Just a month after the charity, Christian Aid became Ctrl.Alt.Shift, a trendy ‘global online community to help young people get engaged in global development issues’, we’ve found the equivalent in the cinema.
The charity has spent a ton re-jigging its focus from religious zeal to youth culture cool. It will soon launch a magazine co-edited by music writer and thelondonpaper columnist, Chantelle Fiddy, and former editor of Sleazenation, Neil Boorman. The mag aims to target the 48 per cent of young people who’d be into the charity if it felt more “accessible, relevant to their lives or involved doing something they actually enjoyed.”
Well, why don’t they head to the movies?
Last week, you could have seen both Blindsight and Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame, two films that share no similarities other than they both show how hardcore real kids can be when they are pushed to the limit. (Oh – and they have limited runs at artsy cinemas – but to DVD they will come, suburbanites.) They couldn’t be more on-message for Ctrl.Alt.Shift.
Buddha Collapsed…, about a tenacious six-year-old who calls an Afghan cave her home is almost too painful to watch. Like Bjork’s character, Selma, in Lars von Trier’s Dancer In The Dark, she is so heart-crushingly innocent that it rips your heart out to see her hurt. Like Selma, she’s too clueless to help herself.
Blindsight is a documentary about blind Tibetan children who’ve suffered short lives filled with abuse and scorn. In a big ‘fuck you’ to the society that shuns them, they climb Everest with a team of professionals led by American Erik Weihenmayer, famous for being the first blind man in history to reach Mount Everest’s summit.
Only, in another phat ‘fuck you’ to mainstream society, the kids stop short of the summit and choose to stray off to play with a big block of ice instead. After all – a summit is relatively arbitrary if you can’t see the view, right?
The film was shown at last week’s Film Knights (the monthly film club run by us here at Little White Lies) – anyone else feel as happy as us they said ‘screw you’ to the summit?
Thanks for this. Couldn’t make it to Film Knights this month so the recap is appreciated.
On the subject of Ctrl.Alt.Shift (and Christian Aid) can I just reiterate that we never had ‘religious zeal’. Christian Aid is an industry-leading development organisation not a missionary society.
We reserve all our ‘zeal’ for poverty eradication.
Nice.
Written by Chris on August 13th, 2008 at 8:32 am
Point taken, Chris.
I actually think it’s a good thing the organisation is looking to expand its reach via people like Boorman.
I’m a fan of these films and of any moves made to publicise the oft-untold stories that exist in the world.
Written by georgie on August 13th, 2008 at 9:51 am
I would have found the film more uplifting, if the kids able to reach the summit had done so. I think the teacher got too worried when the going got hard.
Still these kids where given incredible opportunities, booth in the school, and on the mountain. The film highlights their plight, and tells their story in a touching way.
Written by chris on August 13th, 2008 at 3:55 pm