They just won the Grand Jury Documentary Feature for their documentary "A Year at Danger" at the deadCENTER filmfestival in Oklahoma City this past week.
I saw the documentary a little over a month ago and as someone who has seen her share of docs, I have to say it was truly excellent. My friend Chris introduced me to Steve Metze (briefly) as he is one of her students in her memoir writing class. I was reminded of Steve today as I had lunch with her and caught up on how we should proceed with our goal to do something for veterans coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan with combat-related PTSD.
Part of our plan is to offer memoir writing classes (for free of course) in a retreat setting. Chris is an English professor who's been teaching that class through the University of Maryland. The retreat is supposed to help in the healing process, but of course, it would not be the healing component by and off itself. Today we discussed setting up a non profit and how we should refine and clarify our mission statement. At any rate, early August, Chris will go to Afghanistan to teach that same class plus some other classes at one of the big military compounds. She'll have to go through basic training/boot camp which we joked about today. In the early 90s, she did the same thing; going through boot camp as she was going to teach on a military base in Bosnia.
Ours is a long story in terms of how we met (definitely 'meant' to be considering how we connected) and how we seem to meet other people who can help us develop a viable program. The trick will be to start small but have a good non-profit organization set up. We view this endeavour as a community effort; it will take various parts to make it work, and various people/orgs have services to offer that could be of help. We're all for delegation!
At any rate, I'm excited and a bit nervous for Chris to go to Afghanistan but part of me wished I could go along on that adventure. It'll be an eye opener and who knows, she'll come back with more insight of what we can do. She'll only be gone for 6 mos, during which time I'll be getting 'us' ready with the non profit and making connections etc.
For those of you who missed this when I first posted on it; here's an excerpt of 'A Year At Danger'
check out what I wrote about it in my June 13th post.
Can't wait to see this. Congratulations to the doc makers.
ReplyDeletehey there, Ingrid..
ReplyDeletethanks for your comment. Autism is indeed a whole spectrum......a number of blogs in my blogroll are very good...on the subject.
The Integral
This sounds to be a wonderful and very positive endeavor. I hope to read more about your plans and activities. It's going to take a whole lot of energy.
ReplyDeleteCongrats to the film makers! I can't wait to see it.
ReplyDeleteI was in DC last Friday and almost caught up with Spadoman and his family. Unfortunately it didn't happen. I have not been on the blogs so much this summer so I'm not up on what everyone is doing. Would have been great to meet up with you though.