ArtsLink

Film Screening:
Between Joyce and Remembrance
Directed by Mike Kaplan
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Allen Auditorium, 2:00-4:00pm

Guest Speaker:

Truth and Reconciliation through Memorial Building?
Remembering Genocide and Resistance in Namibia
With Elke Zuern, Professor of Politics, Sarah Lawrence College
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Thomson 317, 5:30pm

We are pleased to invite you to the first installment in the Clowes Center for the Study of Conflict and Dialogue 2009-2010 Film and Speaker Series. Each quarter, the Clowes Center will sponsor a film screening and discussion around a particular theme. The theme for this year’s series is Paths of Terror and Truth: on violence, memory, and the politics of reconciliation. This Thursday, we will hold these two events, sponsored by the Clowes Center, the Comparative History of Ideas, The Department of History, and African Studies.

Film Screening:
Between Joyce and Remembrance, Directed by Mike Kaplan

Between Joyce and Remembrance is a hard-hitting documentary about truth and reconciliation in South Africa, focusing on the family of the tortured, poisoned and murdered student activist, Siphiwo Mtimkulu.

Producer Mark Kaplan spent seven years documenting the lives of Joyce and Sikhumbuzo Mtimkulu, mother and son of the murdered young man, culminating in a meeting of the family with Siphiwo’s killer, Gideon Nieuwoudt, a former colonel in the apartheid government’s hated security police. Kaplan reveals the fragility of South Africa’s transition to democracy by exploring the feelings of the Mtimkulu family. The film picks up where the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission left off. It offers a deeper understanding of the difficulty of reconciling with torturers, knowing they will receive no punishment. A burial of the only physical remains of Siphiwo – a handful of his hair – is a pitiful closure. For Siphiwo’s son, Sikhumbuzo, this may not be enough.

Post-screening discussion facilitated by guest speaker Elke Zuern.

Thursday, November 12, 2009 in Allen Auditorium, 2:00-4:00pm

Guest Speaker:

Truth and Reconciliation through Memorial Building? Remembering Genocide and Resistance in Namibia

With Elke Zuern, Professor of Politics, Sarah Lawrence College

After a century marked by colonialism, genocide and apartheid, Namibia, unlike its South African neighbor has not established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Though a century old, the debate over genocide and colonialism has been particularly divisive, and the government has generally sought to discourage the public memorializing of significant aspects of the country’s early history. Based on fieldwork across Namibia, visiting a wide range of museums and memorials and interviewing the local organizers of various commemorative actions, this talk investigates the shifting politics of public memory in Namibia. Three case studies illuminate the debate: the building of a citizen-initiated memorial in Swakopmund to those who died in the local concentration camps, the government plan to remove the controversial German Reiterdenkmal (Equestrian Statue) in Windhoek, and the competing representations of Herero history at the annual Herero Red Flag Day celebration. The three cases demonstrate the starkly contested nature of Namibia’s colonial history and underline the political power of competing representations for present day Namibian politics and international relations.

Thursday, November 12, 2009 in Thomson 317, 5:30pm

During winter quarter, we will screen Florian Henck von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others, with a post-film discussion facilitated by Stephen Pfaff of the Jackson School of International Studies.

In spring, we will screen The Tribunal: The proceedings of Ka Ho’okolokolonui Kanaka Maoli Peoples’ International Tribunal Hawai’i, 1993. Our guest speaker will be J. Kehaulani Kauanui, Professor of American Studies and Anthropology, Wesleyan University.

For more information contact Maria Elena Garcia at meg71@uw.edu

Or Theron Stevenson at theron@uw.edu .

Theron Paul Stevenson | Director of International Programs |

Comparative History of Ideas Program | University of Washington | Box

354300 | B102 Padelford | P (206) 685-4716 | F (206) 543-7400 |

http://depts.washington.edu/chid/international