The highly acclaimed documentary film Coexist was screened before dozens of conflict resolution professionals and students at the Mediators Beyond Borders (MBB) conference at UCLA this weekend.
The film looks at the ongoing government-imposed reconciliation in Rwanda. The reconciliation program is designed to be a solution to move the country past the 1994 genocide in which hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were massacred.
Coexist is currently up for an Africa Movie Academy Award for Best Documentary at the awards ceremony being held on March 26th in Nigeria. Other honors include an official selection at the Artivist Film Festival in Hollywood in 2010.
Adam Mazo, the film’s executive producer, director and editor, was inspired to create the film after a trip to Rwanda in 2006 when he was working as a local television news producer in Sarasota, Florida. “The reason I got into that work was to do something positive through the community. I felt like I wasn’t able to do that through producing local TV news,” he said.
Coexists gives first-hand accounts of how some genocide survivors and perpetrators view the reconciliation process. “The government program seems to be working for some people and it seems to be failing some people,” said Mazo. “I think that reconciliation is not one size fits all. That is not to say that is what the government program is doing, but I think that it is important for people to understand that reconciliation is very personal. And there are different kinds of reconciliation. The kind we are talking about in Rwanda is both personal and political,” he continued.
Bruce Tow an MBB member who attended the screening said that as a disputes resolution professional, he found the film helpful in understanding how social challenges like the ones covered in Coexist can evolve. “I was particularly impressed with the fact that it had interviews with people who were self-confessed perpetrators and it tried to sort of describe the story from their side as well,” Tow said.
Coincidentally, Eric Rwabuhihi, who is a Rwandan genocide survivor was attending the MBB conference. He watched the documentary. “I thought it was a good movie,” Rwabuhihi said. “I think there were a couple of things where I thought they could have done more of. I want to see many people now who are living in the future, people who are moving forward people who are saying, ‘we are working toward building a sustainable and peaceful nation,’” he continued.
“There are people who want to be defined as Hutu or Tutsi, but me I don’t see myself like that. I see myself as Rwandan,” explained Rwabuhihi
Mazo said he created the film to spark discussion and encourage contemplation and understanding primarily between students in grades 8 through 12. “The goal continues to be to use Coexist as a tool in classrooms and among community groups to engage viewers in conversations about preventing violence, transforming conflict, and making bullying socially unacceptable,” said Mazo.
Mazo partnered with Mishy Lesser, Ed.D., who is an education consultant, to create a viewer’s learning guide that is used in classrooms and groups.
“We get students to write about a time when they mistreated somebody and somebody mistreated them. I think through sharing those experiences of when they mistreated someone or when they were mistreated, it begins to help them to understand what it is like to be the other,” Mazo explained.
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