 Good morning. Well, that was pretty good. That was pretty good My name is Joe Hewitt. I'm vice president for policy learning and strategy here at the United States Institute of Peace And I am just delighted that you could join us today for this event, which I think is going to be really special I want to welcome you to the US Institute of Peace and I especially want to welcome our diplomatic colleagues who were able to join us today. I want to welcome everybody who has joined us for the live stream I understand that we have a group of students at Avila University Who have gathered to join and watch this as well. So welcome to you in Kansas City, Missouri This is great. This is really great Look, USIP understands that The causes and consequences of violent conflict Are experienced differently by women and girls compared to men and boys That's just the reality and we're past the point Of debating whether gender matters in conflict. Of course it does Because we understand that USIP is committed to the integration of gender into project design Into monitoring and evaluation Into all the efforts that we do in learning We have to do that. Our programs won't be effective If we fail to integrate gender into all aspects of our programming USIP's slogan is making peace possible And we know this that peace is really not possible Without the full and meaningful participation of women in conflict prevention and peace building And so it really is that important. It's a prerequisite So We're really thrilled today on International Women's Day To organize this event and do something I think very special In recognition of International Women's Day and National Women's History Month during March USIP has organized a series of public events Designed to highlight and to further Examine the complex roles that women play During conflict and in advancing peace Today we'll celebrate women's leadership and contributions to peace and security And how the power of film Can harness can be harnessed to drive positive change In context that have been affected by violent conflict It is now my very great pleasure to introduce Kathleen Keynest Who has been at USIP for more than 10 years leading the integration of gender into all the work we do She is the director of the gender policy and strategy team That's part of the policy learning and strategy center. So please join me in welcoming Kathleen Wonderful. Thank you so much and happy International Women's Day It is so fabulous to see friends and colleagues here to celebrate this day. Thank you Over the next two hours, we are going to commemorate International Women's Day by focusing on some of our successes Please tweet at hashtag women's day USIP And all of the panelists bios in your agenda also have their twitter handles So Today we're not going to focus on the continuing bad news About women's status in the world Yes, we know the gaps are big And we know the challenge is great And the road ahead is long Instead, however, we're going to take this time to celebrate what we believe Is a great success for women Where we have made progress Where we know that the impact is real and delivering change Some of the most remarkable successes of the last decade are the result of a genre of film Made by women and about women telling their stories of what it is like to be a woman surviving war and building peace The success is one of unparalleled partnerships with filmmakers NGOs media policy makers And the courageous women that make nonviolent action A calculated path to changing the world for themselves their families their communities and their country You will hear directly from the change makers who are helping to make The invisible visible by retelling important stories about women through the medium of film These films have brought forward women's critical voices to the stories of war and peace And have amplified the global agenda of women peace and security as it was conceived in un security council resolution 1325 Reflecting over my last decade here at the institute I have seen lasting impacts from these films as they have expanded our understanding of warm peace through the eyes of women The genre of film has helped shape our ideas Our policies and our programs And so we are here today to celebrate this film movement and the individuals who have been making it happen Before I introduce our distinguished keynote speaker and panelists I want though to take a moment and reflect about international women's day Just after the collapse of the soviet union. I was living in a country a new country called kyrgyzstan And during one very incredible Winter cold winters day and that's cold because i'm from minnesota if i'm saying how cold it was There was this national holiday where all the Government was shut down Suddenly people were handing me flowers chocolate greeting me congratulating me and i'm like what's going on here, right? Well, I had never experienced an international women's day here in the united states and so I was so taken aback by this idea of recognizing women's contribution To the society at hand So i'm really pleased two decades later that International women's day is becoming the norm here And so just to help celebrate it a little bit and to Get you moving because we want to have a really great Discussion with you through this panel I'm going to ask you to join me and a little polling and it's a very simple activity If you've done this or experienced this i'm going to ask you to stand up. All right very simple Great, also it allows people to who are coming in a little late to integrate All right, so How about this? Please stand up if you have ever celebrated international women's day. This is a gimme All right. All right. That's good. That's good All right, you can sit down look around Uh, by the way, the united nations made it an official day in 1975 During the year of the woman But it has actually been celebrated since the early 1900s around the world which is a whole another story a good one though All right. Now i'm going to get a little bit harder Please stand up if you have ever met a woman Nobel Peace Prize winner All right, this is good Thank you considering there's only been 16 out of 131 that is a really good showing All right Okay, this might be a gimme two but Please stand up if you've ever participated in a non-violent movement All right. Look around this is going to be a good group today. Thank you All right, and finally finally Please stand up if you have ever seen the film pray the devil back to hell All right. Well, that's great because for all of those who didn't see it We're going to now introduce a two-minute clip Because by the way, this is the 10th anniversary of this remarkable film And uh, yes And uh, it's so It is really a pleasure to not only introduce the film to you in a two-minute clip But also it's producer abigail disney A filmmaker philanthropist CEO and the president of fork films That's like spoon fork fork films, right? Just I wanted to make sure people understand As abby already knows i'm really one of her biggest fans I first met her at the dc launch of pray the devil back to hell in 2008 And I realized then that abby was blazing a new trail and an important genre of film As she said it so well that night We grew up thinking about war through the lens of john wane's pith helmet And what abby has done in her notable series on women war and peace is bring a new lens of understanding war and peace through the eyes of women, so Please well Join me in welcoming abby disney to the podium Well, good morning to you all and happy international women's day And i'm just going to actually ask you to give that the appropriate happy international women's day That's more what we were looking for. Thank you um I just want to thank usip for organizing this and and joe and maria and More than anybody kathleen keen has to spend such a champion at this film from the beginning and such an ally and a friend to me And synom anderlene is here um and synom has been at this longer than most any of us um and for um a long period of time Was maybe the only voice in a lot of rooms seeing what she's saying and that takes a very special kind of courage So i want to thank her for her years of work Exactly 10 years ago today. I was standing in the town hall in srebrenica With an audience that was half muslim and half serb Screening pray the devil back to hell for the first time for a public audience of any kind Um, so I why bosnia? Have to go backwards and explain that Um swanee hunt many years ago also a voice for this issue long before anybody else and very courageously speaking up Asked me to come with her in 2006 to light barrier because we just elected a they just elected a woman president there And i was interested in women's political leadership and had been uh philanthropist on the issue And she thought it could come along and be helpful as a philanthropist and I said to my husband the night before I left um i'm going to a country right out of a civil war. There's still 14 000 un peacekeepers there I've never been to that kind of a context and I knew there would be unspeakable suffering and and It would be hard And I said to my husband You know i'm going to go there and i'm going to see something and it's going to make me feel obligated To do something or say something and I don't have time to be obligated, right? I don't I've got busy life And I've got to do the bake sales and take the kids to school and the rest of it Um, I don't want an obligation on my plate and he said well, then that's all the more reason you have to go You got to go and see what's calling to you and I thought it would be a sad thing And it was exactly what happened and it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me personally in my life Because in fact I found my life there and I found relationships of ships and friendships That will last me a lifetime um and also a purpose The story of what the women did in Liberia Was sort of hanging in the air just hanging there people would refer to it and refer to it It was a little bit like a ghost story, you know sort of Ephemeral and and and hovering and what I now understand as I look back was That's what a story looks like Right before it disappears Right before Sacajawea disappears and right before all the women we know Disappear that's what they look like is a ghost story A nice story an anecdote Um and when I heard what the women had accomplished I remember choosing the single most conventional looking guy I'd ever seen in my life this British guy with sort of too much gin so his cheeks were a little pink and it's a little tubby and uh And I thought you're really invested in how Uh things need to be normal and describable And the way they've always been so I'm going to ask you about this story And see if you deny it and I asked him about it and he said no not only did those women Bring peace here to Liberia, but there's CNN footage of me climbing out the window Um at the peace talks and that's when it clicked in for me Now I never wanted to make a film and I didn't go to Liberia with the intention of making a film Um, and you can only lose with my last name if you decide to go into the film business But uh, but I came home obsessed and uh, eventually got started on pray the devil back to hell Now I get invited to go places. I got invited to go to Bosnia when we were almost finished with the film I think it was the november before 2008 and uh, I was in shrugger nitsa and I was Having one of those visits that if you've traveled a lot and you've met with women who've been through conflict and things you have these meetings where everyone sits in a circle and The leader of the group asks them to go around in a circle and tell you What the war was like for them and these are hard meetings and I've had a million of them and they are Never fun. Um, but what the women went through in shrugger nitsa is, uh Just beyond comprehension and what I have encountered in every one of these meetings is not only do they describe to you something that is so beyond your Capacity to imagine Um, but they also describe it to you in such a way that