The festival, which runs through July 25, includes films from Afghanistan, Iraq and India, as well as Jennifer Arnold’s “A Small Act,” a documentary about a young Kenyan, and Taika Waititi’s “Boy,” out of New Zealand. Both Arnold and Waititi are traveling to Kenya for screenings. “The idea is to bring independent films to people who would otherwise never see them,” said Keri Putnam, the executive director of the Sundance Institute, also speaking by phone from Nairobi.
FilmAid InternationalFilmAid International sets up a projection screen at the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya.
Film Forward/Boy A scene from Taika Waititi’s film “Boy.”
“Movies transport us to other places, they take our troubles away, they make us laugh,” Manne explained. “The refugees who watch the movies are no different from any Western audience in that regard, except that their needs are different. You can’t compare a bad day at the office with famine, rape and civil war.”
Every year, Film Forward travels to 14 places around the world to screen 10 films: five international coach outlet store online, five from the United States. FilmAid, which first held screenings in Macedonian refugee camps in 1999, also helps refugees make their own films. One young Kenyan made a documentary called “Facebook Connection,” about children at the camps using Facebook on cellphones.
“In protracted purgatory situations, relentless hopelessness, trauma and boredom set in coach outlet store online,” said Liz Manne, the executive director of FilmAid, speaking by phone from Nairobi. “They are stuck in no man’s land.” Such is the case at Kakuma, a camp in northwestern Kenya where a majority of the refugees are from Southern Sudan, and at Dadaab, a camp in the northeastern province that has become ground zero in the relief effort for the famine in the Horn of Africa.
Movies may not be high on lists of supplies needed by refugees, but for many people suffering the effects of war and long-term displacement, film screenings can be an all-too-rare source of diversion and psychological release, advocates say. This week, Film Forward, a Sundance Institute initiative, and FilmAid International, a humanitarian aid organization, are bringing a festival to Kenya’s sprawling Kakuma and Dadaab camps, home to hundreds of thousands of refugees.
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