Officials from the Carter Center have said that the official results of the election “lack credibility.” Following the release of the election results Tshisekedi declared himself the winner.

Here are several articles about the election:

Enough Project Blog post from Easter Congo
Washing Post Editorial
Ben Affleck/Cindy McCain/Anthony W. Gambino Op-Ed on Huffington Post

The situation is tense.  Although police disbursed protesters there yesterday, our friends in Bukavu have told us that things there have been peaceful thus far.  We hope and pray that as time passes this political situation will end peacefully.  We will continue to post any information we receive as we get it.

This quote from the short documentary Crisis in the Congo being produced by The Friends of the Congo could not be more true.  The film does a beautiful job of helping you understand the complexities of the situation Congolese people gripping your heart with the facts of what is actually happening.  Through interviews intertwined with news footage it weaves the story of how we got to where we are in the Congo today and how the west has been complicit in much of what has happened to bring the Congolese to their present circumstances.

NOTE: The short film is a graphic portrait of what is happening in the DRC, so please be advised before you begin the video that it is not for the squemish. But it may be the best piece I have seen on what is happening in the DR Congo and gives a very clear and stunning portrait of the internal and external political and social climate facing the Congo today.

Please watch and share this 26 minute film from the Friends of the Congo that will change forever how you see the situation facing the DRC.

Our director, Evan Vetter, recently guest blogged over at Daredreamermag.com about his decision to finish the Congocast project as a film and the impact that decision had on his life. You can check out the post here – we hope that it challenges you to prepare for the risks you have ahead in life and inspires you to take a leap to do something that can help impact the world around you!

If you’re reading this post on a laptop or a cell phone, chances are you’re unknowingly participating in the struggle over CONFLICT MINERALS (and unfortunately, as we type this, we are too).

Conflict minerals are those mined in areas that are plagued by armed conflict and human rights abuses – and the DR Congo is one of the most notable places in the world where this occurs.  Profits from the sale of minerals like gold, coltan, tantalum, tin and tungsten help to fund the activities of armed rebel groups that keep the country in a constant state of instability.  These groups use fear, violence and rape to control the local populations working the mines and then sell the minerals to traders who ultimately sell them to multinational electronics companies manufacturing devices such as cell phones, laptops and MP3 players.

This is one of the many destabilizing forces in the DR Congo – and one that receives very little attention from end-consumers like you and me.  To quote a recent article in the New York Times on the subject:

“This is Africa’s resource curse: The wealth is unearthed by the poor, controlled by the strong, then sold to a world largely oblivious of its origins.”  New York Times, November 2008

Recent legislation hopes to turn the tide on this human rights tragedy.  The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was signed into law last summer by President Obama, in an effort to improve accountability and transparency in the financial system.  It included a section that specifically addresses certain conflict minerals in the DRC.  This law requires that any company using conflict minerals in the production of their products must report which mines the minerals came from.  The more people become aware of this issue, the more embarrassing this can become for big companies, so several have decided to stop using conflict minerals altogether – most notably, Apple and Intel.

All this to say – take a moment to think about what your next electronic gadget REALLY costs.  We’re encouraged to see companies take steps that could ultimately save lives in the DR Congo!

DO SOMETHING:

Find out how your favorite company is doing in regard to their supply chain and take the opportunity to tell them your thoughts on conflict minerals by visiting the Enough Project’s Conflict Minerals Company Ratings page.

FIND OUT MORE:

You can find out more about Conflict Minerals at the links below:

Enough Project: Conflict Minerals Initiative
CNN: Electronics Fuel Unspeakable Violence
Wikipedia: Conflict Minerals

Robin, Luke & Evan filming in the DR Congo (by Erin Bond, 2009)

Although I haven’t updated here on the congocast.org site since the winter, spring is coming and with it some major changes for this project!  To catch you up to speed, here is a brief synopsis of what has been going on with the Congocast project over the last few years.

• Beginning in the summer of 2006, Robin Tabbiner and Wendy Merritt lived in the DR Congo (with a video camera) for a year working with victims of the ongoing conflict facing the country.
• From 2006-2009 I interviewed Robin and Wendy in the US, in the DRC, and anywhere in between following their work as I directed/edited the documentary podcast found here at congocast.org.
• From 2007-2010 Robin returned multiple times to continue the work she was doing in the DR Congo (with the help of Port City Community Church in Wilmington, NC).  Sometimes she had a camera or a camera-man (me) to document the work.
• The podcast was completed in the spring of 2009, telling the parts of the story videoed from 2006-2007.
• In July 2009 my wife and I had a baby and the project was put on hold as we adapted to parenthood.

In the summer/fall of 2010 I used a great bit of my vacation to explore the viability of turning the podcast into a feature length documentary including the footage / story being carried on by Robin through the present.  While doing this I began to realize it was going to take more than vacation days and working as a weekend warrior to finish the film and do it justice.  So after many conversations with members of the staff at Port City Church (where I worked and who graciously funded the project to this point), I’m leaving my position to dedicate myself full time to finishing this project as a film.

