Preview
TEACHING PEACE IN THE TIME OF WAR
Featuring
Directed by Teresa McInnes
Wednesday, February 16
John Dutton Theatre (WR Castell Central Library)
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the former Yugoslavia was thrown into chaos. The civil war that ensued cost more than 250,000 people their lives and has drastically affected the outlook of the nation’s youth, some of whom were born at the time the war began. It’s against that backdrop that Teresa McInnes, a Nova Scotia-based filmmaker, made Teaching Peace in the Time of War.
With the help of Hetty Van Gurp, an educator and founder of Peaceful Schools International, McInnes created a documentary about breaking the cycle of violence in schools specifically, and in society generally. Filmed in Belgrade, this film looks directly at the impact of a decade’s worth of violence on children who have never known anything but conflict. Compiling footage from Van Gurp’s tour to six schools, McInnes knew early on that most of it was interesting but slightly random.
"I have over 100 hours of film from various schools across Serbia," she says. "But I knew that the story of the students at one school in particular would tell the story better than a group of children with no real connections."
The film opens with some of the children from Vasa Pelagic School speaking about what peace means to them. One pupil, Aleksandra, states: "Peace means nothing to me, because I don’t have any peace." Another pupil speaks about the hatred he feels for Muslims, yet his best friend, Emil, is Muslim. The mood of the film, at least initially, isn’t very hopeful. Enter Van Gurp and Peaceful Schools International. Van Gurp, who lost her 14-year-old son in an unfortunate act of bullying when another pupil pushed him off the bleachers at a sports match, set about to educate the educators on ways to actually stop bullying, rather than just handing out punishment.
"You can’t achieve peace by force," says MacInnes. "It’s an oxymoron."
McInnes did not start out with a plan to shoot a film about Serbia in the wake of the civil war. A former social worker, she was hired in 1999 to make a film about bullying in schools, but when she met Van Gurp, what started as one film quickly became three. The first two films in the series, Waging Peace and Learning Peace, were focused almost entirely on North America. When Van Gurp arranged to visit six schools in Serbia, McInnes knew that her third and final film was on the move, and it hasn’t stopped since.
The real success of this film is that it focuses on the triumphs of the youth at the school, rather than becoming embroiled in the politicking of the adults. McInnes admits that there was tension between the teachers and Van Gurp from time to time, even for the simple fact that Canada is a part of NATO, which bombed Yugoslavia during the war. However, McInnes chose to focus on the ways in which children in a war-torn part of the world can learn to deal with their problems through peaceful resolution, rather than violence. When Gordana, a student representative, organizes the first school dance, the children and their teachers are laughing in a way that wasn’t seen at the beginning of the film.
Educators all over the country and beyond have been using the film for their own anti-bullying workshops, and it has been made a part of a tool kit called Peace@School, which includes the two first films from the series. The requests for screenings and the opportunity for travel and exposing the issue have been overwhelming.
As it stands, McInnes is returning to Belgrade with Van Gurp and 20 teens from across Canada to revisit the school and to maintain ties with the people she’s filmed.
"All the kids have already graduated from the school and have already seen the film," she says. "They are as happy with it as we are. We are now sharing the experience with a group from Canada, who have a lot to learn from these children." |
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