God Grew Tired of Us

January 4, 2007, 7:00pm – 9:00pm

About This Event

Winner of both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, God Grew Tired of Us explores the indomitable spirit of three “Lost Boys” from the Sudan who leave their homeland, triumph over seemingly insurmountable adversities, and move to America. Orphaned by a tumultuous civil war, John Bul Dau, Daniel Abol Pach, and Panther Blor were among the 25,000 “Lost Boys” who traveled together for five years across the sub-Saharan desert to reach UN’s refugee camps in Kakuma, Kenya. A journey’s end for some, it was only the beginning for John, Daniel, and Panther, who, along with 3,800 other young survivors, were selected to resettle in the United States. From the trans-Atlantic flights that take them to America, to a supermarket visit where they encounter an endless bounty of food, the cameras observe three resilient young men in a complex and confusing western world. In time, John, Daniel, and Panther were able to build active and fulfilling new lives while remaining deeply committed to helping their friends and family left behind in Africa.

Please join us for a provocative panel discussion and Q&A session immediately following the film.

Featured Panelists:
Suliman Baldo, Deputy Director, Middle East and North Africa Program, The International Center for Transitional Justice
John Bul Dau, Founder, Duk Lost Boys Clinic and the American Care for Sudan Foundation; Director, Sudan Project for Direct Change
John Prendergast, Senior Adviser, International Crisis Group
Christopher Quinn, Producer and Director, God Grew Tired of Us
Gayle Smith, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress

Moderated By:
Anna Soellner, Director of Outreach and Special Events, Center for American Progress

Location

Loews Lincoln Square Theater
1998 Broadway (at W 68th st)
New York, NY 10023

Biographies

Suliman Baldo is a widely-recognized expert and advocate on conflict resolution, emergency relief, development, and human rights issues in Africa. He has worked extensively in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the Sudan, and has traveled widely throughout the rest of the African continent. In the 1980s and early 1990s, he worked as a lecturer at the University of Khartoum; as a field director for Oxfam America, covering Sudan and the Horn of Africa; and, later, as the founder and director of Al-Fanar Center for Development Services in Khartoum, Sudan. He also spent seven years at Human Rights Watch as a senior researcher in the Africa division. Most recently, he worked as a senior analyst before becoming the director of the Africa program at the International Crisis Group. Suliman Baldo holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (1982) and an M.A. in Modern literature (1976), both from the University of Dijon in France. He also holds a B.A. from the University of Khartoum, in the Sudan.

John Bul Dau, age 32, was born in Duk County in Southern Sudan. He was forced to flee his village as a child in 1987 and arrived at the Kakuma refugee camp five years later, where he had emerged as a group leader with responsibility for more than 1,000 other Lost Boys. Selected to move to the United States, he relocated to Syracuse, New York to pursue a job and further schooling. Often working double-shifts, Dau has been employed by McDonalds, UPS, XTO, and General Super Plating. He was fortunate to locate his parents and siblings in Uganda and Sudan, and raised the funds necessary to bring his mother and a sister to live with him in Syracuse in 2004. Now married to Martha, one of the “Lost Girls” brought to America, Dau has worked tirelessly on behalf of the citizens of Sudan. He is the founder of the Duk Lost Boys Clinic and the American Care for Sudan Foundation, and has just been appointed Director of the Sudan Project for Direct Change, an organization established to assist orphans and other vulnerable children of Africa.

Christopher Quinn, the Producer and Director of God Grew Tired of Us, was born in Washington, D.C. Quinn began his career in broadcast news for CBS. He attended the Anthropology Film Center in Santa Fe for documentary and ethnographic filmmaking. He has directed several original documentaries and fictional works including The Life and Art of Howard Finster and the fictional film entitled Hand of Fate starring Dermot Mulroney (About Schmidt, Living in Oblivion). Quinn has also directed Michael Apted’s 21-Up In America. Other current projects include directing National Geographic's Worlds Apart and developing MTV’s top rated show "Room Raiders." Quinn recently formed a creative alliance with Eric Gilliland (Rosanne, Wonder Years, That 70's Show) to produce original content for the motion picture and television industries. Networks and companies Quinn has worked with include: A&E, BBC, ABC, National Geographic Channel, RDF, Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, Granada, London Weekend Television, and The New York Times. Quinn lives in New York City.

