Calling the Ghosts A Story about Rape, War and Women

Calling the Ghosts

A Story about Rape, War and Women

Executive Producer: Julia Ormond Directed by Mandy Jacobson and Karmen Jelincic

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SYNOPSIS

An extraordinarily powerful documentary, CALLING THE GHOSTS is the first-person account of two women caught in a war where rape was as much an everyday weapon as bullets or bombs. Jadranka Cigelj and Nusreta Sivac, childhood friends and lawyers, enjoyed the lives of "ordinary modern women" in Bosnia-Herzegovina until one day former neighbors became tormentors. Taken to the notorious Serb concentration camp of Omarska, the two women, like other Muslim and Croat women interned there, were systematically tortured and humiliated by their Serb captors.

Once released, the pair turned personal struggles for survival into a larger fight for justice-aiding other women similarly brutalized and successfully lobbying to have rape included in the international lexicon of war crimes by the UN Tribunal at the Hague. Chronicling the two women's experience and their remarkable transformation, CALLING THE GHOSTS is an indispensable resource for deepening understanding of human rights abuses and combating violence against women in the global arena.

PRESS

"**** A somber, eloquently expressed, and beautifully shot video... A must for all library collections interested in international affairs, women's studies, and human rights issues."

Video Librarian

"The power of the documentary to provoke action is tremendous... an important advocacy tool for groups seeking to empower women and women's organizations."

Roger Rathman Amnesty International USA

"Exquisite and compelling...A necessary and significant film for women around the globe to navigate the new world order."

Patricia R. Zimmermann Ithaca College

SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS

Toronto Film Festival
IDA Best Documentary Nomination
Emmy Award, Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft in News and Documentary Programming: Directing
Emmy Award, Outstanding Investigative Journalism Program
1998 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award
Berlin Int'l Film Festival
Human Rights Watch Int'l Film Fest, Nestor Almendros Award
Sarajevo Int'l Film Festival, Special Jury Prize
Amnesty Int'l European Film Festival, Special Jury Prize
Cable Ace Award for Best Documentary

ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)

Mandy Jacobson

Mandy Jacobson is a multiple award-winning, two-time Emmy documentary filmmaker who has been working out of New York and South Africa for the past 10 years. She has just completed 4 documentaries on Nelson Mandela as part of SABC's flagship series to celebrate the former Presidents' global contribution to human rights. Jacobson's fieldwork has taken her across the globe including the USA, Brazil, Bosnia, Rwanda, Bangladesh, Cuba, Mozambique and South Africa to make heard stories not typically covered by the mass media, stories that explore the passion and politics of different forms of truth-telling an and justice-seeking. (09/09)

Karmen Jelincic

Ms. Jelincic holds a Master Degree in International Human Rights Advocacy from Columbia University's School of International Affairs, as well as a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film and Television from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She was born in Croatia and raised in the United States. Since 1991, she has been actively involved in advocacy efforts here and abroad, in response to rape as a war crime, and other violations of human rights in the former Yugoslavia. Together with Mandy Jacobson, she has traveled across the country screening footage from Calling the Ghosts at teach-ins, sitting on panel discussions, and appearing at numerous national and international conferences about the war in former Yugoslavia and the prosecution of rape as a war-crime. Ms. Jelincic's past filmmaking credits include Someone Stole the Baby, a video documentary about a veteran SoHo tap dancer and her efforts to bring the original dance into the 1990s. (09/09)

Julia Ormond

Born in Epsom, Surrey, Julia Ormond studied at Webber-Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. In the United States, Ormond is known for her work in "Smilla's Sense of Snow" (1997), "Sabrina" (1995), "Nostradamus" (1994) and "Legends of the Fall" (1994). British audiences were introduced Ormond when she played a heroin addict on the British television series "Traffik" (1989). Ormond won the London Critics' Award for Best Newcomer in 1988 for her role in "Faith, Hope and Charity." In addition to "Calling the Ghosts," Ormond has also produced a documentary called "Playground." Ormond's most recent performances include her role as Marie Calvet in "Mad Men," along with roles in "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," "CSI: NY," "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." (7/12)

Subject Areas

Fighting the Silence

The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s seven year war was the deadliest ever recorded in Africa. During that time, more than 80,000 women and girls were raped. Only now that the country is formally at peace are the consequences of the brutality becoming truly visible. Rape is slowly seeping into everyday life. FIGHTING THE SILENCE tells the story of ordinary Congolese women and men that are struggling to change their society: one that prefers to blame victims rather than prosecute rapists. Rape survivors and their families speak out openly about the suffering they endured because their culture considers women second class citizens and rape a taboo. They give voice to thousands of other survivors and their families who have chosen to hide their grief and remain silent for fear of being rejected by their families and community. Girls and women survivors tell of the brutality they experienced. Married couples openly talk about the pain they endure. Husbands talk of the pressures that led them to abandon their wives and why they agreed to take them back. A father explains why he has given up on his daughter’s future and how he wishes he could afford to take her rapist to court. Soldiers and policemen share their (shocking) views about why rape continues to flourish despite the war having officially ended four years ago.

