Entrevista

Parte 1 
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Parte 2

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 2012 Art and Social Justice Conference: 7- 8 October 2012!

It is time again for the world known Art and Social Justice Conference. Below is the invitation from Gernika Peace Museum, Gernika Gogoratuz Peace Research Center and the Culture House of Gernika, the main organisers of the conference this year.

3rd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ART AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
Arts, Crisis and Social Transformation
Gernika-Lumo (Basque Country, SPAIN)
7-8 October 2012

We are proud to announce the III Art & Social Justice Conference which will be from 7th-8th October at The Gernika Peace Museum in Spain. This 3th conference has been organized by the Gernika Peace Museum, Gernika Gogoratuz Peace Research Center and the Culture House of Gernika. The theme of this year’s conference is Arts, Crisis & Social Transformation and the symbolic choice of Gernika --this year of commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the bombing and of the creation of the masterpiece “Guernica” by Picasso-- as a location is important in the context of this theme.

The current crisis in western societies, largely a result of the greed of the banking system and different forms of political corruption and mismanagement is attacking many basic aspects of our lives. It is a basic human right to have a job, have a home, have food, access to education, healthcare, and to be able to engage freely in making, creating and sharing artistic works. However in many parts of the world, the crisis is and has been permanent and any discussion on the role of the arts in societies in crisis has to embrace these realities too.
This situation leads to questions about governance, change, morality, freedom, justice, individual rights, sustainability and society.These issues are not only central to Human Rights as contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but recurring themes central to the arts in general. In a time of crisis art manifests itself in different forms through critical thinking and a heightened sense of challenging injustice, hypocrisy and inequalities. Artists play a key role in transforming people, societies, and cultures simply by reflecting on what is going on around them. Our choice of location this year, Gernika-Lumo, Spain is very symbolic and important to the notion of arts and transformation in a time of crisis as the town is a significant global landmark for the arts and peace movement.

The Art & Social Justice Conference has been held in Durban, South Africa at Durban University of Technology (2010) and Nicosia, Cyprus at The University of Nicosia (2011). This year’s conference is important for its choice of a historical location, Gernika-Lumo, Spain where we will discuss and reflect on Arts, Crisis & Social Transformation through an innovative multi-dimensional approach:
1. Presentation of specific papers
2. Workshops by arts practitioners
3. Circle discussions at the end of each day
4. Performance and display of artistic work

Contributions pertaining to Arts, Crisis and Social Transformation are welcome - see information below on submitting abstracts for a paper, workshop, or performance.
Organised by
Gernika Peace Museum Foundation, Gernika Gogoratuz Peace Research Center, Culture House of Gernika.
With collaboration from:
Art and Social Justice Durban Conference 2010, Jan Jordaan, Art for Humanity & Durban University of Technology & Mike Hajimichael, Art and Social Justice Nicosia Conference 2011 & University of Nicosia, Department of Communications
Sponsored by
Euskadi Fundación 2012 Fundazioa. The Year of Culture, Peace And Liberty. Human Rights Direction. Basque Government;

Registration for the Conference, fees and information
Early Bird - reduced conference fee before the 31st August 2012 €150
Conference fee after the 31st August 2012 €200
The fee includes
- Conference Program
- Lunch and dinner 7th and 8th October
- Free entry to all artistic performances held during the conference
- Excursions (Winery, coast, Gernika-Lumo’s Museums)
- Simultaneous translation (Spanish-English)
- Free registration for our other conferences:
V. INTERNATIONAL ART AND PEACE MEETING: Kids’ Guernica. An International Art Project for Peace, in Gernika-Lumo, 6th “October 2012.
“I INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON ART, MEMORY AND DEMOCRACY; From Picasso´s Guernica to the present day” in Gernika and Bilbao, 9TH-11TH October 2012.
Paper, Workshop, Performance Requirements
Papers presented at the Conference should focus on the theme of the conference: “Arts, crisis and social transformation”.
Please submit by 3rd August 2012, the proposal should contain the following information:

- Title of the paper
- Abstract (300 words maximum)
- Keywords
- Language: Spanish and/or English
- Biography (150 words) including phone and e-mail contact

Suggestions for workshops & performances are welcome from participants. Workshops should include a 300 word description concerning relevance to the conference.
Performances will be hosted at the conference including poetry, readings, and music. Please supply any links online of works to be presented and a 300 word description.