They they they not only got through it. They they found a way to become Not victims but resources they found a way to lead They found a way to remake the story of the worst thing into A story of rising Um, they were so like the women in Liberia that I have been working with and sitting in an edit room and watching For now a little over a year And so I as when the when the circle gets around to you sort of the donor and the person with the magic wand That hopefully can fix everything for them and they're waiting to hear what you have to say It's very difficult sometimes to find that's not me is it? No, that wasn't me. That was you That was my friend You know, it's hard to know what to say in those moments because you don't know whether or not You're going to be able to use your magic wand and fix everything for them and money isn't going to fix everything for them anyway But you want to honor what they've said You want to reflect that you've heard it But you also want to leave them Somewhere not in the circling the drain position that you've found yourself in And so I thought why don't I try telling them this story and see how they feel about it? And so I launched into a very animated. Sorry pun intended Um Version of what had happened in Liberia And when I got to the end of the story truly the room in the the energy in the room had completely altered And they said to me you have to bring this film back That wasn't an option these women were demanding and you don't mess with these women and Srebrenica You do not say no to them So I promised them I'd come back and so we organized the screening on international women's day And what happened in that room as the lights came up after the film was astonishing I'd never experienced it before in my life, but it turned out to be the first of 82 countries 32 for me Were exactly the same thing unfolded and it was kind of extraordinary. There was some Russelling and people reaching for Kleenexes and the lights are coming up and they're reorganizing themselves some of them have been retraumatized and Actually are a little angry about that, but most of them are really sitting quietly and collecting themselves and there's some Reflection on the trauma and the pain that goes on for maybe about five or ten minutes. Um, and then it pivots To someone saying but that woman reminded me of myself And that woman right minded me of my cousin and that woman down the street tried something a lot like what that lemma did And then 15 to 20 minutes you can set your watch by it There's a woman who stands up and says well, that's what they did in Liberia. What are we going to do in Srebrenica? What are we going to do in Kosovo? What are we going to do in Tbilisi? What are we going to do in the Congo in the Sudan and on and on and on and I felt like the best midwife on the planet Because again and again and again I watched a movement happened right before my eyes What was so magical about this film? I I really you know I hadn't had any experience in the in the in the women peace and security sector was sort of a baby sector anyway It didn't in fact formally exist in a lot of places But I had been speaking at a kind of theoretical level For a couple of years with swanian other people I had certainly had myself deeply entrenched in the women's movement locally in new york and across the united states And so there were certain things that came naturally to me certain presumptions that I brought with me that That I think were informing our process That made us craft a film that was the film that needed to be made and and frankly because I had had so much exposure to women's movements and particularly grassroots women led movements And wasn't of the documentary community, but I had enough of an experience of the language of film To understand what what drove a good story I think we were able to do What was essentially we turned it into a bit of a primer a primer if you will for nonviolent organizing There was there was so much of the strategy in what these women accomplished it was So remarkable and so we wanted to make sure that there was a little bit of everything in the film being mocked Which is a very important part of trying to dismiss a nonviolent movement and dismiss women's movements Being threatened, of course always the second thing that happens The sex strike which is very important because gender figures into this every step of the way The feeling of despair and that you'll never get anywhere which every nonviolent movement Encounters sometimes for long long periods of time and one of the most important things was getting home after the victory And not presuming that the victory itself alone was enough But continuing the work and going forward and continuing to protest There are so many elements in this that I've seen other movements Talk to each other about and speak about The film has done some extraordinary things at birth Not for profit called pieces loud, which is something Jamie's going to tell you about later And it also spawned this series Which reached almost 13 million American viewers Called women war and peace and and as Kathleen alluded to The idea of telling a story About what the women know and when they know it Is an entirely different proposition Than telling the usual war story While we were making women war and peace there were days when we had four edit rooms open simultaneously And I would go from Bosnia to Columbia to Afghanistan In a single day talking about the different circumstances of these different stories And there were days when the Bosnian women the afghan women the columbian women Would say something In all three different languages that was essentially the same And it was kind of astonishing because when you talk to combatants about war They have a very clear picture of what they're talking about and it's very particular They tell you about the weapons and the politics and the landscape and the terrain and the history and the ethnicity and Everything they want to talk about what kind of bullets they were using And what was the caliber of the mortar shell that landed in the camp Women when they talk about war they talk about fire Because that's all a missile is is fire in a missile in a capsule Designed to explode with maximum damaging capacity They talk about fear. They talk about mourning and grief They talk about running They talk about where's the water? Where's the food? Where's the electricity? Where's the education? Where's the health care? What women do in wartime and the reason the Bosnian women and all the women in succession recognize themselves in this film is universal You know, my grandmother had this expression when I was growing up that doesn't at all mean what I now use it to mean She used to say the devil is in the details. You know the expression The devil is in the details because it's hard to get details straight But the devil is also in details because sometimes if you let yourself be drawn into details If you let yourself care a lot about the caliber of the missile and not who the missile landed on It's a way of not thinking about what it is that you're actually doing And I think that that is what happens when we glamorize violence when we almost eroticize violence in most of our popular culture I have I have a theory that when you when you think about the quintessential soldier Many of us think about Rambo and many of us think about this guy and he's sweaty and he's got these bandoliers and he's just the Essence of masculinity and self-determination and all the rest of this and this is the image Of war that and particularly American media has been selling Around the world for a really long time. I think of the weapons as the hardware and the media as the software um I think women get written out of this story for a very particular reason and it has to do with the way the details Disappear they are just ephemera in the face of what women Truly live in more time. So if you take that image of Rambo All by himself at the jungle with his ak-47 And surround him and with women And not women and children. Please not let's not ever say that again women And the children and elderly and sick and disabled and all the lore and the traditional knowledge and the cooking and the access to everything that they need Women and all the things that people depend on them for around him And he looks completely different. He looks actually horrible. He doesn't look like a romantic person He doesn't look like a person you want to be you're I know that I would think well, what are you doing man? Put the gun down Because the gun has no place in that narrative Women ruin the narrative women ruin war And that's just exactly the point so um These films went on to be seen in 82 countries on all seven continents seven count them That includes Antarctica because I am a scrappy scrappy girl But uh Just this year in 2017 Lama bowie was back in Liberia Screening pray the devil back to hell to an entirely new generation of young people Who were preparing themselves for an election that had everybody on edge and she was fighting hard To calm the people before the election lest there be violence and she wrote me From Liberia and said You know, I think I forgot to appreciate what we accomplished with that film because I am watching Audience after audience of high school kids be utterly altered by this There were two things that people said to me in the aftermath of screenings that I'll always hold with me very dear One was from the crown prince of Norway prince hakon We showed it in davos to all the fancy people actually tita brown introduced lama bowie to mick jagger there and uh, and she looked at me and said who's that ugly man? He said he has a neck like a chicken Anyway, um, he said to me I've always known that it was important that women be involved in peace and conflict resolution I just could never picture it before And I feel like I have a picture now And that is profound because I remember the meetings before the films and they were boring And they were people staring off into the distance and they were people just talking in abstractions and people thinking in theory None of it was ever going to hit the ground. None of it was ever going to have a concrete purpose But wow that made a difference and the other was from a young man in um Congo in kinshasa Who came to us? We had a screening that was predominantly male because we were so stupid We had a screening after dark and no woman in her right mind and kinshasa is leaving her house after dark Nevertheless it turned out to be a wonderful screening because we had about 40 men there And one of the men came up to me afterwards and said, you know I used to think women couldn't really do much of anything And I'm now I'm feeling kind of differently And that made me so proud that Um landed on me along with the emails I've gotten from people who've changed their professions and emails I've gotten from women now who are war correspondents who said I became a war correspondent because I saw your film in high school for the high school teacher I just encountered two days ago who told me I show it every semester to every class I have um I feel like The The fact that we were telling their story from their point of view Is what made a difference stories matter one of the most important things that I was disciplined to do by my partner an amazing genius director genie reddiker was Stop telling people things stop giving them information Information will kill story Its story is the heart. It's the same as caring about the caliber of your weapon As opposed to what's actually happening in story time and voices matter You know the bottom across the street has never been foggier Um, but peace comes from the bottom up That's the thing I haven't learned more than anything else and Empowering the women at the ground level to do what is that comes most naturally to them We will stop seeing them as victims and people who suffer and more time We will understand them as the repositories of every single thing that we need For profoundly building peace in a constructive way in the 21st century. Thank you While everybody