POST-SCREENING PANEL DISCUSSION
Sudan is doing whatever it can to get rid of the rebel forces in the Blue Nile areas and the Nuba mountains. Its way of doing this is to obliterate their base. Their base is the people, the villagers who have now been forced to gather in mountain hideouts or refugee camps. But still the bombings continue and so does the fight back, led by the rebel forces. hajooj kuka has been on the ground filming for over eighteen months. This film takes the viewer through the lives of displaced people who lost family members, homes, farms and belongings. But instead of finding a devastated and defeated people we find a vibrant culture, people who have found new purpose and energy in the face of conflict. The response to the violence is often singing, dancing, laughter and marvelous music that comes from the root of their culture. Through this journey we understand the Sudanese conflict that stems from a war on identity.
While it is a story set in a time and place of conflict it is also a story of a people coming to terms with their culture and identity, and facing the idea that the question of identity is at the heart of the conflict. Sudan has always had tension or conflict between the so-called Arab north and African south. This still underlies this conflict playing out in areas of North Sudan as the Khartoum government tries to impose not only their rule, but their culture.
FILMMAKER
hajooj kuka is a filmmaker from Sudan, currently based between Nairobi, Kenya and Nuba Mountains, Sudan. He is the creative director of 3ayin.com, a website that works with local reporters aimed at bringing the news of the war through short documentaries, to the Sudanese people. hajooj is a regular contributor to nubareports.org. His previous work includes the 2009 documentary, Darfur’s Skeleton (52 min), which explores the conflict in Sudan’s troubled region since 2003. He has also worked as a director and editor at Alhurra TV station in Washington DC and at the production company Shilo Inc in New York.
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