FRUITS OF WAR
- Time: Tuesday 11 March 7.00pm
- Venue: Eastside Arts
- Time: Saturday 15 March 5.00pm
- Venue: Club Marconi
- Director: Josiah Hooper Year: 2007
- Country: USA/El Salvador Duration: 60mins
- Genre: Documentary Language: Spanish w/ English subtitles
Four young El Salvadorean men struggle to survive in their homeland, as deportees, after spending most of their lives as members of street gangs in the US. These men have seen enough violence to fill a lifetime and find themselves in a most unusual position – undergoing a transformation from gang members to deportees and finally into peacemakers. Their evolution is set in motion as they gain an understanding of US policy during the El Salvadorean civil war and how it has shaped their lives, and continues to shape the future of others like them. This is a personal journey filled with both hope and regret as these four men tread the winding path of self discovery.
Session includes Introduction and Q&A with Director Josiah Hooper
Awards Audience Award SXSW Film Festival
Special Panel Discussion (Microcinema @ Eastside Arts only)
Session 02 – Central America Focus
Tuesday 11th March 7pm,
Post Screening Discussion
Using the film Fruits of War as a point of reference, the panel talk will focus on the history of US foreign policy and civil war in Central America, the resulting migration of Central Americans to the US and beyond, contemporary issues facing Central America today including the engulfing issue of gang growth in parts of the region.
The discussion panel will include:
Josiah Hooper – Director
Josiah Hooper is a freelance television producer who has had work broadcast nationally on cable and public television in the US. His most recent broadcast was a piece on the micro-lending website kiva.org for PBS’ Frontline World. He co-produced “Gunshots” a film about black market gun dealing that won a Society of Professional Journalist award and was used in congressional testimony on gun legislation in 2001. Currently, he is working on a story about a human rights abuse database in Guatemala for Frontline World. He has been involved in television production for the past ten years after attending the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
Vivien Altman
Vivien Altman is a journalist and producer at the Foreign Correspondent Program, ABC TV. In more than two decades of radio reporting and TV producing she has worked out of the Middle East, Europe and the Americas including an 8 year stint living in Central America. From 1986 to 1994 she reported from Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean as a freelance radio reporter and then returned to Australia working for ABC Radio National, then SBS TV “Dateline.” She also worked for a year on “Tendencias” an independent new journalism magazine based in San Salvador. With a special interest in the Americas, she has produced TV reports for the Foreign Correspondent Program out of Chile, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Ecuador, Paraguay , Falkland Islands, and Brazil.
Juan Campos
Juan Campos arrived in Australia in the 1980s as a political refugee from El Salvador. Juan is a member of the Central American Cultural Projects, a group in formation together with Guatemala and Nicaragua, supporting programs to alleviate poverty.
Dr. Jeff Browitt
Head, Latin American Studies, University of Technology, Sydney
Jeff Browitt has been involved in what is broadly termed Latin American Studies for over 20 years. He has taught at the University of Technology, Sydney, Monash University in Melbourne, The University of the West Indies in Barbados and the Universidad Industrial de Santander in Colombia. He completed a BA Honours in Spanish language with a minor in Latin American history at La Trobe University (1983-6), an MA in Hispanic Literature and Linguistics at the Instituto Caro y Cuervo in Bogotá, Colombia (1988-89), and an MA in Critical Theory (1994) and a PhD on the Sociology of Latin American Literature (1999) at the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at Monash University. In all phases (Honours, Masters and Doctoral theses) he has tracked the formation and function of literary writers as public intellectuals as well as the impact of modernity and nation-state formation on cultural products and processes in Latin American countries. He has published on
, Central American literature, Latin American popular culture and Colombian political economy.
Miguel Olmo – TBC
Service Provision Manager, Blacktown Youth Services Association
Flora Farjam – TBC
Youth Support worker, Multicultural Youth Support Project, Cabramatta Community Centre
Dr Penelope O’Donnell – (Chair) – TBC
Senior Lecturer, School of Letters, Art, and Media
