The Lost Boys of Sudan (Documentary) reflection

I really enjoyed The Lost Boys of Sudan documentary. I found it very truthful, enlightening and interesting. It helped shed a bit of light on a school whose large group of inhabitants I barely know at all. I think the intentions of showing us students the film were great as well. The intentions were to educate us about what we see every day, what our meager eyes can’t tell us. It was a truly great thing.

To start off, I’ll explain my previous beliefs about the Sudanese refugees. I didn’t know much; I guess I thought that they came here because there was civil unrest in their country, and they needed to move to a safer place to get an education and such. I had the lucky opportunity of having a few Sudanese refugees speak to me and a few other people (not at school). They basically told us a first hand retelling of what their lives were like in Sudan (although they weren’t in the refugee camps and such). I knew that it must be hard to come to a new country and such. To summarize it, I hadn’t thought or knew much about the whole thing.

And wow. There are things like this that we don’t know about all around us! It’s amazing how we get through each day not knowing about the world around us. We’re usually so locked up in our way of thinking about the world and our selves, that it’s great when a movie like this can slap some sense into us. For instance, when I was walking the halls outside after the movie, I saw some people walking around that could have been Sudanese refugees. “Wow” was all that went through my mind. I had tapped into this large unknown abyss that’s around us everyday, and it was a very eye-opening experience.

 

I think The Lost Boys of Sudan was done very well in the way of displaying a very accurate and well-rounded portrayal of reality. The movie didn’t cover the worst things that can happen in situations like this (gangs and such), but it didn’t focus on the best situations, landing more in the middle, typical situation (feeling lost, disoriented, money troubles).

 

I was amazed how the camera seems to be just there, and how everyone seems to not really notice it. The good part of this technique is that it shows the interesting lives these people lead. It showed the hardship, friendship and everything they encounter in a very ambiguous way, which is necessary to a good “learning experience”. The interviews were indirect and objective, asking interesting questions. The whole process must have been an interesting experience for the filmmakers, to observe reality rather than trying to participate in it.

 

I thought it was great how the boys kept together to some extent. You could definitely tell that in Sudan there was a strong community (community dancing, singing, cooking, socializing). Their friendship seemed to deteriorate a bit in the US, with people being split up and the pressures of being in a new place. It was awesome how they retained there great sense of humour, and were able to laugh with each other despite all of the new things they were experiencing. The reunion was very fun to watch, especially at the beginning with how everyone was greeting each other for the first time in a while. You could tell how much they loved each other.

Overall, if you haven’t watched this documentary, I recommend you do no matter where you live. It’s really interesting because it applies directly to everyday life and how we think about others. Things like these are very powerful tools for teaching. Thanks for showing us it!

Photography and it’s Assorted Joys

Beauty. There’s a lot of it that our meager eyes don’t notice. You can find beauty anywhere; it’s not hard at all. From a normal kitchen to a leisurely stroll through the seemingly ugly Winnipeg West End, it just takes a little slowing down. Photography is a great method for finding beauty, looking through the lens of a little mechanical device somehow opens up your eyes to everything. It’s like sensory overload!

Photography requires that I lose control. We all love the idea of being in control, it gives us a superficial sense of security, and that makes sense. When you have everything locked up with no surprises in sight, things seem easy. Photography shatters that idea of trying to control the world, you’re observing everything you forget in the normal day to day, submitting yourself not to your own plans but to the abundant beauty everywhere. Sure you’re in control of what you capture, but the scenery is already laid out for you.

Photography helps me to realize how much I get caught up in myself, caring too much about my image, living in fear, judging people and things like that because photography is all about seeing things as they are. When I’m not taking pictures, I sometimes carry a bit of the photographic mindset over to regular life. I find myself mentally taking pictures, seeing how a perfectly normal crack in the sidewalk could be transformed into a very meaningful portrait of something or other.

Photography is very expressive in the way of me filtering my opinions, views and soul into a picture. It’s a really wild idea, displaying bits of myself as a picture that I usually randomly take. It’s a great universal concept in a way, showing how everything is connected and how I can see myself in anything if I try. It can be a non-pleasant concept as well since the possibility of seeing yourself in everything means even the things you most despise. Taking pictures is a great way for sharing myself with others since it’s great fun for others and I enjoy it as well.

I found something interesting about fame through my pictures. When people look at my photos, I sometimes get a buzz off their compliments. It’s better if I smile and remember that the best thing was the actual picture taking. From the moment I start taking pictures to the feedback I get, the process is very open and something that I’m not in control of. I don’t want to take pictures for the buzz of the comments, since that would be trying to control the process, which takes the joy out of it.

In geography class, we were assigned a project that was to be done on a region of Canada. The initial reaction was “ugh”. It proved to be quite boring for the most part, but the only parts that were somewhat interesting were the parts in which I applied myself. For the presentation our group randomly did a play about the prairies (people were grass, rivers, farmers and other odd things). Later on, that was about the only thing people remembered from the whole spiel of presentations. It’s like photography and how you have to be creative to be interesting, working with what’s around you until it’s not just scenery or redundant information.

