Remaining present in the modern world includes noticing the good. We're not talking toxic positivity here. We're referring to a simple commitment to also noticing what's good in the world even as you navigate what's not. Whether you find these reminders burrowed in a news story, the feeling of being on your mat or out on a run, or the eyes of a loved one doesn't matter. Noticing them does.
This short 1986 documentary follows the International Youth for Peace and Justice Tour, a programme in which teenagers from then-conflict zones around the world visited and spoke with high-school students across Canada. Capturing the tour's stop in Montreal, the director Premika Ratnam introduces viewers to teens from unstable or war-torn nations of the period - including Northern Ireland, East Timor, Namibia, Zimbabwe, El Salvador and Guatemala - as they recount their experiences. With wisdom often beyond their years, they discuss a range of hardships, from daily indignities and lack of job opportunities to witnessing torture and murder and fearing for their lives.
In Muzo, life revolves around luck and chance, where the pursuit of emeralds has attracted fortune seekers for generations. The emerald trade, once violent, is now peaceful.
