Amnesty in Salisbury & South Wiltshire
Promoting human rights from Salisbury UK
Monthly meeting took place last night Thursday 9th March at Victoria Road. It was a full agenda including North Korean talk at Five Rivers; NWR meeting; Films at the Arts Centre; Social media and Death Penalty reports and the market stall. Minutes will be posted soon.
Minutes of the February meeting are now available thanks to group member Lesley for compiling them. It was a full agenda and we have a lot going on and planned at present. If you live in the Salisbury area and would like to help that would be appreciated. If you go to the end of the minutes you will see the list of events and activities. If you are interested in becoming involved, then come along to one of those and make yourself known. Follow this site or twitter or Facebook if you prefer those.
On Friday 3rd February the group hosted a showing of the film Fire at Sea in the Arts Centre in Salisbury. This film won the Golden Bear award at the Berlin film festival and tells the story of immigrants seeking to reach Europe, in this case the island of Lampedusa. There are in effect two parallel story lines: one involving a small boy of around 12 who spends his time, with a friend, making and shooting a catapult and on his father’s fishing boat. The other involves the immigrants packed onto boats bobbing about for days in the Mediterranean in their desperate efforts to reach Europe. Some die of dehydration and others get burned by diesel fuel splashes as they refill the engines. These burns can be serious and even fatal. There are harrowing scenes of bodies being retrieved from the boats.
The feature of the film is that the two stories never overlap. The islanders carry on their lives completely divorced from the drama that is taking place in the sea around them and in the holding centre where the immigrants are looked after. The doctor is featured who is involved with vetting the immigrants and speaks matter of factly about the dire state of their health and how some of them die. He is then shown treating the boy who is concerned about his breathing difficulty, which we are led to believe is imaginary. These two contrasting scenes seem to sum up the theme of the film.
We took the opportunity to ask people to sign a petition on the refugee situation in Greece.
We are grateful to the Arts Centre for hosting this event.
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We are pleased to attach the minutes of the December meeting thanks to group member Lesley for preparing them.
Group meeting tonight at 7:30 as usual in Victoria Road. Supporters welcome.
We are pleased to attach the monthly minutes for the October meeting thanks to Lesley for preparing them. We discussed the Refugee, North Korean and Death Penalty campaigns, forthcoming films, Evensong at the Cathedral and Citizenship days at some of our schools.
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In partnership with Salisbury Arts Centre, we shall be showing the film Mustang on 15 December 2016. This award winning film by a Turkish director concerns five girls growing up in a northern Turkish town. On their way home from school they meet some boys and start some harmless frolics in the sea. This is reported to their parents and thus begins a life of confinement, forced marriage and control.
We are delighted to say that there will be a short presentation at the start by Prof. Lucy Mazdom who is Head of the Film Department at Southampton University. Her research interests include French and American film; contemporary French and British television; transnational film studies; remakes; film history in a global context and issues of cinematic distribution, exhibition and reception.
After the showing, the local group will asking people to sign a petition (to be decided nearer the time).
Tickets are available at the Arts Centre.
Follow us on Twitter and Facebook. If you are interested in joining local group, make yourself known at the film to one of us at the signing table. It is free to join the local group. Details on the ‘Joining’ tab on the home page.
We attach minutes of the September meeting thanks to group member Lesley for preparing them.
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The minutes of the July meeting are available here thanks to group member Lesley for preparing them. A full meeting in which we discussed the death penalty report; the results of the stall; the film at the Arts Centre; social media statistics; the meeting at the Cathedral and the BBQ in August. We also discussed the letter sent to John Glen about the Maldives (reply awaited).
The minutes of the June meeting are now available thanks to group member Lesley for typing them up. We discussed the stall on Saturday; the film at the Arts Centre; the video based on North Korea and the death penalty among other things. The full minutes can be read below:
Amnesty in Salisbury & South Wiltshire 