how ordinary people around the world get swept up in extraordinary events. Its timeless story of two childhood friends turned into political foes personalizes the terrible costs of internecine strife. Daresalam is not only director Issa Serge Coelo’s first feature but one of the first feature films from Chad. For more information about this event, contact Dr. Andrew Ivaska at (514) 848-2424 ext. 2419, or Dr. Leander Schneider at (514)848-2424, ext. 5601. For more information about the Peace and Conflict Resolution Academic Lecture Series, visit http://peace.concordia.ca About the sub-series Exploring Conflict and Its Resolution on the African Continent through Film
Conflict and its resolution on the African continent are often engaged within a narrow perspective that hones in on spectacular and headline-grabbing outbreaks of extreme violence. This perspective often frames these outbreaks by falling back upon well-worn perceptions of ‘Africa’ as a space of primordial violence. However, these conflicts - including recent ones in Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo - are in fact crucially conditioned by specific historical and socio-political dynamics that often have global dimensions. These include Africa’s place in the global economy, new religious identities, and the circulation of mass cultural images and icons. The series under the aegis of Concordia University’s Peace and Conflict Resolution academic lecture series engages and examines shallow representations of disaster in Africa by understanding conflict as the product of broader social and historical dynamics and observing it in its multiple, and often ‘mundane,’ forms. The eight films, mostly by African directors, that are featured in the series avoid the pitfall of stereotyping Africa by focusing on some of the broader dynamics of everyday life that shape conflict and the possibilities of its resolution. The films thus explore the ways in which Africans are negotiating conflict along prominent social cleavages of gender, class, religion and ethnicity. 30
Source: Chris Mota,
Senior Public Relations Officer
Concordia University
tel: (514) 848-2424 ext. 4884
cel: (514) 952-5556
fax: (514) 848-3383
e-mail: mota@alcor.concordia.ca
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