Students Screen Documentaries About Darfur at Film Festival

raised awareness about the humanitarian crisis in Darfur during its Global Studies Film Festival on Tuesday.

Approximately 400 students created documentaries that explored life in refugee camps for displaced people from the Darfur region of Sudan.

“It’s a good thing to raise awareness of the people of Darfur,” said freshman Esahi Glasper, the festival emcee. "Many people don’t really know that they’re lucky to live in the U.S. They’re unaware of the hardships and the lives that people in other countries have to lead."

The festival showcased the top seven films of the more than 100 films global studies students created.

Students used video footage that Karin Muller of National Geographic filmed while she lived in the region for three months.

Take 2, Muller’s nonprofit organization, helps high school and college students get involved in global issues through the use of digital media.

At the film festival, Muller said the goal of her organization is to teach students empathy and understanding through their work.

“That is what is going to make us all global citizens,” she said. “If we’re going to compete in an increasingly flat world, that is one skill we’re going to have to give our kids.”

Students worked in groups of three to create roughly three-minute films.

One of the films focused on a man who served as a butcher, as well as a doctor, in a refugee camp. Another film followed a young woman who juggled various family responsibilities while trying to still be a teenager. Another film showed children eagerly learning and sitting in the dirt in their outdoor classroom. All of the films showed men, women and children living in dire conditions in refugee camps.

Prior to the film screenings, two local college students from Sudan addressed the crowd.

Dalia Lukolo explained how her family escaped to Egypt, and then eventually the U.S., after her school was bombed in 1994.

Nicholas said he stayed in multiple refugee camps when he was younger. He said his family only received help from the United Nations, which provided necessities like food and medicine.

“But the problem was, all of these materials that were necessary in order to survive, it wasn’t coming on time,” he said. “So the little infants and kids like 3, 5 years old, sometimes 7, they were dying, because they didn’t have the nutrition they needed, and they didn’t have the medicine they needed.”

Nicholas said he was surprised to learn that high school students were interested in learning about Sudan.

“When I was in school, nobody cared about Sudan, nobody cared about international affairs and nobody cared about things that were happening in other parts of the world,” he said. “I’m grateful that you guys are actually interested in what’s happening around the world.”

Reuben Hoffman, one of the five teachers who coordinated the festival, said it was important for the students and other attendees to hear from the speakers.

“It brought a sense of legitimacy that these people have been there and lived there,” he said.

Tuesday's event was the school's first Global Studies Film Festival.

“This was our freshmen students’ first experience making films,” said Tanya Morrison, another teacher whose classes participated in the project. “They learned new technology.”

Morrison said students learned much more than film editing from the project, however.

“They learned how to become global citizens and see how their lives can affect the lives of others around the world,” she said.

Hoffman added that only one of his students knew about the crisis in Sudan at the start of the project.

“The goal was to gain a greater appreciation for a humanitarian crisis, and I think that that was accomplished,” he said. “They learned about a place far from Santee that they had no knowledge about prior.”

Hoffman said the teachers plan to have their students create documentaries again next year.

“This is not something that happens at every school,” Hoffman said. “The opportunity that students are receiving at West Hills to go above and beyond the normal curriculum is a great message that needs to be put out there. We’re doing some innovative things at West Hills.”

To learn more about Take 2, visit take2videos.org.