For more information please contact:
Iratxe Momoitio (Director) zuzendaritza.museoa@gernika-lumo.net
Gernika Peace Museum
Tel             (+34)946270213    
María Oianguren (Director) mariaoianguren@gernikagogoratuz.org
Gernika Gogoratuz. Peace Research Center
Further details available on our main conference web site:
http://www.museodelapaz.org/en/conferences.php
http://www.gernikagogoratuz.org
We look forward to welcoming you to ASJ III Gernika 2012

Once Brothers - a real story of the Yugoslavian conflict

30 for 30: Once Brothers – ESPN’s Stab at the Genocide Discussion

Posted on January 20, 2012 

ESPN’s 30 for 30: Once Brothers featuring former European basketball stars Drazen Petrovic and Vlade Divac is a film deserving its own category among genocide-related works

. Typical genocide films exhibit striking, often recurring themes in cinematography from the imagery, soundtrack and colors to the dialogue, camera angles and lighting. Once Brothers is completely unique, not only from a cinematographic standpoint but from the core of the story itself and the focus on the sport of basketball more so than the focus on the conflict surrounding Yugoslavia.

Claiming that Once Brothers is a film focused on the Yugoslavian/Serbian genocide is a stretch. The conflict between Croatians and Serbs is the backbone for the hurt friendship between Petrovic and Divac. The film focuses on the team, friendship and family relationships more than anything else, and this is what draws in the viewer, not only the story of the the genocide. Regardless of how many others were in Petrovic and Divac’s cross-cultural circumstances, their story is amazing. ESPN captured a powerful story in history that just happened to be draped over a horrible incident in Yugoslavia.

Once Brothers’ place in the genocide context is unique. Few films focus on things besides the brute horror of Auschwitz-style imagery and mass slaughter. Not only does the film uncover how American basketball changed as a result of Petrovic and Divac’s acceptance in the NBA, it also delves into a war which hid yet another genocide of the 20^th century. Notice, though, that recency is a key reason why the film is so powerful.

ESPN’s 30 for 30 episode is unique compared to Holocaust-aged stories because of the fact that the Yugoslavian conflict took place less than 20 years ago. Even kids in their late teens could be survivors of the genocide; It’s so recent. This is not the case with the Holocaust, and each year the number of remaining survivors dwindles. The death toll in the Yugoslavian genocide is much, much lower than that in the Holocaust, but this does not negate the fact that it is still hugely important to study, learn from and remember. Divac was able to grow up in generally peaceful times, see his homeland battered in a civil war, and is now able to visit the US, Croatia and his home in relative peace (Though people still remember his flag incident).

What is also unique about Once Brothers is its specific emotional draw. The viewer feels sympathy in the fact that Divac’s relationship with his long-time friend Petrovic had to end, and was left on such a sour note. The viewer also feels the bittersweet joy that Divac experiences when speaking with Petrovic’s parents and visiting Petrovic’s grave. Genocide films like Schindler’s List, The Last Train and Killing Fields evoke emotions from the viewer in a different way. Emotions are tested in these films by intense imagery, carefully scripted dialogue, and other precise cinematic techniques. While Once Brothers certainly utilizes its own set of cinematic techniques, it does so to evoke a specific emotional reaction from the viewer, one that’s highly relatable.

30 for 30: Once Brothers follows a few key characters, all of which are real people. Scripted scenes, if any, are minimal. Most footage included in the documentary is of interviews and newsreels and old ESPN broadcasts. While the producer was able to piece together footage just how he wanted, it is still very different than other genocide films. Genocide films typically employ actors to recreate the past, and the directors and producers must visualize everything before it happens, make any adjustments necessary in the script, and carefully adjust and implement different visual and audio elements to get a desired effect. The story of Petrovic and Divac is real, and this is something ESPN didn’t have to recreate. It was right in front of them. Everything was in front of them.

