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Out of Ethiopia: film-makers and the weight of memory

published Wed, Nov 11 2009 04:29 GMT
More than three decades after many Ethiopians left their country for exile, there is now a small but mighty handful of films exploring the experience of this diasporaIt is a truism that – agitprop and now tribunal plays aside – it takes quite some time for traumatic events, personal or political, to filter into a culture. Distance is key; time for healing, for perspective, for the discovery of an appropriate idiom. A few years, at least; 10 years. A lifetime. But how much more complicated, how much slower the process, when it is combined with immigration across continents and languages. There are so often such great wounds – if the trauma was enough to cause people to flee across borders, ...

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