Featuring MAG America’s Patricia Loria & Filmmakers Nathan Golon and Rick Gershon
More than 110 million active mines are scattered in 70 countries around the world, according to the United Nations. This means, one landmine for every 52 people in the world.
Remnants of conflict devastate lives. Like the lives of a young family in Laos, featured in a powerful documentary called “Surviving the Peace”. In the film, a young villager is featured and tells the story of building a fire in his back yard, without knowing a bomb was going to explode there. When the explosion happened, he opened his eyes and could no longer see. There are similar stories of such incidents happening every day around the world.
The film was produced for MAG, Mines Advisory Group, an international organization that saves lives and builds futures through the destruction of the weapons in conflict-affected countries. Since 1989, MAG has worked in over 35 countries and in 1997 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
During our Fireflies in Fight interview, Jennifer Lachman, Executive Director of MAG America reports that MAG International has over 3,500 people working around the world with 96% of the staff being local people from the countries where they currently serve.
The goal of the documentary, fittingly named “Surviving the Peace” is to profile MAG’s global work but more importantly, to create a strong compelling case for the problems they are trying to solve and the impact it has on the local population.
Laos, being the most heavily bombed country in world history, where unexploded ordnance left after the Vietnam War is still found forty years later, was chosen as the country that would best represent MAG’s work. In May 2011, filmmaker, Nathan Golon and cinematographer, Rick Gershon, in collaboration with MediaStorm, filmed the documentary. The idea for the film came from Patricia Loria, the marketing manager for MAG America. The production team was only able to spend seven days inside of Laos for the filming but they were personally impacted by what they discovered about Laos and its people.
Patricia Loria: “Mostly we hire locals. These people are fighting every day, putting their lives at risk to clean up their country. If they can do that, then I can come here and put on a good event to make people aware. They are really my inspiration.”
What MAG America representatives and these two filmmakers want the documentary to inspire most is increased awareness of MAG’s important work around the world, more exposure to the situation inside war-torn countries like Laos and provoke action; get more people to care and do more.
Nathan Golon: “The revelation that I had (throughout this project), is that we, as U.S. tax payers, don’t fully understand the role that our country plays all over the world without us even realizing it. Growing up, going through U.S. school systems, we don’t understand how we are changing every corner of the world. To be there (inside of Laos) and to see the legacy of what happened during the Vietnam conflict, that really sunk in for me.”
Rick Gershon: “It hit me (while filming this documentary) that war is really personal. One of the contrast that I like from the film is that you see these bombs being dropped from 30, 000 ft. in the air, but we got to meet the people being affected by all of this. War is a necessary evil sometimes, but it’s really personal and it affects a lot of people. This is what we, as filmmakers, need to constantly remind people of… that war is really personal.”
MAG America’s goal for producing this film is to get as many people to see it and share it as possible. The hope is that through this film and sharing human stories that accompany the politics of war, many will be inspired to support the people and countries left with wounds and scars yet to be healed – to help them continue surviving the peace with dignity and acknowledgment that they are not forgotten. They are finally being seen and heard.