Source: http://millersam.com/2012/01/20/30-for-30-once-brothers-espns-stab-at-the-genocide-discussion/#more-689

Making of video about Sousa Mendes

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Making of the video
Resumo fotográfico das gravações do documentário "Os Nove Dias De Sousa Mendes", na localidade de Cabanas de Viriato. Este documentário Canadiano da produtora Telimagin passou por Cabanas de Viriato no dia 29 de Agosto de 2011. Realizou gravações ao Solar de Aristides de Sousa Mendes, ao Cristo-Rei e ao cemitério onde foi sepultado este grandioso homem. Também, efetou algumas entrevistas aos populares mais velhos, Olimpio Tavares, foi um destes. Este documentário foi escrito pela Portuguesa Inês Frazão, corresponde da RTP1 em Montreal. A restante equipa que acompanhou a corresponde foi a realizadora Mélanie Pelletier, o diretor de fotografia Alberto Feio e por fim Yves Bernard, o produtor. Poderá visualizar este documentário em: http://www.osnovediasdesousamendes.com

Comunicado da Fundação Aristides de Sousa Mendes, 4-Julho-2012

Fonte:  http://www.carregal-digital.pt/pt/articles/noticias/comunicado6074

Filme com antestreia em Carregal do Sal, 16-Julho-2012

Antestreia

Feriado Municipal - segunda-feira, 16 de julho 2012
Praça do Município
10:00h Cerimónia do HASTEAR DA BANDEIRA, com a presença dos Bombeiros Voluntários de Carregal do Sal e de Cabanas de Viriato e da Delegação da Cruz Vermelha Portuguesa de Oliveira do Conde
Igreja de S. Brás
10:30h MISSA de Sufrágio
Centro Cultural de Carregal do Sal
15:00h Exibição, em antestreia, do filme ARISTIDES DE SOUSA MENDES – O CÔNSUL DE BORDÉUS
17:30h Sessão sobre ARISTIDES DE SOUSA MENDES Intervenções: - Câmara Municipal - Fundação Aristides de Sousa Mendes - Produtor/Realizador/Atores do filme

Reserva/ levantamento de ingressos na Câmara Municipal, até ao máximo de dois por pessoa

What did you do in the War, Grandfather?

As the WWWII generation reaches the end of its life, a young German historian,  Moritz Pfeiffer, a historian at a museum on the SS at Wewelsburg Castle, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. sought to understand his family's Nazi past.  

04/11/2012   'The Holocaust Is German Family History'

Book Urges Germans to Quiz Dying Nazi Generation

By David Crossland

German historian Moritz Pfeiffer asked his granddad what he did in World War II, and then fact-checked the testimony. His findings in a new book shed light on a dying generation that remains outwardly unrepentant, but is increasingly willing to break decades of silence on how, and why, it followed Hitler.

Germany has won praise for collectively confronting its Nazi past, but the subject has remained a taboo in millions of family homes -- with children and grandchildren declining to press their elders on what they did in the war.

At least 20 to 25 million Germans knew about the Holocaust while it was happening, according to conservative estimates, and some 10 million fought on the Eastern Front in a war of annihilation that targeted civilians from the start. That, says German historian Moritz Pfeiffer, makes the genocide and the crimes against humanity a part of family history.

Time is running out. The answer to how a cultured, civilized nation stooped so low lies in the minds of the dying Third Reich generation, many of whom are ready and willing to talk at the end of their lives, says Pfeiffer, 29, who has just completed an unprecedented research project based on his own family.

"The situation has changed radically compared with the decades immediately after the war," Pfeiffer, a historian at a museum on the SS at Wewelsburg Castle, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "The generation of eyewitnesses evidently wants to talk now, at least that's my impression. Towards the end of one's life the distance to the events is so great that people are ready to give testimony."

"Immediately after the war, conversations about it between parents and children appear to have been impossible because it was all too fresh," Pfeiffer continued. "Now the problem is that no one is listening to that generation anymore. As a source of information, one's relatives are largely being ignored. But one day it will be too late."

New Approach to Questioning Relatives

Oral history has become increasingly popular, even though personal reminiscences are chronically unreliable as they are distorted by time. But Pfeiffer took a new approach by interviewing his two maternal grandparents about what they did in the war, and then systematically checking their statements using contemporary sources such as letters and army records.

