{For centuries, people have been watching the Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet and pondering its message about people who can’t get along.}<\/p>\n
One place in the world where the play resonates is Rwanda, a country where two decades ago Hutus attacked Tutsis and more than million people died in a genocide.<\/p>\n
Halifax filmmaker Ben Proudfoot heard about an effort to have Romeo and Juliet performed in Rwanda with an all-Rwandan cast and he knew it was the perfect story for a documentary.<\/p>\n
Apparently, many others agree. His documentary Rwanda & Juliet recently won best documentary at the 16th annual Phoenix Film Festival. It also won the Sidney K. Shapiro Foundation Humanitarian Award.<\/p>\n
The film tells the story of retired Dartmouth University professor emeritus, Andrew Garrod, and his trip to Kigali where he mounted a production of the Shakespearean classic with actors who are descendants of the Hutu and Tutsi. <\/p>\n
Garrod hoped that performing Shakespeare’s tragedy would foster reconciliation, but it didn’t quite go that way.<\/p>\n
“Just like me, I think Andrew thought that this would just be this amazing thing where he would take the play and everyone would be reconciled and it would all be a beautiful experiment showing the power of Shakespeare,” Proudfoot told CBC’s Mainstreet from Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
However, things were much more complicated.<\/p>\n
“The orphans who he cast in the play had different ideas about whether or not he had any right to bring Shakespeare to Rwanda,” said Proudfoot.<\/p>\n
Proudfoot says Garrod hoped he would be welcomed as a hero in Kigali \u2014 the capital of Rwanda \u2014 but the people there had their attention focused on other things.<\/p>\n
“They have other worries, like paying their bills and stuff like that. Many of them think that Rwanda is reconciled already,” he said.<\/p>\n
‘No discernible tension or conflict’<\/p>\n
Proudfoot says the words Hutu and Tutsi are now banned in Rwanda.<\/p>\n
“There is no discernible tension or conflict between people of different backgrounds in Rwanda. But I think \u2014 and as you’ll see in the movie \u2014 it’s very difficult to live without accepting what happened,” he said.<\/p>\n
Proudfoot says the documentary looks at how people are trying to move on from Rwanda’s “horrific past and people are trying to move on and create new lives and a new story with a new generation coming up in Rwanda.”<\/p>\n
The film shows the eight weeks when the play is being rehearsed, but also includes the country’s backstory.<\/p>\n
“My hope was that people who might go home at the end of the day and not want to watch a movie about the Rwandan genocide might go home and watch an inspiring film about kids putting on a play and through that, learn a thing or two about the genocide,” said Proudfoot.<\/p>\n
He says the film will air this summer on the CBC’s Documentary Channel. He also hopes it will be screened at film festivals over the next several months and perhaps be used in classrooms as an educational tool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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