This is a huge step of faith for my family but I know that this film will add something unique to the conversation about the DR Congo and will offer hope, not just to those who are in need in the DRC, but to those who wonder how it could be possible for them to help make a difference in such a desperate situation.

We will be updating this site with the progress of the film and ways you can help be a part of completing it.  We’re aiming to have it finished sometime in the summer of 2011 (hopefully) in time for the film festival season.  We are hoping to find a new and broader audience through this film in an effort to help spread the word about the violence continuing to face the DR Congo and inspire others that they too can make a difference in a world that so desperately needs their help.

You can get ongoing updates about the progress of the project as it comes together over the coming months at:

BLOG: http://www.congocast.org/blog
FACEBOOK: http://facebook.com/congocast
TWITTER: http://twitter.com/congocast

So I’m back in the saddle (or editing bay as it were) and will be for the forseable future!  Stay tuned for more info about the progress of our film and ways you can help us get it finished!

- Evan Vetter, Director of Congocast.org

350+ Interviews/Events Filmed

8500+ Video Clips

It is easy to get overwhelmed when you don’t know where to start.  The idea of trying to turn this podcast into something that is a 90-120 minutes long documentary has terrified the mess out of me over the past year.  Once the podcast was finished there was a sense of relief that was tempered by a feeling that the story was incomplete.  After our trip back to Congo in 2009, I knew that I had the end of the story the podcast told, but with a baby on the way for my family, I knew I wasn’t going to have time to tell it then.

So earlier this year, I ramped back up the process of the Congocast podcast into a film.  I’ve felt like I had a rough idea of the story I’m wanting to share, but with all that footage, I’ve had to keep reminding myself of a simple truth:

To climb up a mountain you have to take the first step.

Doesn’t matter if the mountain is made of stones or miniDV tapes, they both are scaled the same way, one step at a time.  With over 200+ hours of footage filmed, and 80-90% of it logged & captured into the computer, taht next step had intimidated me for months.  I was paralyzed just sitting in front of the computer, staring at all the folders full of video clips, trying to figure out where to start editing (in fact I should be editing right now, but blogging is a nice diversion).

So back in September, I decided to step out and I start breaking down the story.  I found some great articles online about screenwriting and basic three act structure and began looking at how I could get all that footage to fit into the basic story template.  For anyone who is a film geek out there here are some pics of what my process has been looking like:

Storyboard using colored notecards

Storyboard using Notecards on Wall

It may make me look crazy to have all those notecards on the wall in my home office, but it seems to be working for now.

I’ve also got a video of me creating these two walls over the course of a week that I took off back in September to lay the narrative and storyboard out, so check back in the future for a post with a time-lapse of these two images coming together!

You may be wondering what the point of making a film is at this point.  Well, the podcast only told part of the story.  The hope of the film is that it can more concisely help answer the question, “What do any of us have to give?” to a situation as desperate and dark as the one facing the DRC.  The scope is wider reaching, the story more engaging and hopefully the time invested now will produce a story that can be used to effect great change for the DRC and the Congolese people.

Stay tuned to this blog as we will be updating you on the process/progress of trying to turn our little podcast into a feature length documentary film as well as info about ways you can continue to get involved in the DRC!

Here is the trailer:

The film follows Kristof (@NickKristof) as he travels in and around Goma (in the province of North Kivu) as he looks for a story that will bring the world’s attention to the plight facing the Congolese people.  The film is composed of three themes–one part treatise on the psychology of human compassion, one part raw examination of the DR Congo crisis, and one part snapshot of the flailing newspaper industry.  The sum of these parts is a riveting documentary which sheds light on the nature of the issues facing the DR Congo while it attempts to put a face to the crisis it examines.

USING SIMPLICITY TO AWAKEN ABILITY

Metzgar begins his film with a short quote:

“If I look at the mass, I will never act.  If I look at the one, I will.” – Mother Teresa

The director examines the science behind compassion, noting that as NGO’s try to raise support for issues, the more complex their message gets, the harder it is to get people to act. I know as I hear the stats about Congo, hear rape stories, see children starving, that I begin to find myself overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the situation.  Kristof knows that if he can find that ONE right story during his visit to the DRC, he could expose the world to it’s slumber of inaction and hopefully reveal to them their ability to do something.

Whether he finds his story will be up to you.  But I think of all the films I have seen on the DRC in the last four years, the story he does find vividly shows the collateral damage caused by the 16 year war being fought in the Congo.  When the death toll from any war rises into the millions, the bulk of the perished are not from violence.  But, unfortunately violence sells.  Starvation and disease that result from growing instability never become a headline–and Kristof is actively working to change that.