with the panelists are joining us here at the front of the stage Would you just take a moment around you and if there's somebody you don't know, please introduce yourself to them This is a great audience and you should just just take that second It's not any day It's beautiful. Thank you. No, they changed the podium. Oh Yeah, it's great It's like it's like a birthday party So your water is there great and if you need anything please do that All right. All right. I think we're back at it Whoops. Whoops. All right. Now that I've All right. Thank you so much for doing that. That just warmed up the whole auditorium here and Now we're going to get into a discussion and also Discussion with you all but first we're going to hear from each of our panelists here today And I want to first introduce our co-moderator my colleague my friend Maria Stefan Maria is the director of the program on non-violent action here at the u.s. Institute of peace She has a remarkable background And i'm going to ask you to refer to her bio as we're going to very briefly introduce all our distinguished panelists For the sake of time Forgive us because they all have amazing Amazing background so We want to kick this off each one of our panelists is also going to share a brief Video of their work and so you're going to get a nice Kind of sense of like I call this the genre of the women peace and security films abby has set the framing because Really what we're talking about is how these films have made impact And we hope you walk out of this room today going And thinking differently about the role of film in changing minds and hearts And as you pointed out so well abby changing direction of people's lives including your own So i'm going to begin here with Jamie dolby is the executive director of peace is loud It's not quiet. It's loud right and it is a leading nonprofit that uses personal narratives to expand The reach and influence of women at the decision-making tables. Jamie tell us about How this kind of work has come to be like peace is loud And also this series and begin talking a little bit about that impact Sure. Well, thank you Kathleen and thank you marianne usip for Providing this opportunity for the women peace and security community to come together around storytelling. It's really exciting It's the space that peace is loud operates in and it's a fun way to celebrate international women's day. So thank you As you mentioned i'm the director of peace is loud and we are a nonprofit founded by abby that as she said Kind of grew out of her work on pray the devil back to hell When she and her director Ginny reddicker began screening the film as you heard for women globally You know, they they realized pretty quickly what a universal story This was women they were at the center of conflict and peace building efforts All across the globe, but the platforms didn't really exist for their stories to be told because as abby Very eloquently said the story of war was so often and is so often the story of combatants and perpetrators It's uh, you know, it's the the story of men and so abby and ginny together with wnet and pbs Turn pray the devil back to hell into the five-part series women war and peace to look at conflict Through the eyes of women in afghanistan bosnia columbia and and libiria as you heard and peace is loud was launched as the impact partner for the series And as an organization that would focus on using media You know beyond the series to expand the reach and influence of women peace builders We've since grown pieces loud to include a speaker's bureau. We have a whole impact campaign service arm for documentary films We have a women's political participation program mean as list But women war and peace is our origination story. And so I'd like to just show a short trailer From the first series, which many of you in the audience have have Probably seen and then I'll talk just a little bit about about its impact and what we've learned along the way and how we're Building a new campaign With those with those lessons so so I want to share a quote from former ambassador melanne verveer Reflecting on the series just recently. She said when women war and peace aired on national public television It was the first time the idea was put forward into mainstream media that the full participation of women in public life Is essential to building strong vibrant democracies The series made this concept relatable and urgent and it changed the way women's participation and rights are talked about around the world And I share the quote because you know, it's the idea of making women peace and security Relatable and urgent that is at the heart of our work at pieces loud You know, I I believe Strongly that storytelling has the power to create empathy and understanding to change beliefs perceptions priorities the way we all live in the world And we've seen women war and peace do this in partnership with so many of you in in this room We've seen how the series has advanced maintenance of the women peace and security agenda And there are just a few ways i'll touch on you know briefly that that I think we've you know, we've seen this series Operate one is you know the films. They really inform and mobilize, you know people they translate Kind of you know, sometimes wonky policy issues for for general audiences who aren't sort of well versed in In the policy agenda and that's important because you know, it's it's general audiences who for example in the u.s Or the constituents who put pressure on policy makers to change the way that they legislate As abby said over 13 million people saw the series on pbs when it first aired and that wasn't just coasts That was all across the country And we built a social media Audience across our platforms of 70 000 people and that's continuing Continuing to grow today. You can follow us women war and peace on On facebook it continues to be a really engaged community And that awareness raising is you know, I think the culture change work that takes time and the results aren't necessarily As kind of immediate and neatly kind of packaged for for funders as the clear cause and effect this film You know Influence this passage of this piece of legislation and that work is is important But I would argue that the culture change work is is just as important And in trying to kind of measure that and capture that a little bit what we did with the first series was We worked with a group of computer scientists at at university of illinois to do a kind of semantic analysis study And look at media discourse on the topic of women war and peace And what the analysis showed us was over a period of time both prior to the broadcast And then after After the series was was launched a significant increase in media coverage on women in conflict from stories of just Women as solely victims of human rights abuses kind of in need of protection to stories of women as actors Negotiators human rights defenders and witnesses. So that felt really significant Second, you know, the films have been used as advocacy tools all over the world as abby Mentioned by practitioners to build constituencies and also to you know influence policymakers We've seen the films used to advocate for country national action plans for more effective implementation of 1325 Just uh Just last year, which is a full six years after this series came out The films were used in countries uganda kenya the drc south sudan barundi to advocate for inclusive peace and security processes so the films just continue to To serve this this purpose and lastly is you know, we've seen the films Used effectively as educational resources and tools and I would say that's especially important with the newly past women peace and security act which calls for You know more kind of robust training and education on women peace and security I think storytelling has an extremely important role to play in classrooms You know, I'd argue and You know the the agenda is can be very broad that women peace and security agenda It encompasses a lot of ideas and and you know, sometimes there's even You know conflict within the community about you know, where the focus of the agenda should be Is it about women's inclusion and peace processes? Is it about women's political participation? I mean, I think it's about all of those things. It's not kind of mutually those ideas aren't mutually exclusive and I think film You know, it can present all of those ideas and truths together and really invite reflections So wonderful. Thanks so much. I'm going to turn it over to Maria Yeah, I have the honor of asking suad baba the first set of questions So suad is the executive director of just vision and your organization just released a new documentary film called nila in the uprising About the little known story of nonviolent resistance led by women palestinian women during the first intifada of the late 80s And it's also part of the second women war in peace series And now the popular depiction of the first intifada is not necessarily one of nonviolent resistance So what is the story that you wanted to tell? Why did you do this film? Maria? Thank you. That's a fantastic question Can you guys all hear me? Okay. Yeah, fantastic It's really wonderful to be with all of you today on international women's day And in order to get to the heart of that question, I wanted to take a step back to share a little bit about just vision And who we are i'm the executive director. I have the privilege of leading a team of filmmakers storytellers journalists and human rights advocates and We tell the stories of palestinians and israelis who are working to end occupation and build a future freedom dignity and equality for all At the end of the day our work is about finding the role models who embody those values and then amplifying their work So that they can inspire others gain traction and influence both within their communities across communities And certainly in the international community where so much of this work on israel palestine is happening And so many interventions for better or for worse and mostly for worse these these days and for the last several decades Are taking place And part of the reason that we do this work at in its essence and abby Beautifully spoke to this stories matter deeply and they they matter across issue areas This is true to of israel palestine when we look at The dominant stories that are making it into the news on the israeli palestinian context I think most of you would agree with me that the stories tend to reinforce this narrative of violence and top down political failure Literally politicians running around in suits running the show Or about their latest political scandal Or armed men front and center and that story tells us a very problematic narrative It tells us that this is intractable that this is never going away This is always how it's been and there's nothing that we can do about it It also misses the very people who are doing something about it It misses the courageous community organizers the activists the journalists the voices of dissent that every day civilians every day folks like you and me Who are putting their bodies and lives on the line non violently to create a different future in the region And we believe that those stories have tremendous power in changing the narrative on this issue Inspiring people to get involved and also moving people to action as I think jamie so beautifully spoke about in the sort of numerous ways that film has galvanized Action and galvanized change Now i'm sitting. I want to Speak very specifically to this question of women's stories. Why women's stories now for me That question is answered both because of the values that drive me and also because of strategy It's about what works right i'm i'm gonna in transparency. I'm a feminist I will claim that identity through and through I believe in the inherent equality of every human being I believe that women like every other human being should be at every single table I also believe that women's inclusion is an indicator of how pluralistic our societies Truly are and truly can be and so I