In May 2012, the students from the Program for Narrative and Documentary Practice traveled to Burma to explore daily life in the country’s biggest city, Yangon, as the culminating workshop of the yearlong course. As Burma currently sits at a crossroads, between the oppression of the last decades and the recent promise of an opening society; between its isolation and the possibility of rejoining the international community; and between the rising geographical powers of China and India, it was an opportune time to explore the many changing dynamics within the city.  The students were led by PNDP Founding Director Gary Knight and PNDP Program Coordinator Samuel James.

A Special Screening of the Academy Award-nominated Documentary Film How To Survive a Plague, introduced by an early  member of ACT UP! Jim Eigo.

Faced with their own mortality an improbable group of young people, many of them HIV-positive young men, broke the mold as radical warriors taking on Washington and the medical establishment.  The film presents the story of two coalitions—ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group)—whose activism and innovation turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition. Despite having no scientific training, these self-made activists infiltrated the pharmaceutical industry and helped identify promising new drugs, moving them from experimental trials to patients in record time. With unfettered access to a treasure trove of never-before-seen archival footage from the 1980s and ‘90s, filmmaker David France puts the viewer in the middle of the controversial actions, the heated meetings, the heartbreaking failures, and the exultant breakthroughs of heroes in the making.  
 

Bosnia. Rwanda. Kosovo. Sierra Leone. Pakistan. Just a few of the world's humanitarian and political crises in the past years. Whether the result of war or nature, these disasters devastate populations and cripple health systems. Despite the immense dangers and difficulties of the work, one organization, Doctors Without Borders, has continuously intervened at these frontlines of overwhelming human need.

Set in war-torn Congo and post-conflict Liberia, Living in Emergency interweaves the stories of four volunteers with Doctors Without Borders as they struggle to provide emergency medical care under the most extreme conditions.

Two volunteers are new recruits: a 26 year-old Australian doctor stranded in a remote bush clinic and an American surgeon struggling to cope under the load of emergency cases in a shattered capital city. Two others are experienced field hands: a dynamic Head of Mission, valiantly trying to keep morale high and tensions under control, and an exhausted veteran, who has seen too much horror and wants out.

Amidst the chaos, each volunteer must confront the severe challenges of the work, the tough choices, and test the limits of their own idealism.

Flow is Irena Salina’s award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century - The World Water Crisis.
The film will be introduced by Shafiqul Islam, Tufts Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Contagion follows the rapid progress of a lethal airborne virus that kills within days. As the fast-moving epidemic grows, the worldwide medical community races to find a cure and control the panic that spreads faster than the virus itself. At the same time, ordinary people struggle to survive in a society coming apart.

The film will be introduced by Jennifer Steele, DVM, PhD.  She is a Research Assistant Professor, Division of Infectious Diseases, Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University.  Her research articles have been published in the Journal of Infectious Disease, among others.  Dr. Steele is working with the Tufts team on the RESPOND project through USAID.  This initiative is a multidisciplinary project to create better synergies among veterinarians, doctors and public health officials in responding to outbreaks of emergent zoonotic diseases that can be transmitted between animals and humans with a focus on preventing these diseases from reaching humans by identifying and countering outbreaks while they are still within wildlife and livestock.
 

Join us as Mary Kaldor discusses the third editiong of her landmark work on New and Old Wars. Kaldor's work on new wars, first published in 1999, crystallized thinking about the changing nature of war in the globalized post-Cold War era, in particular focusing on the proliferation of non-state ators and the systematic targeting of civilians, the importance of identity politics, and the inter-relationship between private and often criminal interests and political conflict. She is Professor of Global Governance and Director of the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit at the London School of Economics, and will be presented with the Dr Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award at this lecture. The book signing will begin at 5 pm in the Mezzanine area, and the lecture will take place at 5:30 in the ASEAN Auditorium.