Jeden Svet

Jeden Svet = One World.

"Your energy is needed elsewhere."

The Jeden Svet (One World) Film Festival has a week-long program here in Prague. The festival is comprised 104 documentaries from 40 countries. The films are organized thematically into categories such as "Age is Just a Number", "I Want to Break Free", "Women's Voices", and "Environmental Challenges", just to name a few.

The first film I saw was the Emmy Award Winning, "The World According to Ion B." About a 63 year-old man who has lived in the garbage yard of an apartment building in Romania for 22 years. In a suitcase he's carried for years are his beautiful collages dating back to the 70s. His modern collages expressing the need for social and political change during the communist regime now hang beside the work of Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp. The heart-wrenching film follows him through his first exhibit, going back to the town and family he was banished from, moving from the dumpster and back to it, all while the audience feels his genuine excitement about his art. The damage of his alcoholism holds him back, so while he can still create art, he cannot do much else besides drink. The director was present to answer questions as Ion has been slandering him in the news.

"Our School," the second film I saw, documents the integration of a school in Romania. The government gives money to schools that promise to integrate Roma, or gypsy, students. Throughout Europe the Roma are the most widely discriminated group, living in their own communities far from the "people." "Our School" follows about 6 Roma children in their integrating into the Romanian school, and we watch as they are thrilled to find out that they are attending, and distraught to find that they are put in a separate class than the Romanian children. The audience lives the highs and lows of these students for 3 years. The children go from the excitement of school to the reality of prejudice, bad teachers, then great teachers, and from dropping out and running away, to making friends and realizing their dreams. When we finally feel the happy ending, we learn that in 2008 each and every one of the remaining (and excelling) students was put into "special" school where they realize they have again lost to the system.

The third film was "The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan," which is an investigative documentary focused on the forbidden yet widely practiced bacha bazi. Very young, poor boys are "paid" to dress in women's clothes and dance for men, especially former commanders and drug lords. Though it is illegal, it is widely practiced throughout Afghanistan. The documentary leader got in with a powerful man in a town who practices this. Often times the boys are "owned" and must do everything their "master" (and sometimes his friends) say. Rapes, disappearances, and murders are common among these circles and this documentary shed light on the subject, bringing officials to action.

It was interesting to do non-touristy things in Prague. I was able to appreciate the cultural experience after seeing the hard work of the translators. At any time there would be three people standing at the front of the theater to announce the film or answer questions at the end. Though the films came from many countries with a wide range of topics, the desire to listen to the voices unheard and motivate social change is universal.