{"id":6978,"date":"2011-06-15T11:57:16","date_gmt":"2011-06-15T15:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=6978"},"modified":"2011-07-18T14:24:05","modified_gmt":"2011-07-18T18:24:05","slug":"disney-unveils-women-war-peace-documentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2011\/disney-unveils-women-war-peace-documentary\/","title":{"rendered":"Disney Unveils \u201cWomen, War & Peace\u201d Documentary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Filmmaker Abigail Disney says she learned \u201cto look at war through women\u2019s eyes,\u201d as a result of visiting Liberia in 2006 and meeting Leymah Gbowee, who now holds a masters in conflict transformation from Eastern Mennonite University (EMU).<\/p>\n

Gbowee was one of the leaders of a women\u2019s movement that was instrumental in ending Liberia\u2019s 14-year-long civil war in 2003.<\/p>\n

Gbowee inspired Disney, the daughter and granddaughter of two leaders of the Walt Disney Company, to produce her first film project, \u201cPray the Devil Back to Hell.\u201d<\/a> The 2008 award-winning documentary shows the way Liberian women forced their warring men to arrive at a peace settlement that led to the election of Africa\u2019s first woman president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, in 2005.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Leymah Gbowee, executive director of Women Peace and Security Network-Africa, and Abigail Disney, the producer of documentaries on women peacebuilders, including one featuring Gbowee in Liberia, \u201cPray the Devil Back to Hell.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In a June 10 forum sponsored by EMU\u2019s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP), Disney explained her motivations in being one of the executive producers of \u201cWomen, War & Peace.\u201d<\/a> This new documentary \u2014 to be aired on PBS over five successive Tuesdays at 10 p.m., beginning Oct. 11 \u2014 features women peacebuilders in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Colombia, and Liberia.<\/p>\n

\u201cWar has never been a tidy, closed activity, taking place on a clearly demarcated battlefield between two uniformed entities, or when it has, that has been the exception,\u201d Disney wrote on the \u201cWide Angle\u201d PBS website and reiterated at EMU.\u00a0\u201cRather, war marches right through the center of everything \u2014 through house, hearth and field \u2014 ripping a hole into the center of things that can never be entirely repaired.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo bring a woman\u2019s eyes to the telling of the story of war \u2014 to turn the camera around and place it in her hands \u2014 is to fundamentally alter the way war looks and sounds and smells,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

After showing a trailer of \u201cWomen, War & Peace\u201d to the audience of about 60, Disney moderated a discussion by three women: Gbowee; Dekha Ibrahim Abdi, a Kenyan-Muslim woman of Somali ethnic origin who received the 2007 Right Livelihood Prize (alternative Nobel Prize); and Koila Costello-Olsson, another MA graduate of CJP and the director of the Pacific Centre for Peacebuilding.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found the [Disney] preview to be harshly realistic, yet optimistic,\u201d said Janice Jenner, director of CJP\u2019s Practice and Training Institute. \u201cThe film series apparently doesn\u2019t gloss over the ravages of war, but it won\u2019t leave the viewer feeling helpless and hopeless, because it also focuses on the many women showing courage, resiliency and determination to change the war paradigm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abdi spoke about war strategies that include systematic raping of women and rendering them homeless, as means of destabilizing a society. She has worked with African women, however, who have learned to use resistance techniques to the waging of war, such as refusing to cook food for the warriors. They have also used intermediaries, such as elderly women as negotiators and catalysts to reduce violent conflict in their regions.<\/p>\n

Abdi also offered some ways that women in her region are able to anticipate conflict and thus to activate their networks to try to prevent it. One of the signs of budding armed warfare is an increase in domestic violence by the men. Another is seeing giraffes suddenly show up in a town, a sign that they have been spooked by the young armed men roaming the countryside.<\/p>\n

Abigail Disney was one of 20 participants in a three-conference that began June 9 at EMU. It grouped female peace workers from nine countries to learn from each other\u2019s experiences and to explore the potential value of an educational program tailored to women peacebuilders.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn collaboration with CJP graduates and partners, we wanted to explore whether future women peacebuilders would benefit from a program focused on the distinctive needs, skills and strengths of women,\u201d said CJP executive director Lynn Roth.<\/p>\n

Some women at the consultation had spent decades living and working in conflict regions of the world, such as the Kenya-Somalia border region, Liberia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n

The consultation took place toward the end of CJP\u2019s annual Summer Peacebuilding Institute, from May 9 to June 17, 2011.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Filmmaker Abigail Disney says she learned \u201cto look at war through women\u2019s eyes,\u201d as a result of visiting Liberia in 2006 and meeting Leymah Gbowee, who now holds a masters ... read more about Disney Unveils \u201cWomen, War & Peace\u201d Documentary<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":6980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12503,12499],"tags":[13766,10067],"feature":[],"class_list":["post-6978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cjp","category-spi","tag-abigail-disney","tag-leymah-gbowee"],"yoast_head":"\nDisney Unveils \u201cWomen, War & Peace\u201d Documentary - EMU News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2011\/disney-unveils-women-war-peace-documentary\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Disney Unveils \u201cWomen, War & Peace\u201d Documentary - 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