News Details (Posted: September 30, 2009):

"Once in Afghanistan"..a documentary film and discussion

Contact Information:

Jane Weimer
386-322-5152

Full Description:

The Friends of the Port Orange Regional Library

present the documentary film

“Once in Afghanistan”

Showing the film and leading the discussion will be

Ms. Jill Vickers and Ms. Kristina Engstrom

“We would knock on doors, walk in on weddings, on funerals and everything would stop, and we would vaccinate.” Thus begins “Once in Afghanistan,” the stories of a group of Peace Corps Volunteers who were in rural Afghanistan going house by house, village by village as part of a worldwide effort to eradicate smallpox. The women’s memories are as different as the women themselves, but often amusing, sometimes contradictory, and collectively able to shed light on a place that existed just forty years ago. In an age when images and messages of hate travel faster and farther than ever before, this is a message of understanding.

A small crew of women who were part of Middlebury Community Television at the time produced it using money contributed by the Peace Corps vaccinators. One of them, Jill Vickers, was a member of the Vaccinator group in Afghanistan. International consultant Kristina Engstrom, part of this project, and vaccinator and co-producer will be at the showing for Q&A.

In the film, the women tell of the hospitality and generosity of the Afghans and of hardship while traveling to rural villages where few Westerners had been. They speak powerfully of how living and working there influenced their lives. Photographs and film footage from 1965 illuminate their stories. The documentary spotlights an Afghanistan few know because it is pre-Soviet invasion, pre-civil war, pre-Taliban, pre-NATO forces. It was a time of relative peace and security.

October 20, 2009

2:00 p.m.

Port Orange Regional Library

1005 City Center Cr.

Port Orange, FL 32129

386-322-5152