Joanna Lillis, EurasiaNet, May 16, 2013

Avalanche is a tale of a village whose inhabitants walk on eggshells because their rulers have convinced them that if they flout strict rules governing their everyday lives, they will spark an avalanche that will engulf them. A childbirth breaks the spell: as the rulers order a woman buried alive for going into labour without authorisation, the child is born. The commotion fails to bring down a disastrous avalanche, and the leaders are revealed to have lied and manipulated to keep the people in check. According to Gulnar Amanzhanova, the troupe’s director, this is a play about how “fear does not let people fight for their rights.”

Noor Ali Moa'alla, Your Middle East, May 16, 2013

The discourse around the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in film has shifted recently from the wider scope of the conflict to the stories of communities and individuals that are struggling in their day to day lives under Israeli occupation. “Resistance Recipes” builds upon this discourse by touching on an important aspect of Palestinian life: agriculture and food.

The important role Mary King played in helping to advance the struggle for women’s rights is a lesser known story of how the success of one social movement, the U.S. civil rights struggle, helped to expand the space for another movement. King spoke recently about how her consciousness of women’s rights was shaped by her organizing and media work for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the civil rights movement, while attending the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism — an intensive workshop focused on journalism and social movements held in Mexico in April.

In 1985, Mkhuseli "Khusta" Jack organized a consumer boycott in the city of Port Elizabeth, South Africa, which helped end racial apartheid. In 2000, Oscar Olivera was the spokesperson for a popular resistance that stopped the privatization of water in Cochabamba, Bolivia. In 2013, they met face to face and shared their stories of strategic organizing with the scholars and professors of the School of Authentic Journalism.

Markus Löning, the German government’s human rights commissioner, said in a recent interview that nurturing democracy in other countries takes patience. When asked about what to do if democratization of countries like Tunisia or Egypt ends up having unintended consequences, Löning responded, “We can't paint the world the way we want it to look. We can only support those who try to push their countries toward democracy and human rights. That process, as European history has shown, doesn't always go forward in a straight line.”