John Prendergast is a Senior Adviser at the International Crisis Group. He worked in the White House and the State Department in the Clinton administration from 1996-2001 and has worked for a variety of NGOs and think tanks in Africa and the U.S. He has authored or coauthored seven books on Africa and is currently co-authoring a book with actor Don Cheadle.

A Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, Gayle Smith has spent much of her career in international affairs in the field. Smith served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from 1998-2001, and as Senior Advisor to the Administrator and Chief of Staff of the U.S. Agency for International Development from 1994-1998. In 1999, she won the National Security Council's Samuel Nelson Drew Award for Distinguished Contribution in Pursuit of Global Peace for her role in the successful negotiation of a peace agreement between Eritrea and Ethiopia.
Smith was based in Africa for almost 20 years as a journalist covering military, economic, and political affairs for the BBC, Associated Press, Reuters, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Toronto Globe & Mail, London Observer, and Financial Times. Smith has also consulted for a wide range of NGOs, foundations, and governmental organizations including UNICEF, the World Bank, Dutch Interchurch Aid, Norwegian Church Relief, and the Canadian Council for International Cooperation. She won the World Journalism Award from the World Affairs Council and the World Hunger Year Award in 1991.
Smith is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and served as a member of the Commission on Capital Flows, the Commission on Weak States and National Security, and the Council on Foreign Relation's Africa Task Force. She is a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution, where she co-authored The Other War: Global Poverty and the Millennium Challenge Account. In 2005 and 2006, she served as Director of the Global Poverty track of the Clinton Global Initiative.

Anna Soellner is the director of outreach and special events for the Center for American Progress. Anna joined American Progress after serving at the Hong Kong office of the public affairs firm Golin/Harris Forrest. There she provided strategic counsel for a diverse group of private and public sector clients including the Hong Kong S.A.R. government, Jardine Matheson and Giorgio Armani. She also served in the office of Martin Lee, chairman of the Hong Kong Democratic Party, where she was a Henry Luce Foundation Scholar. In that capacity, Anna served as foreign media liaison and assisted in developing party relations with foreign governments and NGOs to promote democracy and rule of law in Hong Kong. Before leaving for Hong Kong, Anna served in the Office of Legislative Affairs and Public Liaison at the U.S. Treasury Department in the Clinton administration. She has also worked for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. She has a bachelor's degree with high honors from Smith College.

The International Crisis Group (Crisis Group) is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation, with nearly 120 staff members on five continents, working through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflict. Crisis Group’s approach is grounded in field research. Teams of political analysts are located within or close by countries at risk of outbreak, escalation or recurrence of violent conflict. Based on information and assessments from the field, it produces analytical reports containing practical recommendations targeted at key international decision-takers. Crisis Group also publishes CrisisWatch, a twelve-page monthly bulletin, providing a succinct regular update on the state of play in all the most significant situations of conflict or potential conflict around the world.

The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) assists countries pursuing accountability for past mass atrocity or human rights abuse. The Center works in societies emerging from repressive rule or armed conflict, as well as in established democracies where historical injustices or systemic abuse remain unresolved.
In order to promote justice, peace, and reconciliation, government officials and nongovernmental advocates are likely to consider a variety of transitional justice approaches including both judicial and nonjudicial responses to human rights crimes. The ICTJ assists in the development of integrated, comprehensive, and localized approaches to transitional justice comprising five key elements: prosecuting perpetrators, documenting and acknowledging violations through nonjudicial means such as truth commissions, reforming abusive institutions, providing reparations to victims, and facilitating reconciliation processes.