Liberian Film, Author and Children’s Art Give Lessons on Compassion
Monday, January 23, 2012
- By Carol Traynor
On January 26, Valencia College, in partnership with the Global Peace Film Festival, will screen the documentary film, “Pray the Devil Back to Hell,” in the Special Events Center on the college’s West Campus. The award winning film, featuring 2011 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Leymah Gbowee, is the gripping account of a group of women who demanded peace for Liberia, a nation torn apart by a decades-old civil war.
Liberian native Agnes Kamara-Umunna and author of the book, “And Still Peace Did Not Come: A Memoir of Reconciliation,” will be part of a reception that evening from 6:30-7 p.m. and will lead a discussion following the showing of the 60-minute film. Copies of her book will also be available for sale.
Umunna, whose visit is part of a three-day residency called “Conversation on Compassion,” served as a statement taker for the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission after that country’s brutal civil war. She lives in New York City where she continues to record oral statements from Liberians now living in the United States.
Of Umunna, Gloria Steinem said, “We must know each other’s stories to exist in each other’s eyes…Agnes Umunna brings us the stories of child soldiers, brave women, the despair and new hope of Liberia, and her own personal journey.”
A separate art exhibit titled “The ABC’s of the Abrahamic Faiths: Pages from an Illuminated Text” will be on display on Valencia’s East Campus in Bldg. 3-113. The exhibit was created as part of the Multifaith Education Project, a 2011 collaboration of local middle school children, teachers and parents and Amina Ahmed, an artist based in New York City. A colorful alphabet theme invokes passages from the Bible, Torah and Qur’an to illuminate simple concepts, such as kindness. Serving as the centerpiece of the exhibit, a peace quilt created in 2009 by local school children turns multiple pieces into a graphic symbol of peace.
Both events are free and open to the public. The West Campus is located at 1800 S. Kirkman Rd. in Orlando. The East Campus is at 701 N. Econlockhatchee Trail in Orlando.
