Moving Pictures

Gary Haugen Interview for Documentary

It was such an honor and privilege to have IJM President Gary Haugen teaching at Pepperdine last week.  My role was to be his “co-teacher” in this one-unit, one-week intensive class on International Human Rights.  I reached my highest and best use as his “co-teacher” by taking roll, preparing the written administrative materials, and smiling politely as he taught the course.  The class largely centered around his groundbreaking new book called The Locust Effect, which I have now read twice.  Occasionally, I interjected with an experience or two from my work in Uganda, but I was thrilled to mostly be a student learning from the leader in this arena.  I will be grading the papers the students turn in on Monday.

Just before Gary taught the final class, he graciously agreed to be interviewed on camera by one of the filmmakers who will be following our group of Pepperdine students and alums to Uganda this summer.  When we started our prison projects in Uganda in 2010, former Global Justice Program Director Jay Milbrandt began visually capturing our experiences.  He captured many moving pictures of us engaged in our work, and also created two different moving pictures in the form of short documentary films in 2010’s “The Masindi Project” and 2011’s “Remand: Jail for Kids in Africa.”  After last summer’s project in an adult prison in Fort Portal, we were approached by filmmakers about making a much longer, more comprehensive film about our work in Ugandan prisons.

About two weeks ago, we got the green light from Pepperdine and entered into a relationship with Nashville-based Revolution Pictures to make the documentary film.  Revolution is run by an award-winning filmmaker, Randy Brewer, who also graduated from my alma mater, Abilene Christian.  Anticipating that we might go ahead with this, Pepperdine film professor Craig Detweiler has been capturing footage of interviews with Ugandan judges visiting Pepperdine over the past several months for possible use in the film.  It was for the same purpose that Craig interviewed Gary Haugen last week – for possible use in the documentary.

The Nashville production team is flying out this week to film interviews with the twelve Pepperdine students who will be traveling to Uganda for the summer to work for Ugandan judges and to join the prison project.

The prison project this summer will involve spending one week inside the Luzira Maximum Security Prison preparing the cases of more than 100 adult prisoners who have been waiting several years for a lawyer, the evidence against them, and a court date.  The team will consist of 6-10 American lawyers, 12 Pepperdine Law students, 6-10 Uganda law students, and 6-10 Ugandan lawyers.  We are still finalizing the team of American lawyers, so if anyone reading this is potentially interested in joining the team, let me know ASAP and I will send you the precise dates (late June/early July) and the cost structure.

It appears that the filmmakers want to include some of Henry’s story as background and lead-in, so it will be fun to visit with and film his family as part of this trip.

Speaking of Henry, his extended family had a meeting this past week to discuss the path forward in the wake of the passing of Henry’s father.  The aunt who is trying to take Henry’s family’s land was not among the 79 attendees, though she sent a representative on her behalf to continue to assert her claim on the land.  I was heartened to learn that the rest of those in attendance refused to allow the representative to even speak at the gathering.  Nevertheless, Henry is moving forward with trying to secure legal title to the land, which will be a lengthy and expensive process.