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Students Against Violent Engagements

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What is SAVE?  We are a group of concerned high school students who believe that even the smallest of groups can make a difference in the world. 

Our Goals:  The first goal is to raise awareness in our school and community about violent conflicts around the world. For the past two years, SAVE has focused on the genocide in Darfur.  This year and in years to come, SAVE will branch out to heighten understanding of other disastrous situations. 

The second goal is to raise money that will go to organizations that go directly to victims of conflict. All money raised this year will go to the International Rescue Committee (IRC) which works on the front lines of troubled spots worldwide. Please click here for additional information about the IRC.

 

 

 

Each day in Darfur, hundreds of people are raped, starved and murdered by the Sudanese armed forces and a Sudanese government-backed militia known as the Janjaweed.  Their homes are being burned to the ground by their own government.   At least 400,000 people have died from violence or disease and more than 2 million Darfurians have been left homeless and had to flee to neighboring countries like Chad. The United Nations Security Council authorized that peacekeepers be deployed to Darfur, but the Sudanese government has not yet allowed them entry. Meanwhile, the calculated campaign of displacement, starvation, rape, and mass slaughter continues.

 

 

 

 

 

What have we done?

2007                                         2008                                   2009

Dollars for Darfur Competition                        Creating Long Sleeved Shirts             Bake Sales

Bake Sales                                          Bake Sales                                          Tee Shirts

Darfur Walk-A-Thon                            Darfur Now Movie                                Nicolas Kristof Lecture

Donation Cans around town               Pinwheels for Peace                           Empty Bowl Luncheon

Jonathan Darius Metius Speaker        “Darfur Day” at LMMHS                      Third Thursday Booth

                                                                                                                                    Apple Squeeze Booth

 

                                                                       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Lenox High School 1^st Annual Global Awareness Film Festival

“A creative collaboration of socially conscious masterpieces.”

Host: Students Against Violent Engagements

Date: Saturday, March 28, 2009

Time: 12:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Location: Lenox Memorial High School

                197 East Street, Lenox, MA 01240

            Directions

Lenox High School’s S.A.V.E will be holding a Global Awareness Film Festival on March 28^th, 2009 from 12:00pm to 9:00pm.  During this time, we will be serving lunch and dinner.  There will also be a bake sale and your typical movie theatre goodies.  Dinner will be made by the SAVE Students, and dinner will be catered by Flavours Restaurant in Lenox, Ma. Lunch items are served A La Carte and dinner will be $7 a plate.  Although this event is free of charge, there is a suggested donation of $5 for students and $10 for adults.  This money will be donated to the International Rescue Committee (IRC).  The movies will be playing in two theatres at Lenox High School. You can come for one movie or see them all! You can watch a few, leave for a while, and come back! Please join us to enjoy these socially conscious films while eating good food, and all for a great cause!

Show Times

Theatre                                                                       Music Room

12:00 The Devil Came on Horseback                     12:00 Lost Boys of Sudan

1:35 Sometimes in April                                           1:40 Battle for Haditha

3:25 Innocent Voices                                                 3:30 War Dance

5:30 Yesterday                                                           5:30 Rocks with Wings

7:20 Screamers                                                         7:45 Never Again

 

Trailers and Descriptions

The Devil Came on Horseback

In this unflinching documentary on the genocide in Darfur, former Marine Capt. Brian Steidle is forever transformed by the atrocities he witnesses as a military observer for the African Union. Armed only with his camera, Steidle records the killings of black Africans at the hands of Janjaweed militias funded by Sudan's Arab government. With his bleak photos, Steidle focuses attention on the horrors ignored by the rest of the world. (NR)

Click here for TRAILER

 

 

Sometimes in April

This HBO drama focuses on the horrifying 1994 Rwandan massacre in which Hutu nationalists slaughtered nearly a million of their Tutsi countrymen. At the center of the story are two Hutu brothers torn apart by the conflict: Reluctant soldier Augustin (Idris Elba) desperately tries to get his wife, a Tutsi, and their family to safety, while his brother Honoré (Oris Erhuedo) espouses Hutu propaganda via the radio waves. Debra Winger costars. (NR)

