Community Arts in Rural Settings

The Canadian Cultural Observatory would like to thank again all the participants and contributors to the "Arts and Heritage in Rural Communities In Focus Series."

A few days ago, at the Hot Docs film festival, I watched “War/Dance,” an extraordinary documentary set in rural war-torn Northern Uganda. The film movingly contrasts the hard everyday reality of three displaced children living in a refugee camp, where men with guns are everywhere and the only resources are the weekly arrivals of UN food trucks, with their joy and pride in preparing for a national school dance and music competition.

Winner of the Documentary Directing Award at the 2007 Sundance Festival, this film expresses how three Ugandan children’s lives were transformed by two associated factors: their daily music and dance classes with a local school music teacher, and then the impact of incorporating two professional musicians into their rehearsals to enhance their training. The visiting artists work with the children to raise the level of their traditional and western techniques, and while we watch this process, and the ultimate result at the nationals, we hear directly from the children – some speaking for the first time about their harrowing experiences – about how their music and dance training is a means to forgetting their terrors and loneliness and furthermore is giving them a reason to live.

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