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November 19
ANIMATOR JOINS PRODUCTION TEAM FOR DOCUMENTARY
 E. J. Lucas, has joined the production team for Facing Sudan, a documentary produced and directed by Hersey teacher, Bruce David Janu. The film documents the struggles of that country through civil war and genocide.
Lucas is lending his talents as an animator to the production. A recent graduate of the Illinois Institute of Art with a degree in animation, Lucas will be creating about 8-10 minutes of animation for the film. The animation will highlight the stories in the film and well as bring to life events for which there is no footage. For example, Lucas is creating a short animation that dramatizes an attack on a village in Darfur.
Lucas contacted Janu, who is a former teacher of his, after reading an article about the film and Janu's intent of using animation to tell part of Sudan's story.
"I am very excited to be a part of this project," he said. "And hope that my contributions will bring more attention to the cause."
More information about E.J, including samples of his animation, can be found at http://facingsudan.blogspot.com.
July 28
The following was printed in The Daily Herald.
Unlikely heroes the stars
Hersey teacher's film highlighting ordinary people who aid Sudan
By Erin Holmes
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Friday, July 28, 2006
A grandmother in Barrington. A mom in Arlington Heights. A former custodian at John Hersey High School.
They seem unlikely heroes.
And that's precisely why Bruce Janu, a teacher who moonlights as a filmmaker, is making them movie stars.
The trio and others are being highlighted in Janu's latest and most intense project: a documentary about the crisis in Sudan and, as importantly, the people from your backyard who are helping ease the pain.
The 90-minute film, titled "Facing Sudan," tells a story of suffering and genocide with help from mom Martha Cook, grandma Jackie Kraus, janitor Brian Burns and others — people so moved by that nation's problems that they went and did something about it.
"Unlike most people who think....'Well, others will do it,' they take it a step further," said Janu, a social science teacher at John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights.
"I wanted to do it through the eyes of ordinary people — to demonstrate that ordinary people really can do extraordinary things."
The film also will focus on three so-called Lost Boys: boys who ran, for miles and miles, after their Sudanese schools and villages were attacked in a decades-long genocide that has displaced and killed millions of people.
Janu, who's been working on the project for about a year, has about 100 hours of footage. Included in it are images of one Lost Boy now living in Chicago who, with Kraus' help, gets to see his son for the first time.
The Barrington woman went to Sudan and brought back photos of the boy and his mom, who still live in a refugee camp.
The film also will include a bit of animation. For that part, he'll need some help; Janu put out a casting call Thursday for people to help with some war scenes he'll need to recreate.
Those extras, of sorts, will be filmed using technology that allows them to be animated — in the end, they?ll look almost like watercolor paintings — and set in action against an animated background of Sudan.
The movie project is about two-thirds done, Janu said. He hopes to have it wrapped up by the end of August, at which point he'll submit it to myriad film festivals, including Sundance, and create some lesson plans to go along with the DVD for use in school.
"My goal is not to make money on this," Janu said, laughing. "I won't. It's to raise awareness about this issue."
Janu hasn't been to Sudan but says he's always had a passion for human rights issues.
The northern African nation, which borders Ethiopia, Chad and Uganda and has been embroiled in war for decades, captured Janu's attention and his heart after a chance meeting one night with Burns.
Janu was working late at school one Friday when Burns, a janitor at the time, came into his classroom. While in college, Burns had met a boy from Sudan and later visited the country with him, becoming so impassioned he's now raising cash to open a medical clinic for people there.
Janu invited Burns to talk to his students; those stories, Janu says, made him think, "Wow."
Janu, a self-taught filmmaker who does the occasional wedding video and has other short education films under his belt, originally was going to do a quick piece on Burns.
Then he started meeting others who'd helped in Sudan.
"I thought, 'This is a really interesting way to tell the story of Sudan,'" he says, "and to demonstrate that ordinary people can do some amazing things if they really want to."
The film opens and closes with images of Burns, cleaning the halls of Hersey and talking about his Sudan experiences.
July 24
A Touch of Hollywood Coming to the NW Suburbs
The wilds of Sudan may actually be thousands of miles away, but not for local filmmaker, Bruce David Janu. With a little movie magic, Janu will bring Sudan to the northwest suburbs.
Janu is wrapping up production on a documentary about the humanitarian crises in that country, entitled Facing Sudan.
"The film tells the story of Sudan, but not in a traditional way," he says. "We are telling Sudan's story through the eyes of normal, everyday people who have been moved into action by what they have seen and experienced there." These people include a Barrington grandmother, a high school custodian, a pediatrician, several "Lost Boys" and a suburban mother.
