Individual life stories

 

By Freke Leene

Reflecting on the past month, one of the main things I am taking away from Peace Lab is the importance of perspective. As one of the main authors we discussed in class, Tim Judah, also states: “…what matters is not historical truth, but what people believe it to be”. This idea has become overly clear to me and my fellow Peace Labbers over the past month.

For a final project, this idea is something that we intended to highlight. Together with Britt and Lotte, we made a short documentary to round off Peace Lab 2020. Our documentary was focused around the notions of right and wrong, and the problem of black vs. white thinking. We used George Bush’s speech about ‘good and evil’ and leaving no space in between those two extremes as a starting point for our documentary, and then we used Kosovo as a case study to show why it is not always this simple.

The main goals of the documentary were to educate people about the conflict in Kosovo, to raise awareness about the prevalence of the conflict in today’s youth in Kosovo, Albania and Serbia, but perhaps most importantly: to amplify young and ordinary voices. For our documentary, we interviewed seven young, ordinary people from Kosovo, Albania and Serbia, and asked them about their different experiences growing up in a post-conflict area, their prejudices and their identities. By letting these people speak for themselves and telling their personal stories instead of speaking on their behalf, we intended to showcase the individuality of experiences in Kosovo and the Western Balkans. This is why we ended up naming our documentary ‘The Colors of Kosovo’, because it shows there is not just black and white, but many other colors that can beautifully complement each other. One of the Serbian women featured in the documentary talks about a culture in the Western Balkans that is very fixated on celebrating the little differences between Serbian, Croatians, Bosnians etc. However, she noted that all of those little differences together may complement each other and create something much more beautiful, which I think is a great sentiment.

We end the documentary with our personal reflections, where Britt, Lotte and I briefly talk about the main things we learned while making the documentary, to round off and bring together everything the viewer just watched. In this section, we focus on what changed for us while making this documentary. For me, the main thing that changed was that I learned how vital it is to listen to these individual life stories and expectations for the future, instead of speculating about the ‘Albanian’ or ‘Serbian’ perspective. There is not always just one ‘bad guy’, and while it is often easy to judge from the outside and get lost in the rhetoric of politicians, listening to the ordinary people is much more important. Moreover, your identity is not equal to your nationality. You are not just Albanian, Serbian, or Dutch, but much more than that, and we should not generalize about the experiences of every individual that falls within such a group.

Overall, this past month has been an extremely valuable experience, and I could not think of a better way to round off my AUC career.

Through the following link, you can watch our short documentary (without any bias, I highly recommend it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGc-Pl1IXjI&feature=youtu.be