“Her Name is Beatrice, My Name is Lara: Experiences in witnessing, internal displacement and conflict in Northern Uganda after 23 years of war” is a documentary project examining a documentary’s potentials and pitfalls in critical ‘witnessing,’ while exploring how voices from those living in the centre of conflict can challenge dominant media and humanitarian narratives. A photo- and video-based exhibition was featured in the Liu Institute’s Lobby Gallery in 2010.
At certain stages in the 23-year conflict in Northern Uganda, over 1.8 million people, or 90% of the northern population, had been displaced into severely overcrowded and squalid internally displaced person’s (IDP) camps, resulting in “almost 1000 excess deaths every week…” (Ugandan Ministry of Health, 2005). It is also estimated that one in five girls and one in three boys in northern Uganda have been abducted at some point by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group and were forced to be child soldiers. Although a ceasefire between the LRA and the Ugandan Government had been signed in August 2006, it has since run out without producing a peace agreement. The LRA and their infamous leader, Joseph Kony, continue to be active in neighbouring Sudan, Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Lara Rosenoff Gauvin, PhD student and Liu Scholar, returned three times over two years to visit Beatrice in Padibe Internally Displaced Person’s Camp in Northern Uganda.
Watch the Trailer:
Her Name is Beatrice
Personal webpage of Lara Rosenoff
