By Victor Alvarez East Bay Newspapers
EAST PROVIDENCE - East Providence resident John Levall produced and directed a documentary that will be screened at the Rhode Island International Film Festival.
“Home Across Lands” follows a small group of refugee Kunama – a small ethnic group found mostly in Ethiopia and Eritrea – as they begin their new lives in Rhode Island. The International Institute of Rhode Island helps them make the difficult transition from the Shimelba Refugee Camp in Northern Ethipoia to their new home in the U.S.
“To illustrate their journey effectively we needed to show where it began, to give the audience a sense of what life is like inside a refugee camp, and to give a voice to people who are forced to live there,” said Mr. Lavall.
“Of the world’s nearly 14 million refugees, more than 7 million have languished in refugee camps for ten years or more, some for generations. It is a life of restricted mobility, enforced idleness and dependency – a human warehouse where lives are on indefinite hold – not unlike the punishment of a prison, though with the added injustice of never having committed a crime. Although the international community tried to find durable solutions to their plight, less than 1 percent are ever offered a chance of resettlement.”
Shot in one year, the film chronicles the extreme changes with an array of striking landscapes, from the arid Shimelba Refugee Camp in Ethiopia to the Spring House Hotel on Block Island.
“Home Across Lands” will be shown as part of “Rhode Island Stories,” a new feature of WSBE Rhode Island PBS airing on Saturday nights at 7 p.m. that celebrates independent documentaries by and about Rhode Islanders.
Visit www.homeacrosslands.org for more information.
WHEN TO SEE IT: “Home Across Lands”
Wednesday, August 5, 7 p.m.
Columbus Theatre – 270 Broadway, Providence
621-9660