ATTENTION VS. ACTION

I think the most inspiring thing about the piece for me, was the revelation that just because an issue is receiving attention doesn’t mean the cause has found it’s voice.  Kristof was one of the first journalists to begin shining his light on the conflict in Darfur early last decade.  He would repeatedly write stories about the injustice facing the Sudanese people until someone listened.  One woman interviewed in the film points out that repetition can be a fear of journalists.  You want to have breaking news.  But writers that were continuous in their denouncement of the Holocaust during WWII were not derided later for their repetition.  Their voice was necessary to ending the horror occurring at that time, and the same is true for humanitarian disasters like Congo and Darfur today.  Attention does not equal action.

Enough cannot be said.

The chorus must get louder.

I definitely recommend that if you have HBO, you check this film out, as it will surely leave an impression.  Hopefully it will add to a growing chorus working to help the Congolese people leave this war behind them.

Saturday night as I was wrapping up my work, I stopped to check my twitter feed. As I opened my favorite twitter client I saw at the top of the list a tweet from Nicholas Kristof. If you don’t know who Nicholas is, he is one of the few international journalists today that is championing the cause of the Congolese people in his writings and work. He is a voice laboring to fill the knowledge gap of the uninformed about the terrible things facing the DR Congo. I had started following Kirstof on twitter after I saw that he was the subject of the Ben Affleck produced film on the DR Congo called “The Reporter” last year.

His tweet said: “The World Capital of Killing, Congo, and a heroic doctor and patient there: my Sun column, http://nyti.ms/aIutFe“

So I clicked…

A FAMILIAR FACE

As Kristof’s NYT article began to load, I noticed it was about Panzi Hospital.  He had interviewed a rape survivor named Jeanne Mukuninwa along with Dr. Denis Mukwege, the doctor working to help put her life back together. The story was similar to what we saw in Episode 7 of the podcast. But, as I looked at the picture of the woman at the top of Kristof’s article, something seemed familiar. Was she one of the women we interviewed at the Panzi hospital in 2007? But what would she still be doing there 3 years later? Maybe it wasn’t her? She looked a bit happier. Her hair was done, it had been straightened.  She was different, more put together.  I knew that in Episode 8 of our video podcast we had shown part of an interview we shot at the Panzi Hospital with a woman we thought was named Jan. But could this be her?

Jeanne Mukuninwa in Kristof's 2010 Interview

So I went back to the original interview we had shot. I scrubbed the clips and found the one where our translator asked the young woman’s name. Sure enough, she stated it was Jeanne Mukuninwa (I had mis-spelled the name as my french is bad).

Jeanne in our 2007 Interview for the Congocast.org Podcast

If you read the New York Times article by Kristof, you will notice two things about Jeanne that have happened over time.  1) She looks like she is doing better than she was in our interview in 2007.  2) She is back at Panzi hospital because she was raped again after she returned to her village.

Nothing makes me more angry than that last statement.  How could that happen–again?

ALIVE AS COMPARED TO LIVING

As exciting as it was to see that she appeared to be doing better, I am reminded that this conflict is seemingly far from over.  Many of these women, once their surgeries are complete, return to their villages only to be raped again.  It is unsafe.  And yet, they go back.  Why?  Because their families are there.  Their lives are there.  They grew up there.  So they return – only to revisit the horrors they had escaped by coming to Panzi.

I know I’ve said it over and over again, but you can help.

• PRAY: Pray for this conflict to end.  The evil perpetrating this madness is more than a group of men. Maybe you don’t pray…
• DONATE: Find a charity that is making a difference and give what you can (Some are listed under our links here).  But maybe you don’t have any money…
• EDUCATE: Yourself, your family, your friends, your facebook buddies & your twitter followers – you don’t have an excuse to not update your status and tell people what is happening.

If you would like to find out more ways you can get involved – visit http://www.enoughproject.org.  They are an incredible resource on activism and can provide a great way for you to learn more about how you can make a difference and educate yourself on the issues.

Hearing what has happened to Jeanne in this article was devastating.  It could inspire a sense of hopelessness.  But I don’t think that is what the Congolese people would want from you or me.  It was a huge encouragement to see her face again.  To see that she is still alive.  To see that her hair is straitened and cut.  That is a simple thing, but is speaks to me that she is not just alive but she is living.  Could I do the same in the face of such obstacles?  Could you?

Jeanne’s story, past and present, reminds me that the spirit of the Congolese people is strong.

It reminds me that many of these rape victims are not just alive,

They are living.

They are fighters.

And that the living are worth fighting for.

The first step is to just start pulling things out and see what is left and whether it makes sense! I have an additional 60 hours of footage from last years trip waiting in the wings – but I thought to get the process rolling again I could start by editing something I’m more familiar with.

I’ll continue updating the congocast.org site as I get more into the process of turning this crazy project into a film! So check in again soon as I will be using this blog to update you on things that are happening in the Congo activist community and the progress I am making in cutting the film together!

- Evan