think that there's important value there But it's also it's about what works understanding the role of women's leadership is understanding what works I'm sitting on a panel with some of the foremost experts in the field people who have Studied and researched the role of women in non-violent civil resistance movements Maria has been someone who's informed our work. I've been following abby's work for Such a long period of time with great admiration and sanam and jamey and kathleen and what we've seen in the research is that For political and social movements They are most likely to succeed when they're non-violent Now what's even more striking to me is that Whether a movement is able to maintain a non-violent strategy has nothing to do with its political leanings It has nothing to do with how repressive a regime is It actually the greatest predictor is actually the way that movement Orients its ethos around women in public life and leadership. That's profound Now we've seen that reinforced in our work in israel palestine time and again We've been in the field for about 14 years and a few years ago We began research for what would become nile in the uprising Now when we began that research, we were compelled by two things One many of the activists that we had worked with For the last decade had shared with us look The first into feta is this iconic period of palestinian nonviolent civil resistance It's the most important period of palestinian history in terms of the resistance movement on the ground in terms of what it achieved And yet this ephemeral quality what did it that abby referenced earlier? What did it actually look like what did it take to pull off? Our generation people who are in their 20s 30s 40s have very little access to what that looked like Now the second piece of that was that the dominant narrative internationally in particular I mean for those of us who live through that period the dominant images are likely going to reinforce The very same tropes that we see in the media around this issue today incident by incident reporting that zooms in on stone throwing molotov cocktails military incursions And what we knew was that that story was incomplete at best That what it missed was the marches and the tax strikes the boycotts the sit-ins the victory gardens the underground classrooms all nonviolent civil disobedience tactics tried and true Time and again in some of the greatest social movements of our time from the u.s civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s To india's struggle for liberation to the movement to end apartheid in south africa to liberia and so on And yet those stories were not documented in the way the story was told And so we wanted to find out and tell and tell that story now what surprised us in our research And also that what was very What was actually even less documented and very little known in both palestinian and israeli society Um was Was really interesting to us. We knew that women participated in the movement right part of the reason the first into feds It was so successful was that it was able to mobilize And mobilize very different than what i'm about to share mobilize across gender age class political factions What we didn't realize was the 18 months that are considered the most disciplined and effective period of that movement Women were at the helm They were literally calling the shots and were thrilled to be tag teaming with fork films and pieces loud Is to make sure that people like nila ayish and the thousands of others like her are celebrated But importantly that their legacy and their lessons are passed down to the next generation They did something remarkable. They were able to put palestinian people on the map Literally forcing the world to recognize the right of self-determination for the palestinian people for the first time They changed the course of diplomatic relations on this issue Importantly, they also understood that their own freedom was bound up in confronting gender inequality as they struggled for self-determination When we talk about intersectionality today when we talk about the importance of looking at holistic issue areas looking at our communities holistically They were ahead of their time ahead of the game But we also know that these stories are important not only for those rising in israel and palestinian. They're also Important lessons for communities around the globe We're all wrestling with some very deep questions right now about the role of our communities the role of the grassroots What leadership looks like what we should be demanding of our political leaders when we're thinking about the well-being of all of our communities And you know when I think about the reason that I do this work what inspires me to do this work is very much bound up with impacts It's knowing that and seeing firsthand time and again What happens when audiences see stories like this when palestinian community organizers tell us That after seeing a story like budrus our last feature length film Their community held the most disciplined and well-attended nonviolent action to date when I talk to young israelis Who tell us that after seeing stories like this they can no longer serve in the israeli military? By the way, they're mandated to enlist in the israeli military It is considered one of the highest badges of honor in israeli society So when you have a conscientious objector it means something profound I'm I'm inspired when I'm working with young folks and organizers who are working with dreamers in arizona Border communities in texas Organizing around racial justice in st. Louis and they see something like niland uprising and they say to me Can I please use this as a tool in my own organizing efforts? Because the systems that we're facing look very familiar even though they're different and the inspiration is one in the same And the best practices are something that are universal That to me is inspiration. That's impact. I'm looking forward to talking a little bit more about what we've seen in the research around our work When we get into q&a, I also know that each of the panelists will be speaking more on this question of impact both qualitatively and anecdotally as so many of the storytellers in the room know intuitively And i'm looking forward to diving in and following up on that Thanks so much to ha that really adds a fuller dimension to our our conversation here today Our next panelist is sanam anderlini who may be well known here around washington She's also well known around the world. She's the executive director and co-founder of international civil society Action network, otherwise known as ican She had a pen in helping to craft the un security council resolution 1325 and is a formidable voice for women around the world living in war Sanam, why is it that these films have been so effective in your opinion? Especially around the issues of women in peace building and tell me a little bit about how you've integrated it into your own work Thank you. It's great to be your happy international women's day everyone It's 101 years that that this day exists. So it's fabulous to see it continue and growing As I hear the the various speakers and and kind of reflect back on You know, I started this work in 1996 So, um, it's interesting to see the evolution and and it comes down to a few things number one money We didn't have the resources we got resolution 1325 with a grant of 180 000 dollars from the ford foundation at the time Which included mobilizing around the world having to do posters having to do Going into regional meetings and so forth and making it to the security council, right? That was all the money we had now to combine that with the technology of the time Photographs digital photographs printing film was so beyond the scope of Of the resources that an NGO could have let alone women's organizations all around and and so forth So so the fact that technology has enabled us now to actually have good images and be able to share them is extraordinary the fact that We see I mean the the financial question I think is still a problem because even in my own organization If I'm and you'll see I'll show you a clip now of the animations that we do But if I'm thinking am I going to spend five thousand dollars on producing a five minute animation versus Five thousand dollars that I could be giving to you know as a grant to our Tunisian partner who's here or to our afghan partner or to a yemeni partner that five thousand dollars on the ground goes an Awful long way. It really truly does when it's in the right hands, right? So so the the financial side of the story is always a question that we have to address But at the same time For me, it's always been about storytelling. Also, I I'm a I'm a writer I'm a I I like creative writing. I was in marketing before I even came into this into this field So this idea of how do you communicate ideas and how do you get people sort of bought into it? It's not an intellectual exercise. It really is about getting to the heart to then get to the mind um, and and so it's always been a it's always been there and And I think about it because the first time I came across this idea of women Being out there and literally living in this parallel invisible universe from the standpoint of the international community Was sitting in a room in 1998 in london We had been talking about women around the world women's peace activism around the world And we did a conference where we brought 50 women from 50 different conflict zones And it was that universality that abby's talking about from Guatemala and from afghanistan and from palestine and and from rwanda And it was for me personally as I one of the stories that struck me was A rwandese woman who It was four years after the genocide 800,000 people had been killed in a country with seven million population Right, so so we're talking about over 10 of the population and this lady stood up And she said I have to work for peace. We have to work for the future We have to reconcile we have to think about what comes next for the future future generations And I kept looking at her eyes And and it was there were those saddest eyes I had ever seen and I was you know, all of I don't know 26 27 years old and um And I discovered later that she had lost a hundred relatives In the genocide And I come from a gigantic family. We're all over the world And it's the only thing that kept has kept us sane in in 40 years since the since the iranian revolution It's the it's the fact that we belong to a family not we don't belong to any place anymore And I and I and I sat there and I thought I don't know what I would do if anybody touched one of my relatives Let alone a hundred of them Right, I don't know whether I would have it in me to become a piece To to look beyond and and try and take something so horrific and bring something so extraordinary out of it And that's what put me firmly in the space of saying i'm going to work with women because I kept hearing those stories My colleague visaka and sir lanka lost her son and she wanted to talk to the tamels Right, it's in syria right now in yemen in afghanistan in all of the places we're working Even in the united states I came across women who had lost their their sons in in the towers in 9 11 And they decided to set up nonprofits to work on on issues of social cohesion It's on the one hand. It's there's a universality around it on the other hand These are extraordinary people because many people can become angry or despondent But if you find that gem of a person who can take out of adversity and do something extraordinary They're the people I want running the world, right? And they're the people that I will do anything for to enable their voices to to be heard So that's really the starting point for me now in the in the 25 years that I've been doing this I've written books. I've written papers. I've you know, I've talked to all all sorts of stuff And we we went from a place of people saying what women peace security what to why why women women are victims To oh, okay. Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, we have this resolution. Yeah, yeah, but it's you know, it's it it's really It it it's really our values. It's all their values, right? So you have all these variations of this thing to finally the point where it's like, okay So we get this now. How do we do it? What is it that you want us to do? Um, and for me that was where I was like, we've written all this stuff Somehow it's not resonating. I'm dealing with mediators UN mediators who I used to think were like the best in the world and and you know all these guys that run around trying to save the world Um, who would say things to us such as Um, don't give me things to read. I want it on the size of a credit card Right, these are people who are who are meant to go out and deal with Syria or Yemen And they wanted the information on one piece of paper because I don't know they couldn't be bothered to read I'm not sure what the problem is. I like to read but whatever, right? so so this this challenge of on the one and the The what and the how and the why to make it really resonate with their with their hearts On the other hand the fact that they're not going to read and everything has to be in bite-sized forms. So, um I basically I was like, what else can we do when I'd seen animation? It had been very expensive a few years before but we figured out how to you know, there was there was new technology And so I decided well, why don't we try animation and try and do a you know four minute five minute pieces that take It's like chewable pieces of this agenda and just start explaining it through animation Our partners around the world actually translate the material for us So we have in Tamil and Urdu we have it in Japanese Chinese Arab Spanish And any frankly anybody who wants to translate we we give them the script and and and then we do the We we do the the voiceovers But what's amazing for me is that it's being used in Syria It's being used in all sorts of places. We don't know sometimes we get emails from people saying You know, we just did this with communities in various places I use them in my own trainings with at the senior high level senior mediation training for for the un and it's these are the special representatives and the envoys I also use it for the staff and I remember the the current head of the UN department of political affairs when he saw it He said those images that image that last image the images of those men with the guns and the women That keeps sticking in my mind and these this this was really important because we're talking about paradigm shifts I can't tell you how difficult it is to say to people Just because they have a gun shouldn't be the qualification to the table Just because they have a gun doesn't mean they're the only actors. There are other actors When I was in Somalia, it was all about power sharing There was a famine going on and I was like for god's sake you want to share power What about responsibility for the for the famine? So the framing of responsibility sharing was something that I brought into the UN discourse in the spaces that I was in But through these animations we're now making sure that it's in that in those higher level spaces But very importantly, it's also It being spread in the spaces in real time where people are struggling to get their voices in the women are getting their voices Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for bringing in that other element of how you're working with UN and others to change that paradigm So Eric Martin who is a senior strategist at independent television service We've uh had a conversation about poignant anecdotes of examples of how film has inspired Social change, but how do we really know that it's working? Now your organization just released probably the most comprehensive study done to date on the impact of Documentary film in an international development setting. What did you find from that study? Well, thanks so much. Um, I'm the odd one out and a lot of ways on the stage. It's great to be here Let me lean in a little bit So I tv s the organization I work for is the largest funder and presenter of documentary film for public television in the u.s If you're a filmmaker out there, you've either come and asked us for money or you will one day We uh We fund films. So you we know our films. Um, there are films like i'm not your negro this year's academy award nominated abacus The interrupters and ron waltz with this year the list goes on and on And uh once upon a time there was a film called pray the devil back to hell That we were a partial funder of as well. Um, and went on to fund part of women award piece That was actually the beginning of kind of an extraordinary chapter for us I don't know if it was a timing of your of what you were working on but The the floodgates of stories about women in international settings sort of opened up and we brought in tons and tons of films And it led to a project that i'm going to share the evaluation of called a women and girls league global Why don't we just roll the clip of that and give you a quick sense of what that was about I could act it out Interpretive Do we have the clip Well, I can keep talking while you look for it. Um, so Women and girls league global Grew out of this work that we'd done in the us for years and years What we've been doing is showing our films on public television here in the united states Doing engagement screenings and often being invited here in washington to show films for policy makers And some of those policy makers over at usa and started to ask us well, what if we could actually Use these films To support very specific Changes that we're going for in our global development work. Do you think you could do that? We're like we have no idea That's not what we do. That's what you do and so they teamed us up with behavior change specialists at uh at usa and in this world of washington where people talk like that and We worked with usa and the fort foundation um to craft this uh project women and girls league global Do we have the clip or not? Should we just skip it? Skip it? Okay So women and girls league global was a project five years five countries 37 films 60 partners 21 local objectives At least 45,000 people reached really directly plus millions on television The study that we got a couple weeks ago was done by the aspen planning and evaluation program And they were with us every step of the way and what they were looking at was How do these films actually Impact at the local level in the way that the development practitioners think about not in terms of policy not in terms of advocacy But what happens actually when you when you show these films and how can we study that? And what we found was really interesting even though we used the same group of films These are independent documentary films that were not made for use in global development. They are made by storytellers I loved what you said about storytellers who are really looking for that authentic voice. They're these people Our storytellers who are drawn by the characters. They're not necessarily trying to change minds and change behavior They're just drawn to the story But what we know is that spark as storytellers what we know is that spark can actually promote those changes So the study uh, and it's 178 pages. So there's something in there for everyone And you can find it at women and girls lead dot org What the study shows is that Even though these films were used in completely different settings Often for completely different purposes The same kind of films and pray the devil back to hell was one of the films that we used The same kind of films can be used to promote girls education in Peru Child marriage prevention in Bangladesh gender-based violence prevention in india and jordan Leadership in kenya. These are the things we worked on with those same body of film And that spark that happens at the screening what the study found was that They could move The practitioners in those facilitated screenings and we did a series of three screenings We would take three films and people would come to a first screening a second screening and a third screening And over that course we could move the dial 15 to 30 percentage points on pretty much a hugely wide range of knowledge and attitudes Um depending on the country depending on what they were working with now the next step of course is behavior change And behavior change varied much more widely Because that's where really the NGOs on the ground are the ones they're the ones that take that spark And turn it into whatever happens next and you've heard some great examples of what can happen next Um, but in the Bangladesh example for instance where we had Really amazing partners including the ministry of education In the 280 schools where those films were used Over those five years a child marriage rate dropped from one in 20 to one in a hundred And it was pretty much the same drop for girls dropping out of school and that was Statistically significant compared to the control schools so What we feel like we have in this evaluation Is part of a growing body of evidence That's not just coming from us but coming from other people here and other people out there in the documentary film and social change world That really shows that these films It's almost like the role of arts these films are made as art But art can be used to promote very tangible very measurable social change And so for practitioners out there who are looking for new ways and innovative ways to change the world Documentary film is a valid and now measurably Proven way to do that and I can't wait to talk because there's so many things to talk about But i'll just leave it there for now. Absolutely. Well, and we still might get your clip here. So thanks so much for your patience on that abby You've listened to all this Interested in this this catalyst. What do you think and what's next? well Many years ago One of the sparks for my interest in all this was writing my PhD dissertation in the English department at columbia and I wrote it about war novels and I was very influenced By a book by paul fuzzle a british scholar called the great war and modern memory and the book was essentially about How the literature that came out of world war one was very much determined By the fact that the that the young men from england who went to fight In world war one had all read the same books And been educated in the same literature And so when they went For instance To ipre where the you know and the som and and the places where the The earth was completely devastated by the number of mortar shells They were they were thinking about arcadia. They were thinking about the forest. They were thinking about Natural scenes in a particular way and so one thing came up against the other and generated this feeling of irony the And which you which characterizes all the literature that comes out of that war Ernest Hemingway very famously talks about how the word heroism is drained of all meaning and honor is drain of all meaning By the war and that came from a notion of honor That you know had been started with Homer and through tenison and all the way into world war one So there were all these frames of reference that gave the soldiers the way they went into the war And very much determined the way they behaved during the war and then what came out as literature Which influenced the next group of soldiers going into world war two and so forth So the interesting thing is we think of stories as things we mine reality for But they also generate reality in large measure and One of the things one of the narratives one of the stories that we tell and retell particularly in american society Is the hero story? We love the hero story where society of individuals we we think of the world in terms of Individual achievement and fame and getting rich and being an accomplished person and we don't think in collectives We don't think in groups and so the stories we want to attach to tend to have heroes or a central figure driving them Which is why we focus on gondi why we focus on king and mandela Knowing full well in fact that there's a