To summarize about this sublime topic, photography is very meaningful to me, requires me to stop running, and is very enjoyable to say the least. Thanks for hearing me out.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon response

Curious Incident is an awesome book. It’s not awesome in the typical way of “that was so awesome”, but awesome in the way of “that was so awesome!” What I’m trying to get at here is that it’s not your normal book that could fit into a specific genre, since it contains elements of so many!

 

Curious Incident follows the quest of the teenage Christopher Boone. The quest is a simple one, originally intending to find out who killed the dog next door. That isn’t the basis of the story though, for then it would probably fit into the mystery genre. Put simply, the book explains Christopher’s thought process. One second he’ll be explaining what people said when he was asking them questions about the dog, and the next he’ll be explaining a really interesting math problem.

 

I definitely gained some insight into the way an autistic person’s mind works. They appear to be very precise and literal. Christopher stresses how he can’t make up things, and how he always tells the truth for example. This kind of literal thinking is great for math.

 

One of the really awe-inspiring logic problems he explains is as follows. You have three doors and behind one of them is a car. Your first pick yields you a 33% chance of picking the right door. One door that doesn’t contain a car is opened. You’re now given the option to pick another door if you wish. Your logic tells you “why pick another door? I have a 50/50 chance of getting the right one and picking again won’t make a difference!” So if you pick again after the door has been taken away, you have a 66% chance of getting the right door. True to the problem, more often than not if you pick again you’ll get the car. (My friends and I have tried it.) It’s really weird!

 

That’s just one of the examples. I fondly remember reading this book at school and Christopher would mention something that’d get me thinking and wondering, like an amazing and inspiring fact about our universe. For example, he mentions how stars are nuclear explosions billions of miles away. That’s what this book does. It gets you wondering. It’s not so much of a story, as an interactive experience that simply reading won’t do the trick. It’s very diverse and doesn’t follow a set formula that other books follow. It’s really awesome!

 

The way it was written is pretty cool as well. I don’t know much about Mark Haddon, but I do know that he’s not an autistic person (he works with them though). My first reaction to that information was “whaaaat?!” It seems so weird that a non-autistic person wrote this since the book is written so seamlessly! It’s also his first novel, so that’s pretty surprising. I guess if you’re around something each day, you begin to understand how it operates, but still, it’s pretty amazing!

 

As in any good book, the character must transform. Not in a physical sense, like a frog to a hermit, but an internal transformation. The reader has to witness the transformation so he or she doesn’t think the book reading was a waste of time. Who wants to read something that from end to finish, nothing changes, there isn’t a sense of realization or anything. Christopher definitely changes during the book. He becomes a fuller person, a more open human being. Maybe not by a lot, but you can definitely see it. I think the transformation is a large part in this book, especially since he’s autistic. What I mean by that is not that we all aren’t trapped in our compulsions most of the time, but a person with autism would be more so, since they have this extra layer of compulsions that are built into them, that they’re hardly in control of. I’m thinking that would be harder to break out of and transform, making this transformation extra special.

 

The journey of finding out who killed the dog is what begins the transformation. During that journey, Christopher finds out many things, a lot of which are very uncomfortable for him. He gains a sort of independence by failing over and over again but his curious, loving and loyal nature always prevails. I’d say this book describes one of the most interesting character transformations in recent history. Like everything else in the book, it’s very well rounded and interestingly written that you really have to read to believe. Amazing shit!

 

If you haven’t read this book, I suggest you do so. You definitely won’t regret it and will probably be very happy that you did. I give it a rock solid 10 out of 10!

Lemony Snicket’s a Series of Unfortunate Events review

I had the pleasure of watching Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events for a second time and here’s my musings on that very unique experience. 

A Series of Unfortunate Events is a movie full of some great themes like community, friendship, seeing through deception and staying loyal to the ones you love even if what’s around you may seem utterly horrible and unfortunate. The themes play themselves out through comical horror and mystery. 

The setting of the movie is sometime in the nineteenth century, maybe a bit on the earlier side, and most definitely on earth (although you never know), but exaggerated in a dark comic book style, which does a great job on portraying the mood of the books. 

A Series of Unfortunate Events involves some pretty sweet actors. The centerpiece of the movie is Jim Carrey who plays Count Olaf. Carrey does a good job of playing the odd and pathetic characters of Count Olaf in the book. It does take the movie in an odd direction though, sometimes making it a bit more focused on the comedy aspect than you might expect from such a mellow and serious set of books. I didn’t remember laughing while reading them. I think a wide variety of audiences would love this movie, starting at the pre-teen level. It’s a good family movie.

The part that most sticks out in my mind from the movie is the slightly delayed letter the Bauldelaires receive at the end because of how wise and loving it is. It very much summarizes the movie quite well and all it’s themes, telling the Bauldelaires to keep loving each-other even through the times when home seems like a forgotten aspect of their lives. The letter also tells them how home is always with them. Wow, that was an awesome letter I’d like to read it again.

My verdict is that it’s OK, not absolutely great, just because some of the acting isn’t to  good and some of the parts aren’t all to interesting. I’d suggest you see it though, just since the books are very good and overall the movie is pretty good.

- joel penner