No one has done this before.

He juxtaposed his findings with context from up-to-date historical research on the period and wrote a book that has shed new light on the generation that unquestioningly followed Hitler, failed to own up to its guilt in the immediate aftermath of the war and, more than six decades on, remains unable to express personal remorse for the civilian casualties of Hitler's war of aggression, let alone for the Holocaust.

His recently published book, "My Grandfather in the War 1939-1945," (published in German only) is based on the interviews he conducted in 2005 with his grandfather, named only as Hans Hermann K., who was a career officer in a Wehrmacht infantry regiment. His grandmother Edith was too ill to be interviewed at length but he analyzed many of her letters. Both died in 2006.

Both of them supported the Nazi regime and Pfeiffer admits that they were morally "contaminated," like millions of ordinary Germans of that generation. He describes his grandmother Edith as a "committed, almost fanatical Nazi."

'No One Can Say What They Would Have Done'

But the project wasn't an attempt to pass judgment on his grandparents, says Pfeiffer. He only wanted to understand them.

"No one today can say what they would have done or thought at the time," he said. "I believe that people will learn a lot if they understand how their respected and loved parents or grandparents behaved in the face of a totalitarian dictatorship and murderous racial ideology," Pfeiffer said.

"Dealing with one's family history in the Nazi period in an open, factual and self-critical way is an important contribution to accepting democracy and avoiding a repeat of what happened between 1933 and 1945."

Hans Hermann K. was so good at goosestepping that he was briefly transferred to a parade unit in Berlin. Edith joined the Nazi Party and was so zealous that when she married Hans Hermann in 1943, she provided documentation tracing her Aryan roots all the way back to the early 18th century -- even SS members were "only" required to verify their racial purity back to January 1, 1800.

During the course of his research, Moritz Pfeiffer found large gaps, contradictions and evasive answers in Hans Hermann's testimony -- regarding his purported ignorance of mass executions of civilians, for example.

Grandfather Fought in France , Poland , Soviet Union

Hans Hermann was a lieutenant in the famous 6th Army and fought in the invasions of Poland, France and the Soviet Union, where he lost an eye in September 1942 when a shell exploded near him.

His wound probaby saved his life. Shortly after he was evacuated back to Germany for treatment, his unit was sent to Stalingrad and virtually wiped out. Only 6,000 men survived out of the more than 100,000 that were taken prisoner by the Red Army at Stalingrad.

Few would disagree that Germany as a nation has worked hard to atone for its past, unlike Austria and Japan which have cloaked themselves in denial. Germany has paid an estimated €70 billion in compensation for the suffering it caused, conducts solemn ceremonies to commemorate the victims and, above all, has owned up to what was done in its name.

Companies and government ministries have opened up their archives to historians to illuminate their role in the Third Reich, and a late push in prosecutions of war criminals is underway to make up for the failure to bring them to justice in the decades after the war.

But millions never confronted their own personal role as cogs in the Nazi machinery.

Hans Hermann was no different, even though he readily agreed to talk to his grandson.

He was born in 1921 to an arch-conservative, nationalist family with military traditions in the western city of Wuppertal. His father, a furniture store owner, regaled him with stories about his time as a lieutenant in World War I, and it was instilled in him at an early age that the war reparations of the Versailles Treaty were exaggerated.

The store boomed after Hitler took power because the new government provided cheap government loans for married couples to buy kitchen and bedroom furniture.

In the interview, Hans Hermann was frank about his attitude towards Jews in the mid-1930s, when he was in his early teens and a member of the Jungvolk youth organization, which was affiliated with the Hitler Youth.

Asked by Moritz whether he thought at the time that the racial laws banning Jews from public life and systematically expropriating their property were unfair, he said:

"No, we didn't regard that as injustice, we had to go with the times and the times were like that. The media didn't have the importance then that they do today."

Source:  Parte 1 http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/feature-on-historical-research-into-a-german-family-s-nazi-history-a-826633.html
Part 2 http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/feature-on-historical-research-into-a-german-family-s-nazi-history-a-826633-2.html