This is a series of posts by people who are going to host screenings of I AM BREATHING on MND/ALS Global Awareness Day.
I am Judy Kibinge and I am a Kenyan filmmaker and the founder of DOCUBOX, a newly established documentary film fund for East Africa. I believe that few things can illumintate what it is to be human as well as a good observational documentary.
I recall a few decades back attending my older brothers graduation at Dartmouth and being haunted for years by something one of the speakers said. He asked what a tiny speck of dust might say as it floats towards a surface, one of billions of specks of identical flecks of dust:
“Remember me,” says the dust. “Remember me.”
We don’t have many opportunities to access films such as this here, and my dream is is that the screening will inspire filmmakers and audiences to realise that in a world filled with so many examples of suffering of ordinary people, living and hoping that their lives in some small way, like that fleck of dust, will too be remembered. And there is something so beautiful about sharing the story of an ordinary person (as they float, like the dust, towards their last resting place) choosing to make this last journey towards dying moments extraordinary. And to further realise that we are all in different ways surrounded by ordinary lives lived in extraordinary ways.
Little is known about motor neurone disease in Kenya, and I hope to locate sufferers and their famlies and invite them to come to the screening. If anyone has any leads, they would be appreciated! I also hope it will inspire filmmakers and audiences alike here to realise that though we all live in different continents and cultures, we are all essentially humans, striving for meaning in life as in death.
Details of the screening will be announced soon.
Can you also host a screening on 21 June, wherever you are?
http://www.iambreathingfilm.com/i_am_breathing_in_iceland