collective story behind all of them and no single person the same with bad guys and That narrative Is giving us the reality that we live You know that narrative is why every journalist Missed the story that was lying there in pray the devil back to hell They all walked past it because it didn't relate to any narrative They understood they had been raised on the hero narrative They went to libya looking for a hero narrative and they came out of it without one because they couldn't couldn't recognize a collective story um There's a real resistance in in media to the role of Women and putting women at the centers of their stories because they have a way of forcing collectivity You know, I've been working over the years in a lot of different women's organizations And it was really hard to step into leadership in these organizations This is the worst thing about us is we have a tendency to pull each other down But I wonder if that's the flip side about the of the best thing about us Which is that we seem to be more comfortable working in horizontal lines rather than in vertical lines So what's next is I think Um We're sitting in a moment where media Is flattening media is democratizing media is spreading horizontally And and and becoming less of a vertical affair And I wonder if that is the perfect environment Um in which for women to really thrive In terms of making sure that our stories are heard in terms of making sure that that That that these collective narratives and the narratives that constantly get passed over Even when they're sitting in plain sight I mean as as suhad was saying they're sitting right there in front of you and they get passed up again and again and again um, I wonder if The popularization the democratization of the means by which we make media Will in fact lead to a different narrative starting to prevail And maybe creating a different consciousness Going into the way we talk about war the way we talk about peace going forward We're fighting gravity in a lot of ways, you know, and and so you see so many movements where there's a Of relatively happy ending, but then you go back afterwards and it's a little bit of a sad story I mean, I frankly Liberia is a bit that way and We really fought in trials of spring Because we're trying to tell a story that wasn't quite as depressing as it turned out to be So so many of these movements get dragged, you know back into the mud And and that is partly because The way the world is constructed rewards The kind of behaviors and the seeking of individual fame and glory and and power Um, in a way that just can't tolerate The way women operate So it it is going to take all of us pretty much never ever taking our foot off the gas Because it's it's gravity, but it's not eternal gravity. I don't think we don't have to fight gravity forever We this is the place where we can change gravity It's just that we have to recognize and dedicate ourselves to the idea that we won't see it in our lifetimes And the great people shoot for things that happen after they die And so that is the question will we all commit ourselves to building A better future that perhaps we'll never see Now that's that's a great That's a great way to prompt a wider conversation with the audience We're going to open up the questions or the we're going to open up the floor to you all in just a couple minutes But one one question I wanted to ask the full panel And you mentioned the hero's story and we tend to focus on the individual advice the the collective And I found at least you know in my work with activists and movements the film a force more powerful has had Particular allure and power because it does focus on the collective the strategies the tactics and has protagonist But it gets that kind of the organizing and the the collective action element But when it comes to uh the role of film, how how do films go from being sparks And catalysts to actual tools of social change So what does it mean to embed a film in a social change organization and movement and see it work effectively Floor's open I just I just want to give a flip side to this which which is uh, I came across it recently So on the one hand, you know We've been many of us have been used to this idea that there were no images of any of these wars No of the peace work and so forth right and and partly it continues because the folks that are in at real time You can't necessarily go film them right now. It's too dangerous right to or to expose them. So so we always have this challenge But I have a Syrian colleague who is all of 22 years old She grew up in the middle of this Aleppo in Aleppo in the middle of the war She went to Aleppo university. She became a humanitarian actor And then she became she has become a peace activist and and um and actually she's in new york right now But she became a peace activist and I saw her recently and she said She said people ask me why why have you become a peace activist? and she said because I was doing the humanitarian work and it was like band aid it just didn't stop And then one day on april such and such in 2013 somebody sent me a video clip of my university being bombed And I saw it and I got a call and they said everybody, you know has died And that was my moment of thinking enough We have to do something different and I started looking online And I she found me and she found others like me who speak who speak about these issues And that's what's different her and compelled her and she says, you know, I click on that video Every day every day. It's a reminder for me. But she said My friends who are university students who also see that It turned them into militias It has radicalized them to fight and they also It continued to click. It's a real time. It's not the past. It hasn't been erased. It's not receding It's ever present and this is something that is really dangerous if you think about it because There is so much more of that stuff than of the positive stuff people are dying for the positive stuff I hear it over and over where are your voices? Why aren't you in social media? Why aren't you out there? You know, but it's it's to do with resources But I think we have to recognize that when you have a war blow by blow on youtube That in itself is creating a whole new world that that we're also unaware of Can I jump in really quickly on that because I think that what you're getting at too is The image is the beginning of a process or our conversation And I think what we found in the study and what others have found is that It's the importance of that facilitated conversation That's what the evaluators came back to time and time again That was at a social norms conference at the kates foundation those people too time and time again It's about the facilitated conversation that happens around the images that the stories that we're telling and they can go one way Or they can go the other but it's about having you know So in our project we ended up training like 1300 facilitators embedded in organizations all around the world And we you know the project ends, but they're still there And that's what a lot of this work has been about your work and your work has been about building that capacity And those organizations that can take those stories that we're telling or just images that are out there But the challenge is I think how do you do that online? How do you do that in the places where it's actually Um, you don't have access to them. Who are going to be those facilitators? How do you fund it so it's And as you were talking Eric, you know one of the the Questions I had was whether the you know the study that you guys have developed Do you have any plans to take that out to funders and to you know just to to kind of make a case for For investing in this kind of storytelling Yeah, definitely, and I think it's not just this this is just one it's a big study But it's just one of many many out there and I think it's about a building. It's about a building group of evidence About the what what can happen with? Documentary film facilitator storytelling, but also other kinds of storytelling. It doesn't have to be documentary film It doesn't have to be full length things. It can be shorts. It can be animation. It can be You know edutainment has a role on all this. It's it's it just news channels. I mean everything And I'll you know, I just want to jump in because this ties into this question Maria that you're asking about How do you embed storytelling as a tool? Right. So our team at just vision when we emerged we knew that Storytelling was our tool that and like every tool you can use them negatively or positively personally I've seen storytelling play out in a number of ways, right? I grew up in post 9 11 I'm a muslim korean christian woman growing up in the united states And I've seen how narratives that are islamophobic and xenophobic Has not only impacted my direct family and and fbi surveillance of my family and muslim communities across the united states But has also driven entire wars across The worlds right I've also they also came out as a queer woman at 15 years old And as I was organizing story was my number one tool I told my story and I continued to tell my story and come out every single day And that's because story you have to reckon with it all of a sudden you have to reckon with my identity You have to reckon with who I am you have to check your assumptions all of these things And and so that's what drew me to story because you have profound capacity for good Then the question becomes once you have your story How do you make sure it's being utilized that it's being seen that you literally have eyeballs watching it That the messages and the themes and the lessons learned are being grappled with by key audiences that you're reaching those key audiences And those strategic audiences that you're surfacing very targeted Strategy and goals right and this is where outreach teams come into play There are there's a burgeoning field of impact campaigners Who are oftentimes the people that you don't see i'm going to point out emma albert in this audience who Overseas are outreach in the united states. She's a powerhouse, but you will rarely see her out in the limelight But she's the one who's making sure that the story in island up rising Is reaching the right people that we're facilitating the right conversations that we're surfacing the right questions as we go And that's part of how we think about impacts, right? Then there's also the piece about the art of storytelling and this is you know, eric was talking about the kind of The the kind of iterative process that storytellers will often go through and that Sometimes there's a component of this that's just about art for the sake of telling a beautiful story There's also a component about strategic storytelling right where for example with just vision We are very specific about the kinds of stories we want to tell right and we're actually setting out with a goal and working backwards in the that storytelling and For example one of the things that we we did a few years ago We released a feature length film called budrus budrus is a palestinian village Where in 2003 to 2004 they launched a 10 month nonviolent campaign To stop the israeli separation barrier from being built on their lands Which would have confiscated and uprooted all of their olive trees, which was the main live the main livelihood of the community And the dominant story that was told during that time in the media in the israeli mainstream media in the International media was that there was it was a series of riots and clashes Palestinians and israeli activists breaking the law and order thereby justifying their Their arrest and the repression of the movement right riots and clashes I think we hear that frame when we think about ferguson and baltimore and Peaceful marches taking place, but our cameras tend to zoom in when there's a store on fire, right? What that story missed was that there was a 10 month strategic campaign So we created budrus the story of budrus. We released the film in 2009 to actually Tell the story as it actually happened on the ground and