UNAFF 2005 : Films : Heart of the Congo

HEART OF THE CONGO
Tom Weidlinger (Congo/USA) 57'

Description:
In the heart of the Congo, at the end of a war, a handful of aid workers help refugees who have lost everything. They mobilize villagers to dig wells for clean water, train health workers and nurse children with acute malnutrition back to health. They are confronted with threats of violence from roving militias, systemic corruption, and a legacy of colonial dependency. And there are times when it is very clear that these workers exist apart from those they aim to help, benefiting from services and luxuries of the modern world that are beyond the reach of the rural Congolese. In spite of this, the Congolese and European aid workers struggle to encourage the will of the people, and build the skills necessary for a self-sufficient future. Heart of the Congo is a film about courage, hope and perseverance.

Biography:
Tom Weidlinger is an independent filmmaker who has been writing, directing and producing documentary films for twenty-eight years. In his film A Dream in Hanoi, Vietnamese and American actors endure the strains of cross-cultural misunderstandings to mount a production of Shakespeare‚s "A Midsummer Nights Dream." In Boys Will Be Men, Weidlinger examines the culture of bullying and toughness that many boys are inducted into at an early age. Weidlinger is also the creator and executive producer of Making Peace, a four-hour PBS series about grassroots activists who are healing the conditions that create violence. He produced After the Velvet Revolution, a four-year television history project that chronicled the lives of a range of Czechs and Slovaks as they adapted to life in a new democracy after the fall of communism. Weidlinger worked on French/American co-production De Gaulle and France and was senior producer (and director and writer of four programs) of the award-winning West of The Imagination, a six-part PBS series about the history and mythology of the American West. Weidlinger graduated from the Center for Advanced Film Studies of the AFI.

Contact Information:
John Hoskyns-Abrahall, President
Bullfrog Films
PO Box 149
Oley, PA 19547
E-mail: info@bullfrogfilms.com
URL: www.bullfrogfilms.com