10 Videos on Genocide (Not for the faint of heart)

by Michelle

Published October 05, 2008 @ 09:46PM PT

Videos on genocide tend not to be the most uplifting of visual experiences. However, even more than photographs, footage of genocide-related subjects can break through, to an extent, the abstraction and distance of the written word.

1. i-ACT: Stop Genocide Now

Interactive-ACTivism, or i-ACT, is an innovative internet video series produced by Stop Genocide Now (SGN) seeking to connect the online activist community with the on-the-ground realities of Darfur. SGN team members have now made six trips to refugee camps in Chad, producing a video series with each trip to expose viewers to various aspects of life as a refugee as well as individual perspectives on the conflict. The videos have a rough, raw character, which makes for a refreshing alternative to over-produced, sensational, glossed-over mainstream media dispatches from the region.

2. The Ghosts of Rwanda

I'm a confessed PBS-nerd, and Frontline is my favorite program (aside from the video tour of the Crayola factory I once saw at 3 o'clock in the morning). This episode is so good, I bought the DVD. This series of excerpts address the range of issues covered by the documentary-a complex story told artfully from a variety of perspectives.

3. An Alfred Hitchcock documentary on the Nazi Holocaust

Yes, another Frontline episode. In "Memory of the Camps," Frontline presents a documentary on Nazi concentration camps filmed by crews traveling with Allied forces, with editing done under the supervision of Alfred Hitchcock, who reportedly refused to accept payment for his contribution. The film was shelved before it was finished, and not aired until the Frontline episode in 1985. A word to the weak-of-stomach/faint-of-heart: The footage is nothing short of grotesque.

4. Darfur's Smallest Witnesses

Very often, though increasingly less so, the perspectives of children in conflict are left out of mainstream debate, perhaps because most people don't know how to talk to children who've been through such an experience. Dr. Annie Sparrow, and observer with Human Rights Watch, gave Darfuri refugee children crayons and paper, with the idea to "just let them draw whatever they wanted to draw, and that way they reveal what is foremost in their minds."

5. In Darfur, My Camera Was Not Enough

Produced by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), this video includes a brief history of the conflict in Darfur with the photos and eye-witness testimony of Brian Steidle, of The Devil Came on Horseback fame. Steidle's pictures comprise the most full and stark documentation of the violence in Darfur.

6. Samantha Power: Responding to Genocide in Darfur

Samantha Power discusses the tangible results of civic activism on Darfur-linking the "little green bracelets" with action. She also briefly touches on a key challenge of that activism: How does one, as an activist, approach an overwhelmingly tragic conflict in such a way as to have impact? Her mention of "justice a la carte" deserves serious attention.

7. Night and Fog

Night and Fog, perhaps the most famous Holocaust documentary, was produced in France in 1955 to show the horrors of the Nazi concentration camp system. The film was my first exposure to the Holocaust-an experience I remember quite vividly, nearly 15 years later.

8. Victims of Srebrenica finally buried

The commentary in this video is not particularly remarkable (which is not to say it's bad...just not mind-blowing), but the image of the neatly-arranged blue coffins is, I find, quite profound in its seeming simplicity. Given that this burial ceremony occurred 13 years after the Srebrenica massacre, the video also shows that the experience of genocide stays with a victimized community long after the killing actually ends.

9. Taner Akcam: Why is the Armenian Genocide Important?

Akcam offers a very succinct answer to the question, which applies more generally to all genocides, not just the Armenian. Point #3 is particularly important: "If you want to say the sentence never again, it can be possible if a society faces its history."

10. Save the worst for last: The absolute wrong way to present and teach kids about genocide

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDEPRnMJWTs

I agree, strongly-emphatically, even-that genocide education is crucial. However, the adult(s) responsible for this video took an appallingly wrong approach to the rather delicate task of education kids on the horrors of the world. (No offense to the kids, they didn't know any better.) I add this video here as a type of warning. Simplistic reenactments accomplish nothing.

The embedding funciton on this video was disabled by request. I would like to emphasize that I am NOT criticizing the kids in this picture. They don't know any better, and are completing a task as assigned. But the adults behind this should know better, and I think it's important to expose that. You're welcome to disagree with me.