one of the things that was amazing The the public relations firm edelman. They have a daughter company called strategy one They came in to do an independent media audit To understand were we actually able to galvanize the kind of narrative change that we were trying to create And so they looked at the period of 2003 to 2009 2003 being when the campaign was taking place 2009 when we released the film and then 2000 through 2011 after two years of our impact campaign And they found that 30 percent of coverage was Generated from 2003 to 2009 70 percent of coverage around budrus came up 2009 to 2011 Why does that matter because it means that film actually effectively can galvanize a story can galvanize coverage Then the question became now what kind of One last thought because we're going to open it up here to our Cool And the the next question was what kind of coverage were you generating right because we're interested in the quality of the messages What are audiences taking away and they found that we had 98 percent message penetration The key themes being focusing on the efficacy of non-violence on the importance of women's leadership in that movement And about the power of unity across divides specifically around political factions and welcoming in of israeli and international activists That tells you what can happen when you have strategic campaigns built around these films And when there's the magic Hands behind the scenes kind of thinking through how do we reach the right audiences? How do we tell the story and how do we make sure it has an impact? Excellent point. Thank you. We're going to start open it up now and i'm going to start in this quadrant and then go Counterclockwise any questions over here? All right in the back No questions. Are you kidding me? We're going to go right here then we have one Right here second. Do I have three? Three and then we have four we have four questions We're going to do all four questions first then open it back up to the audience Thank you so much for please introduce yourself Organizing this mere gold coins, and i'm originally from kyrgyzstan actually recent resident to dc So and you're I was happy to hear that you introduced international women's day that way in a small country, right? Of five million people my first question is a very short one to miss sander linnie I had an experience of uh, I guess a conversation with the Superior with the boss in un structure When I was reporting on violence against women girls and to my I guess sad face He said well, can we you know kind of make this story a little happy? So I didn't know how to react and I kind of realized that you had those experiences Well, how did you react and my general question to everyone is Among my peers, I mean anywhere beat the scheko beat dc I oftentimes special male Here so oftentimes here why why do you care about women's day, right? Why there is no men's day and my quick I guess Answer is well, you know when women are happy men are happy as well. So what do you guys think? Thank you so much Hi, go ahead stand. Yeah. Hi. I'm ham from the philippines And I am here together with the other 21 academic fellows from us state funded program on civic engagement At the end of our program we're expected to implement a peace projects in our respective countries So my question is how do you add a gender perspective to our projects despite their focus is not entirely on focused on women's empowerment And on gender equality And how would mainstreaming gender to our projects would help us? I mean would benefit our projects. Thank you. Great. Thank you The next right there. Great. Thanks. Hi. My name is margaret woeller and I'm the director of the alexandria film festival And my question is for eric. Um, I was wondering if you've been approached by any documentary filmmakers to embed in the remarkable work that's being done Collaborative work that's being done by the mom's demand action group for gun control and also by the parkland florida Teenagers um, specifically emma gonzalez to tell their story Thank you so much Hi, thanks for the panel. My name is I hope this is working. Yeah, my name is blake selzer I spent the last three years in jordan working on the syria conflict. I appreciate all the comments And especially i'll be able to disney's comment about Those who commit to something that they may not see in their lifetime. I think it's really important To that end you guys have talked about the power of film, especially sonam How do you think it's helped if at all change? Power structures like in the united nations and in the visual images I know that it's frustrating your story about the little girl from or the young woman from syria There's been plenty of documentary films about what's happening including most recently the last minute of lepo But nothing seems to change. So how do you see this affecting that and lastly? I think sometimes films Don't don't start on being advocacy tools, but something like blackfish. I think hbl put out all of a sudden now There's probably no captivity programs for Killer whales now after that. So let's just want to get some thoughts on those things Great one last question because then i'm going to turn it back over to our panel Okay, that's the last question and the panelists is good at each one of you can choose which one you want to Address can I answer the first question about hi? Oh elizabeth one question? So i'm elizabeth mcbride. I'm a journalist and a writer and my question is Kind of for all of you on an individual level, which is you're working in this field of peace building But I imagine sometimes you get really angry at the people that you are Talking to and coping with and I just wonder how you kind of balance your role as a peace builder With the passion you need to bring to your work Interesting question. Okay, so there's nothing inconsistent with peace building and anger And there's nothing it's in fact the whole Point of everything is Not that you are or aren't angry, but what do you do about that? You know, so I if I were angry and I were a warlord I would pick up a weapon and get it 10,000 guys and And and rape and pillage my way through the landscape In fact, you know a lot of wars are driven by people who Actually say they want to make the world a better place who are trying to change things structurally I would imagine that's what her friends from a lepo Were saying when they went joined militias. So anger's fine And I have a lot of it So I I I try to channel it But I think of it more as righteous indignation But the the it relates the first question about making the story happy And and you know, we get that a lot And I come from a family that's famous for making everything happier than it actually is But but honestly there that's actually really deep an important question about the films we make because You know, one of the things I really didn't want to do is a filmmaker was you know A litany of bad awful things. I mean, I want people to know How bad it is and who's hurting who and and I especially want Americans to know that But I also don't want to leave people feeling Less able To fight than more. I mean, what am I trying to accomplish? What's the bigger picture? The the the angry thing would be to beat people overhead with the bad news That would be an angry that would be Emotionally like picking a weapon up So the the constructive thing The thing that will actually change the world is it's not so much to manufacture a happy ending but to find the redemption And and there is redemption in every story There is because you know as long as somebody is standing in a human body and telling you something they lived through it And you know a lot of what women do in conflict that is historic and important and transformative Is simply to witness To bear witness which is an act in and of itself um of defiance and and survival so Um, I think that it takes I mean these are stories that are hard to tell when I said the hero narrative is something We're enamored with it's partly because it's an easier story to tell You know Aristotle lined it up the three act structure and the triangle and the whole thing I mean we've been telling hero narratives forever because they're easy. So guess what we call ourselves creatives So we need to work harder and hard sometimes to find the redemption But you go find it and it's hard sometimes to find the collective But you go find it it's hard sometimes to find the footage, but you go find it because that's our job To tell these stories and and it's our job to tell them in a way that will actually make the world a better place Which involves sometimes some bad news Um with a little bit of sugar on it Laura's open I was actually um, I'm gonna answer your question. Eric. Please partly about uh, about mom's demand action Abby made a really Incredible film a few years ago called armor of light The main subject from the film is I see him here in the audience And and that film Has been used by mom's demand action Chapters all over the country the other main character in the film Lucy McBath She was the head kind of faith representative and and organizer For for mom's demand action and what was so, you know Important about how we built the campaign for that film and I think goes back to maria your question about sort of The the tactics of how you how you do this how you actually embed films and In movements is that we knew from the very start that the film was going to be embedded in In an organization in a think tank that uh, you know rub shank the main subject of the film Was was creating and so we were very intentional about the way we built the campaign So it could be absorbed by an organization that was going to sustain the work And I think that's so important when you start building an impact campaign You kind of need to have an exit strategy Because so often you see you know filmmakers who they get they get funding for a year Maybe for an impact campaign and they do incredible work during that year And they build this whole constituency that kind of maybe never even existed for the film and then the funding runs out and That's it and it's so upsetting to see that happen And I think one of the the unique things about just vision about pieces loud is that the films we take on Were were very specific about about what what films we work on and they're within this niche of peace security Nonviolent organizing and women which means they were coming at it from inside the sort of the movements and Lastly your question about how you balance your role as a peace builder You know Just kind of the passion. I think that it's I think that you know, I I found I don't know if this is true for for you all that You know a lot of uh peace builders that you know, we we work with they they've experienced Conflict in their in their lives and and many of them are working for peace because they've never experienced it before and I think you you do bring You know trauma to the work that that you're doing and and and that conflict with you and I think even the the process of recognizing that and and sort of Holding that in in in in your work can be really helpful It's not so um a couple of things in I mean, I was in Colombia In 2010 at a time when the word peace could not be mentioned Okay, so think about the changes I was talking to these women who had been displaced and they were trying to figure out how to do their life being a get On with their lives and they'd been given bits of land But it was the land that they'd given the women were of the soil was of worse quality than than others And they hadn't been given fertilizer and all these things and then I was talking to the UN I don't represent it for human rights or something like that She was like, oh, it's so desperate and there's just nothing we can do and I looked at her and I you know And I've I've never really worked fully for the UN. I've worked as a consultant I've always been in the NGO sector But honestly, I looked at her and I said I'm sorry, but you know, you get paid too much to be cynical Right. I mean if they can be hopeful We you international if you dare to be in