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Sound of Torture

Since 2006 when Europe closed its borders, human trafficking has burgeoned in Egypt’s Sinai Desert, where Eritrean asylum seekers and refugees heading north to Israel are kidnapped, held hostage, and tortured by Bedouin smugglers demanding exorbitant ransoms for their freedom. Fleeing an oppressive military dictatorship at home, with a “shoot-to-kill” policy at the border and where only pregnant women are exempted from service, over 300,000 Eritreans have fled their homeland in North Africa. Many of these men, women and children die in Sinai’s torture camps. This powerful documentary intimately follows Swedish-Eritrean journalist Meron Estefanos and her efforts to aid the hostages and their families. From Stockholm she runs a popular online radio show, fielding calls for help from Eritrean victims and their relatives. Her activism takes her to Israel and Egypt’s Sinai Desert to seek the release of a badly abused young woman held captive with her baby and to search for another who disappeared along the Egyptian-Israeli border after her ransom had been paid. Both eloquent and harrowing, SOUND OF TORTURE spotlights one of today’s most underreported human rights violations and the one woman who is making it her mission to create change.

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Red Wedding: Women Under the Khmer Rouge

The Killing Fields in Cambodia became known to the world but little is known about the struggles of the women left behind. From 1975-79, Pol Pot’s campaign to increase the population forced at least 250,000 young Cambodian women to marry Khmer Rouge soldiers they had never met before. Sochan Pen was one of them. At 16, she was beaten and raped by her husband before managing to escape, though deeply scarred by her experience. After 30 years of silence, Sochan is ready to file a complaint with the international tribunal that will try former Khmer leaders. With quiet dignity, she starts demanding answers from those who carried out the regime’s orders. To tell a story little known outside Cambodia, Cambodian Lida Chan and French-Cambodian Guillaume Suon include Khmer Rouge era footage underscoring war’s traumatic legacy for Sochan’s generation of women. Awarded two prizes at Amsterdam’s prestigious International Documentary Film Festival, RED WEDDING demonstrates the liberating power of speech and memory in the quest for justice.

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Weapon of War

In no other country has sexual violence matched the scale of brutality reached in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). During nearly two decades of conflicts between rebels and government forces, an estimated 150,000 Congolese women and girls fell victim to mass rape. That figure continues to rise. WEAPON OF WAR, an award-winning film honored by Amnesty International, journeys to the heart of this crisis, where we meet its perpetrators. In personal interviews, soldiers and former combatants provide openhearted but shocking testimony about rape in the DRC. Despite differing views on causes or criminal status, all reveal how years of conflict, as well as discrimination against women, have normalized brutal sexual violence. We also see former rapists struggling to change their own or others’ behavior, and reintegrate into their communities. A companion to FIGHTING THE SILENCE and its portraits of Congolese rape survivors, this indispensable resource provides unique insights into strategic uses of rape as a military weapon - and the motives of the men who employ it.

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The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo

Winner of the Sundance Special Jury Prize in Documentary and the inspiration for a 2008 U.N. Resolution classifying rape as a weapon of war, this extraordinary film, shot in the war zones of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), shatters the silence that surrounds the use of sexual violence as a weapon of conflict. Many tens of thousands of women and girls have been systematically kidnapped, raped, mutilated and tortured by soldiers from both foreign militias and the Congolese army. A survivor of gang rape herself, Emmy Award®-winning filmmaker Lisa F. Jackson travels through the DRC to understand what is happening and why. Produced in association with HBO Documentary Films and the Fledgling Fund, this film features interviews with activists, peacekeepers, physicians, and even-chillingly-the indifferent rapists who are soldiers of the Congolese Army. Harrowing moments of the film come as dozens of survivors recount their stories with an honesty and immediacy that is pulverizing in its intimacy and detail, but this powerful film also provides inspiring examples of resiliency, resistance, courage and grace. **Emmy Award Nominee for Outstanding Informational Programming: Long Form and Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Writing**

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God Sleeps in Rwanda

Uncovering amazing stories of hope in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, Emmy Winner for Best Documentary and Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary Short, GOD SLEEPS IN RWANDA captures the spirit of five courageous women as they rebuild their lives, redefine women’s roles in Rwandan society and bring hope to a wounded nation. The 1994 Rwandan Genocide left the country nearly 70 percent female, handing Rwanda’s women an extraordinary burden and an unprecedented opportunity. Ten years later, girls were attending school in record numbers, and women were a large part of the country’s leadership. Working with two cameras and no crew except for their translator—a genocide survivor herself—the filmmakers uncover incredible stories: an HIV-positive policewoman raising four children alone and attending night school to become a lawyer, a teenager who has become head of household for her four siblings, and a young woman orphaned in her teens who is now the top development official in her area. Heart-wrenching and inspiring, this powerful film is a brutal reminder of the consequences of the Rwandan tragedy, and a tribute to the strength and spirit of those who are moving forth.

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Voices Heard Sisters Unseen

VOICES HEARD SISTERS UNSEEN is a powerful and inspirational film showing how survivors of domestic violence are working to change the way the system treats battered women in search of justice and safety. Interviews, poetry, dance and music combine to present a feminist analysis about how courts, police and social services 're-victimize' battered women who are deaf, disabled, lesbians, prostitutes, HIV-positive or without official immigrant status. VOICES HEARD SISTERS UNSEEN is an important call for multi-issue activism and an integrated response to services for battered women.

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