Cambodia doc- What Russ takes away from Angkor Wat

This mini movie is about the Rotary Peace and Conflict Studies program's last day on their trip to Cambodia. After a grueling week of looking at the many difficult issues of post-conflict rebuilding, these fellows take a day to enjoy one of the seven wonders of the world- Angkor Wat. Enjoy!





Progressing forward on my journey of editing this film- I am editing out of order at this point, this section will probably be the second to last as part of the greater whole, but in a way it has excited me about the over all project, as I hope it is exciting you as well. I already have a sense that in the final production, I will be re-editing some aspects of it, but this is definitely serving it's purpose for now.

So far this project has been a great lesson in how much more my camera work needs to improve. Of course, I think better equipment will help a little and thus my wish list is growing... anyone want to help out on that?

Cambodia doc- Boat Trip to Siem Reap

So, as I progress in editing this documentary project on Rotary's Peace and Conflict Studies Program to Cambodia I will be posting mini movies for 1) my own inspirational purposes 2) give you a taste of the over all trip 3) to document my editing process. Since this is the largest self-directed and edited project that I have tackled, I have decide to condense my 15 hours of footage into a series of small "episodes."

Here's the first one I've compressed for your viewing pleasure of our boat ride to Siem Reap.

Rotary's Positive Peace Place

Each year the International Christian University holds an annual festival in which the university's club and associations participate in by setting up booths to sell snacks and other such goods. The local community is invited to visit the campus and partake in festivities which often include wadaiko (Japanese traditional drumming) and various musical dance performances.

This year, the sixth year of the Rotary Internationals' partnership with ICU in the Rotary World Peace Fellowship, we RWPFs decided to have our own booth in which we sold nachos and held a flea market to raise funds for the Burmese NGO called Back Pack Health Worker Team.

BPHWT provides "primary health care in ethnic armed conflict areas and rural areas where access to healthcare is otherwise unavailable. The BPHWT provides a range of medical care, community health education and prevention, and maternal and child healthcare services to internally displaced persons in Burma."

Anyways, I have to say that I think that our booth was quite a success. We did have to give away some items for close to nothing towards the end of the second day (but that's to be expected when you try to sell off things that you don't even want.) I believe we made our two main goals: raising a reasonable amount of funds for a good cause and having a more visible presence on campus. I hope this is the beginning of a Rotary tradition.

Getting started on the Cambodia doc

I have begun to edit the Cambodian documentary project that I shot for the Rotary Peace and Conflict Studies program in August. For my own motivational purpose, I will be posting stills from the footage.

The following images are from our first day in Phenom Phen, in which we visited two slum areas. First, we visited a highly-valued commercial property that is being occupied by both the original land -dwellers as well as encroachers. The government and their corporate partnerships are evicting these residents and relocating them. Unfortunately, the re-location land that my group visited (the other group had quite a different experience) paled in comparison to the eviction site. We met with entire families that lived in 4x6 shacks, they lacked adequate water and many of the children looked as if they were suffering malnutrition.

Well, not to paint you a too grim picture of the situation there.. here are some still images... as always the spirit of children to find happiness in any circumstance never ceases to amaze me...







From the re-location site:

Thesis update: One step closer

Though most have you know this all along, that my passion is for media and peace, I have only recently decided that this is really what I want to focus my thesis on. So for the next 8 months, that I spend writing this 50-100page essay, I am really hoping to learn from specific media organizations how to make media that creates peace. I have more less being trying to do this with my life since 2003, but here I'm going to get to study and research this in-depth. Will this make me a better filmmaker? Well, I certainly hope so.

So my possible research question is one that I explored earlier this year for a presentation in Peace studies:

How does new media technology contribute to a culture of peace?

Some of the theories I hope to examine in my research are peace journalism and democratic media.

Anyways, to get started on the right track I have enrolled in Johan Galtung's Transcend University's online Peace Journalism course taught by Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick. The course follows the Peace Journalism book written by the two professors, which though I have only read the first few chapters, I already highly recommend.

Since this is the year to write my thesis, I reckon I will be writing several blogs on this process. I hope this doesn't terrible bore you. Hopefully, I will make another film or two over the next year.

Free Burma!

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Film: Jewish in Berlin

My dropping knowledge film which asks the question: What does it mean to be Jewish in Berlin today? (4min) is now up on their Schatten Auf Berlin website. If you scroll to the bottom strip of films in the category of Nue Berlin and click on several films over you can watch Judish in Berlin there... ...or if you feel like it's too complicated to get to (since there is no direct link) please click on the following image:

Two of the three interviews are in German, so in many ways there were new challenges to this project but overall I'm quite pleased with what I was able to accomplish in two weeks with this film. I also recommend taking a look at the Shadows on Berlin web magazine though that is entirely in German. Enjoy!

It seems like the other link takes a long time to upload. So on Blogger video for now.