that space you you put your cynicism You parked it back home because you're being paid to be here and you have to be Have to recognize that you're there to help so so that cynicism that that weighs down these institutions and the people in them Is I think one of the biggest for sources of inertia now What do I how do I deal with this? Part of it is that I see the absurdity and and part of the reason why I started doing the animations was because I was like What you say is so absurd. How is it that you only being as I say bring armed actors or your Challenging the legitimacy of the women But you know three guys with a gun and and and three guys with a suit that say oh by the way We're the representatives of country X we we you know, we fly them here and there and and they're legitimate So so it's there's a there's an absurdity that's there that I think we have to to expose And and I'll sit just two two two more thoughts one is that Part of this as I move on in this field Is actually I want to do it through drama and fiction and storytelling because what I see in the realms that I'm in it's a mixture of mash and and the office and You know whatever the house of cards and and there there used to be a tv series in england called mind your language Which was about different language, you know people from different cultures kind of communicating and lost in translation That's what it is. It's and I used to be so kind of in awe of oh my god The mediation work it's wizard of Oz right so so we have to get in there you have to challenge it You have to question it So that's one space and I'm like that's why I want to go into this space of drama because because I think that's where We can actually tell the stories of who's out there The second Thought for me is that I really wish that that one of the criteria for working for an international organization Was the your ability to care right as opposed to caring for power the power of caring goes a long way You see amazing individuals who despite all the adversity are pushing things It's only because they care we do this because we care right So caring should be one of the criteria that that that we look for and then finally in terms of mainstream media I just want to ask How many of you in the last seven years have seen a syrian peace activist on cnn msnbc alga zero or Whatever tv news you watch put your hands up Okay There are thousands and thousands and thousands of them right the media the mainstream media is interested in knee cappings I remember this in 2000 uh, new york times a journalist said to me Oh, you know knee cappings in northern ireland, and I'm like they happen every day Why don't you do deal with the peace activists? They don't want to do that do that story We as the public need to be asking the mainstream media Where are these voices bring them on and we don't need to see their faces because it might be insecure show their hands and feet Come to me I will introduce you to the folks that are willing to go on tv to talk about what's happening But but it's as if they don't matter right and if they're not on the news And if they're not on ferried zikaria and they're whatever then they don't exist And the point is that they need to exist for them the un and the international community and others to actually believe that There is a solution because to be honest with you peace is inevitable war is not and yet at the moment It seems as if war is inevitable it happens, you know God decides that we go to war it doesn't that men are deciding those are people to decide And and meanwhile peace is going on all the time and yet it's invisible to us So peace is the inevitability and we should be changing the paradigm of thinking that war is inevitable And I want to just jump in to a couple to to respond to a couple of questions including the gentleman's question up in the back You ask the question about how do you integrate gender? A gender lens when your focus is not primarily a gender lens right or a gender focus We're in the same boat right so our work is focusing on grassroots leaders broadly and Palestinian and Israeli society We tell stories about communities organizing on the ground And we incorporate a gender lens throughout our body of work because we believe that women's voices are critical Not only essential as in reflecting the whole the the sort of entirety of the communities on the ground And who's activating and what's actually happening? But as actually incredibly important in in building movements that are pluralistic And the kind of societies that we want to see the day after right and so what I would encourage you to do is It's phenomenal that When organizations when teams that are working on other issue areas Incorporate a gender lens throughout their body of work You don't have to be one or the other you can actually be both and it's really healthy for us to be incorporating and integrating across Movements and issue areas like this right so that's one and I'm happy to talk offline more about your specific projects Because I think I heard a little bit about wanting some advice around how you can do that and I'm happy to go there with you The second piece about this peace and anger piece I actually want to come back because it's to this because it's important when we think about you know When I think about the Israeli Palestinian context time and again Folks that we work with have come to understand peace as empty the word peace as a very empty word What it reflects for a lot of the folks that we work with are meaningless coffee table conversations Um where you're told to go and get to know the other and then nothing really happens afterward They go back Palestinians go back to their homes through checkpoints finding their mill at their homes demolished in some cases Another uncle sent off to prison so on and it's just the same that there's actually no challenge of the structural inequality that's taking place and I think this is And and and I think this is a challenge for us Right because what it means is that we need to put teeth to things like teeth peace We actually have to do work that comes along with changing our societies and what doesn't trigger are the scenes of These incredible women who are doing this real work who call and will be proud to claim their identities as peace builders Right and and so I I want to say that there's a piece about For me part of the reason I got involved in this work is because I felt a lot of emotion about a lot of things And I needed some way to channel it and this is how I found it and then there's a reality of understanding how These words land and how do we actually make them have meaning right and and there's a lot of important work to be done To to make sure that these this is legitimate that people understand what this means and that we think about and really Interrogate what our strategies and peace building are in effecting change right So that's the piece that I wanted to include in this conversation because I think you know peace security You could have these things these words are very broad. They can be defined as national security They could be defined as human security you could look at it from a number of different angles And actually getting concrete about what we're talking about becomes so essential to Getting precision in the work that we're doing All right, I know what's left um, I think I mean Something that I think all the questions touch on is that there's a role for everyone in this equation especially on the storytelling side thinking about from fiction from documentary from shorts from animation to youtube Anything I think that includes that authentic voice that we talk about which I think can genuinely be the spark of the changes that everybody is Is looking for But and I also think that for all of you in no matter what you're doing It's also the way That as we say you listen to those stories and you carry those stories out I mean in some ways that's what the research that we did was really Really found was that it was what happened after the stories were told The stories had to be told but it's what happened after the stories of what happened. What do you do with that spark? What do you do when the women say They did that there. What do we do and that's a role that That every one of you can play in all of your daily lives around media around things that you see on facebook maybe in your jobs And making sure not only that those stories get told which we know now have measurable impact but also about How are you facilitating the conversation? And how are your organizations doing that and I think if we if we had a world where more organizations had embedded facilitators about those conversations using media no matter what the organization did All of this media would have more of a place to go and a way to have an impact And I think that's what these studies are showing So can I finish by taking us back to 30,000 feet? Take us back. I live at 30,000 feet Actually, it's really problem I had the very distinct honor And unique experience of spending some days in North Korea a couple years ago and It was so interesting because at one point we had this big Roundtable discussion very much like I had in in Srebrenica where a lot of women who had distinct and very traumatic memories of the war Told us about it And I was so amazed at how alive That war was In that room it was alive. These were stories being told to me as if they happened last week And I thought what are the north koreans doing to their people Caused them to have this living war inside of them. They must be it must be the propaganda. It must be whatever And then I thought that's really interesting because as an american I'm very nonchalant about the korean war. It was a long time ago because we've had so many wars Since then and what's so interesting is that war has been almost a constant in this country In the 20th century almost And yet it never happens here It never happens here to us And so it's kind of stunning That most americans don't really understand the extent to which we leveled north korea We leveled it And if there is sadness and bitterness Um, it is well earned and if it has been festering It's because there's never been a reconciliation. There's never been a reckoning of any kind So what we can do in this country Um, if we want to build peace is first Remember that we are not a country at peace and and try to Recognize and remind the people around us that we are not a country living in peace We haven't been in a very long time Um, and that that has to change the attitude toward peace and the attitude toward war has to change I actually had a general from the reancor say to me I wish I could get my guys when I recruit them In a very different frame of mind. I don't want them blood thirsty when they get to me I wish I could dial that back in them But they've been so primed by their popular culture to want to go out and find the bodies Uh that I don't really I have to do a lot of unlearning with them So first of all you can do something everybody's always wondering. What's my job? What's my job? I help your fellow americans understand the role that we play in global conflict And then the other thing is media makes reality. It just does so stop rewarding the media That is generating the reality. We live stop rewarding it. Don't go to a michael bay film Don't send your children to a michael bay film. I'm sorry, but he's my betwar. I can't stand him Doesn't have a soul um and reward the stuff that does Reward selma, you know reward hidden figures There are many many films. Oh my god the shape of water Such an amazing there are a million things to reward and a million things to punish and you've got the wallet to do it with And nothing in this country is stronger than your wallet Um, so so that's a bit of activism that you can you can take right out of this room with you Wow I think uh, you'll join me and uh, maria No, thank you very much. This was uh Incredibly in a great way to end it and I love the point too earlier that women ruin war. That's the point Thank you all very much for a great conversation