Event Title

Pretty Village

Presenter Information

Kemal Pervanić

Location

Fontbonne University, Lewis Room

Description

Public screening of Pretty Village followed by a discussion with filmmaker and activist Kemal Pervanić.

Additional Notes

Pretty Village (2014)
Wing & A Prayer Films, 67 minutes

Pretty Village is a story of extreme human suffering and endurance in the face of that suffering. It is a story of a shattering tragedy in which Serb neighbours perpetrated an atrocity against their Muslim neighbours, seemingly beyond repair. It is most of all a story of human resistance in the face of denial by the perpetrators of those crimes.

In the spring of 1991, Kevljani village was indistinguishable from the scores of other villages in the north-west of Bosnia. It was a place dominated by young energetic people who had so many dreams about the future: to experience new loves, for girls and boys to meet, to visit far and strange places, and then to establish a family and settle down, grow old and die gracefully in old age. For most Kevljani residents this is where life began and this is where it ended.

This film charts their journey from the happy days of yesteryear to their current daily struggle in the world which refuses to give them their past back in the form of more than 1000 people missing and a memorial on the site of the massacres executed at the Omarska camp, now owned by Arcelor Mittal, the sponsors of The London Orbit. The perpetrators want to be forgiven, yet remarkably they seek forgiveness for the crimes they continue to deny.

Event Type

Film

Start Date

10-24-2014 7:00 PM