New Article/ Nuevo Ensayo

Hace algunos meses, escribí un artículo para el Harvard Divinity Bulletin, donde usé las ideas del filósofo francés Emmanuel Levinas para pensar la manera que adolescentes que eran niños soldado en la guerra cvil Colombiana denuncian a la violencia y nos llaman a la consciencia.  Aida Ramos, una traductora epañola que trabaja con nosotros como voluntaria, acaba de traducir el texto en español, y está disponsible aquí.

Several months ago, I published an essay in the Harvard Divinity Review, using the ideas of the French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas to think through the way that children who had once been soldiers in the Colombian Civil War denounce violence and injustice and call others to conscience. I have just published the essay on the Shine a Light website, under the title The Prophet at War.

Theater of War, Cinema of Peace

In 2007, Shine a Light collaborated with the Colombian NGO Taller de Vida to develop the first feature-length, fictional film ever made by children who once were soldiers.  The result, Ruleta de la Vida/Life's Roulette, is a powerful movie that has now been shown at film festivals on four continents, and has won some important prizes.  Perhaps more significantly, while on average more than half of children who leave the war return to it, none of the kids who made Life's Roulette have returned to an illegal armed group.  Almost all of them are studying, doing well, and many even continue to work in cinema or social justice movements.

Over the last several years, I have been reflecting on the experience of making the movie and trying to see why it was such an effective tool for art, social change, and personal growth.  Those reflections, mediated through contemporary philosophy and film theory, became Theater of War, Cinema of Peace, a book just published on the Shine a Light website.  You can download it for free at http://www.shinealight.org/Books.html