The World Memory Film Project

Together with Michael Kirtley, journalist and filmmaker from the USA, the Unitas Foundation has launched an unparalleled social experiment called the World Memory Film Project.

The goal of the global project is to raise youth empowerment and awareness of crimes against humanity through collecting short personal films portraying young people’s emotional reactions to genocidal crimes committed by oppressive regimes. By the end of 2013, a feature-length documentary film drawn from thousands of crowdsourced “video stories” from various nations will be created.

In addition, the project is going to provide a modern framework where crimes committed by communist regimes, as well as other such crimes that fall outside the UN definition of “genocide”, are given their rightful place in world understanding of human barbarity. Therefore, a new term, “xenocide”, has been created which refers to the “killing of the other“.

To raise awareness on Baltic Sea regional history and stories from the region, and to empower youth to be more active and globally minded citizens, an e-campaign called Exit Xenocide is going to be launched as part of the WMFP. The aim is to collect and share video stories of severe political oppression (xenocide) related to the Baltic Sea region, and invite youth to express their opinions on xenocidal events and incidents through social media.

Memory institutions are important partners for the project and are invited to cooperate in the following ways:
• in helping to distribute the Call for Video Stories through their communication channels
• partnering in the launch of a national Call for Video Stories
• partnering in running joint activities (engaging filmmaking workshops and mentor programmes for students, international youth seminars, etc)
• in submitting videos on behalf of the organisation.
To partner with WMFP, please contact:

Uve Poom
CEO / Unitas Foundation
+372 5017424
uve.poom@unitasfoundation.org
www.unitasfoundation.org