Click here for TRAILER

 

 

 

Innocent Voices

Director Luis Mandoki presents a society of innocent victims who are caught in a blinding cross fire, a life-or-death environment in which survival is a daily struggle. Based on the true story of a now-grown Oscar Torres, this moving film (set in El Salvador in the mid-1980s) follows the drama of a young boy who must choose between enlisting in the Salvadoran army or joining up with a band of guerrillas. (R)

Click here for TRAILER

 

 

 

Yesterday

Darrell James Roodt (Cry, the Beloved Country) directs this heartfelt drama, the first Zulu-language film to be released internationally. Struggling to raise her daughter in a poor African village, Yesterday (Leleti Khumalo) finds the odds stacked against her when she learns that she's HIV positive. With her husband in denial, Yesterday must somehow find the strength to go on, determined to live just long enough to see her daughter go to school.  (R)

 

Screamers

Award-winning rock band System of a Down lend their music and voice to the cause of exposing modern-day worldwide genocide and the far-reaching impact of government denial. Humanitarian filmmaker Carla Garapedian follows the popular music group on tour as they perform for fans and raise awareness. The film calls attention to "ethnic cleansing" beginning in Armenia in 1915 and extending to the present Darfur conflict in western Sudan. (R)

Click here for TRAILER

 

 

 

Lost Boys of Sudan

This award-winning documentary follows two Sudanese refugees throughout their intense journey from their native Africa to the United States. As orphans living in the middle of a brutal civil war, Peter and Santino dealt with dangers like lion attacks and gunfire from militia. But even more daunting are the challenges they face in suburbia after they're chosen to start a new life in America. (NR)

Click here for TRAILER

 

 

Battle for Haditha

True events in Iraq inspire this wrenching documentary-like drama from director Nick Broomfield about a roadside bombing near the insurgent hotbed town of Haditha and the subsequent revenge killing of 24 Iraqis by the U,S. Marine unit that was hit. Told from different perspectives -- the Marines, the bombers and innocent civilians just trying to get by -- this provocative look at the madness of war defies easy answers. (R)

Click here for TRAILER

 

War Dance

Set in civil war-ravaged Northern Uganda, this Best Documentary nominee for the 2008 Oscars follows the lives of three youngsters who attend school in a refugee camp and find hope through a rich tradition of song and dance. Coming from a world in which children are abducted from their families and forced to fight in the rebel army, these kids give it their all when they travel to the capital city to take part in the prestigious Kampala Music Festival. (NR)

                                    Click here for TRAILER

 

 

 

Rocks with Wings

This heartfelt documentary traces the inspirational journey of Jerry

Richardson and the Lady Chieftains, a high school basketball team from the

small Navajo community of Shiprock, New Mexico. Fresh out of college, Jerry

accepts a challenge to turn a group of shy, quiet young women into fighters

on the basketball court. What results is a story of winning, losing and the

bumps along the way. As the girl's struggle to overcome prejudice and

self-doubt, Jerry draws a parallel from his own pain growing up

African-American in the forced-integration of the South. A bond of outsiders

is forged that allows the man and his team to rise above the odds and emerge

as champions. Rick Derby focuses on the Navajo's serene and spiritual

philosophy in contrast to the harshness of their isolated environment. A

coming-of-age story that everyone can relate to, you can't help but cheer.

 

 

 

 

Never Again?: Genocide Since the Holocaust

Focusing on horrific historical chapters such as Mao's purges in China, Pol Pot's bloody reign in Cambodia and the Arab-Israeli conflict, director Robert J. Emery explores the shameful examples of genocide found in the wake of World War II. Among the guests interviewed in this entry are Dr. Ben Kiernan, genocide studies program director at Yale University and Sophal Leng Stagg, Cambodian survivor and author of Hear Me Now: Tragedy in Cambodia.  (NR)