"Alone, even doing nothing, you do not waste your time. You do, almost always, in company. No encounter with yourself can be altogether sterile: Something necessarily emerges, even if only the hope of some day meeting yourself again." (E.M. Cioran)

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Film review - 'Scared Sacred'

Not much to say about this movie that isn't already covered in the PR blurbs. However, film maker Velcrow Ripper, (though clearly not the "punk rocker" he fancies himself to be) has definitely created a thought-provoking reflection on hope and compassion springing from suffering in the aftermath of disaster - the shifting of emotional devastation into positive transformation. Or, to paraphrase Velcrow himself, breathing in tragedy and breathing out compassion.

He has travelled to 'ground zeros' of the world - post-disaster - including the sites of the 'Union Carbide' tragedy in Bhopal, India, the World Trade Centre in New York, post-war Bosnia, Israel/Palestine, the minefields of Cambodia and war-torn Afghanistan. A group of Afghan women, mostly orphaned, who had fled Taliban-controlled Afghanistan to live in secret in a Pakistani border town, were particularly inspiring. Continuing their brave campaign for the rights of Afghan women - including regular street protests, where their lives are constantly endangered - they have set up a school for orphaned Afghan girls, which offers their only hope of getting an education. Also moving were the stories of an Israeli and Palestinian family who had both encountered tragedy from their particular sides of the conflict. They had managed to transform their raging (and useless) desire for revenge into empathy and now actively work together with other bereaved families, from both sides, to encourage compassion and understanding. Good stuff.

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