The Academy Award-nominated Land of Mine focuses on two of the legacies of war: hatred and landmines. Nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards and winner of awards at multiple festivals around the world, Land of Mine was inspired by real events and tells the story of German prisoners of war sent to clear land mines in Denmark after World War II.
The film tells the little-known story of how Europe was cleared of landmines at the end of World War II. Its contemporary relevance is that today, across the globe, millions of people continue to suffer because of landmines that were planted in conflicts that ended 30 or 40 years ago.
Watch the trailer here.
Following the screening we are joined by Mikael Christian Rieks, the Producer of Land of Mine, and James Cowan, CEO of the world’s largest humanitarian mine clearance organisation The HALO Trust. It will be moderated by Thorold Barker, Editor, Europe, Middle East and Africa for the Wall Street Journal.
The HALO trust was founded in 1988 in Afghanistan and has grown to employ over 8,000 staff in more than 20 countries clearing landmines, clusters bombs, IEDs and other explosive debris left behind after conflict. It saves lives, provides jobs and brings communities back to life.
Thorold Barker is a British financial journalist and author who was editor of the Lex page of the Financial Times before assuming the editorship of the Wall Street Journal’s European Edition. His work has included investigative pieces on Wall Street and The City, as well as travel writing.
Mikael Christian Rieks, graduated from the the Copenhagen Film & Media School in 1992. In the years following he became a leading TV and documentary producer in Denmark. He joined the producer team at Nordisk Film in 2003, where he produced the internationally acclaimed documentary films including, Ghosts of Cité Soleil, Overcoming and the feature film Karla’s World. His latest production films is: The Outsider, released in March 2018.
James Cowan was a soldier. He joined The Black Watch from Oxford in 1986, serving in Berlin, Northern Ireland, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Hong Kong. He helped plan the Kosovo operation in 1999. He commanded in Iraq in 2004. He returned to Iraq in 2006 and commanded in Helmand, Afghanistan in 2009-10. He planned the military Olympic security operation of 2012. As a major general, he commanded the 3rd Division. In 2015 he become HALO’s CEO.
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"I think I did more good as a war correspondent than I ever did as a serviceman," Waters said last week. "Besides all the things I covered, as a war correspondent I got the ear of the four-star general. I could openly question his methods and strategies, and that influenced the treatment and handling of troops."
"I was doing what I loved to do, what I was always proud to do,
"I have loved every day and every assignment… I have somehow realized all of my childhood dreams. Can’t beat that." link
The 81 year old is hoping to attend a World War II veterans day for the Emerald Coast Honor Flight in Washinton D.C. on April 29. Waters was wounded five times while photographing military operations. He was one of six photojournalists inducted into the Missouri Photojournalism Hall of Fame in 2008.
]]>They scored bulls-eyes on industrial and military targets. They also slaughtered innocents. “It’s a fair assumption that when Tom dropped our bombs women and boys and girls were killed,” one wrote home.
Most were not much older than their child victims. “Twenty-one with a face far too sensitive for this business,” was Martha Gellhorn’s verdict on the pilot of a tightly knit, impenetrable bomber crew, “…anyone who had not done what they did could not understand.”
Following the success of Fighter Boys, Patrick Bishop, whose own war reporting includes the Falklands and Afghanistan, has produced another thoughtful and superbly written book about courage and comradeship. But this time the contest is not as clear- cut as 1940’s summer vapour trails over southern England.
It took until 1962 to establish that the Anglo-American bombing of Germany wiped out some 593,000 civilians. This is almost 10 times what Britain lost in air raids and V-rocket attacks. Air Marshall Sir Arthur”Bomber” Harris declared, “They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.”
The Germans called Harris’s squadrons Terrorflieger. Yet they were the only war criminals who stood a better chance of dying than their potential victims. Bomber aircrew 25 per cent from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and white Southern Africa provided one in 10 of British and Commonwealth war dead. Fifty-five thousand died.
Almost 10,000 were taken prisoner, often having been injured when their aircraft were hit. The survival rate for a first tour of 30 missions was about fifty-fifty.
On about 350 occasions, outraged civilians butchered parachuted aircrew. Five weeks before Hitler’s suicide, a badly wounded sergeant pilot surrounded by a screaming mob in the Ruhr “feebly raised his arms to surrender.” One Friedrich Fischer sent a child for a hammer to finish him off. An Allied court, dismissing Fischer’s pleas that he had been driven crazy by bombing, hanged him.
“Victor’s justice,” says Bishop. But, while honouring British churchmen who dared to protest against aerial massacre, his absorbing book is an unqualified tribute to the men who enjoyed the “overwhelming approval of the people they were fighting for.”
Harper Press £20
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