As part of the story-telling process, Janu will be creating several animation segments.
"We want to creatively depict scenes for which we have no footage," says Janu.
For example, one of Janu's subjects, Kenneth Elisapana, witnessed a government attack on his school in the mid 1980s. During the attack, his best friend was shot and killed. To help tell Elisapana's story, Janu will use animation.
"We are going to film using green-screen technology," explains Janu.
Green-screen technology is the Hollywood standard for special effects. Most blockbuster films feature this technology, including the recent Superman Returns. Action is filmed in front of a green-colored screen and then once the footage is placed into the computer, the green is removed and replaced with a different background.
But for Facing Sudan, Janu his taking it one step further. "We are going to take the footage and turn it into a animation. These cartoon-like segments will add a unique stylized element to the film," he says.
Filming for these segments will occur on August 13 in Cary. Janu would like to have local community participation. He is looking for several African/African American males ages 4-10 to play Sudanese children. In addition, he needs one African/African American male and female ages 18-30. He also needs one slim Caucasian young man, ages 18-23, with short red hair.
For those wishing to participate in the film or those wanting more information, please contact Janu at (847)462-5941 or email at info@bellbookcamera.com. Information is also available at http://www.bellbookcamera.com/casting.html
March 2
This story appeared in Thursday's Chicago Tribune.
Teacher's Sudan film mixes despair, hope
Movie about genocide also points out how individuals can help
 By Mary Ann Fergus, Tribune staff reporter. The Associated Press contributed to this report
March 2, 2006
A suburban high school history teacher hopes to build compassion for the atrocities suffered in Sudan with photographs of dead children, straw homes flattened by tanks and faces of Chicago-area residents who have tried to help.
Bruce Janu of Hersey High School in Arlington Heights knows images showing the ravages of genocide make a point, but he also wants to leave his students with hope and a few opportunities to take action.
Janu is making a film called "Facing Sudan" that features four northwest suburban residents trying to make a difference in Africa's largest country. They include a homemaker from Barrington and a former janitor at Hersey.
"I've been amazed at what some of these people have done, and hopefully that may have rubbed off on somebody," Janu said. "Just to give a sense that we're not all helpless, that we can, if we want, make a change."
Elementary and high schools across the state are expanding their lessons on genocide as part of a new Illinois law. The state is at the forefront of such requirements across the country. In addition to covering the Holocaust, educators are required to teach an additional unit on other acts of genocide, including those in Armenia and Ukraine and, more recently, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Sudan.
Janu, 37, said the law hasn't changed his classes; he has always taught students about past and present genocide. But the year spent with the people in his film has made him try to teach in a way that evokes more empathy.
With 50 hours of video to finish editing, Janu hopes his 60- to 90-minute film will be shown in classrooms and perhaps before larger audiences.
It opens with Brian Burns, 24, of Arlington Heights mopping a hallway at Hersey and talking about his two visits to help the people of Sudan.
Burns' efforts began in 1999 when he heard Kenneth Elisapana, a southern Sudanese native and fellow student at Taylor University in Upland, Ind., detail the ravages suffered during the brutal civil war between the Islamic fundamentalists from northern Sudan and Christians and animists in the south.
More than 2 million people were killed during the 22-year conflict, and millions more were displaced, including Elisapana. A peace treaty was signed in January 2005.
The United States and several other nations have said that genocide is occurring in Darfur, Sudan's western province, where tens of thousands have died of famine and violence during the last three years. The Arab-dominated government in Khartoum has been accused of backing the Janjaweed militia against ethnic tribe members.
Months after hearing Elisapana's story, Burns joined a two-week medical missionary trip to Sudan as the conflict raged in summer 2000.
Burns fed sick and starving babies. He held a woman's hand and sang songs to her through the night before she died of AIDS complications the next morning. He slept with a knife by his pillow and ducked for cover from planes dropping bombs.
"And my life hasn't been the same since," Burns said.
Elisapana, now a medical caseworker for World Relief Aurora, formed a non-profit group to help Sudan three years ago with Burns' support. The friends traveled to Sudan together in 2004 to secure land for a medical clinic and arrange for its construction.
Elisapana, 38, plans to speak at churches and organizations in the Chicago area this month about his group, South Sudan Voices of Hope. He hopes to raise at least $30,000 to open the clinic and address the many cases of malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid and other conditions.
"Once they're healthy, they'll be able to work, think, they'll be able to sustain their livelihood," Elisapana said. "For so long they've been denied that opportunity."
Also featured in Janu's film is Martha Cook, a textbook editor and mother of three who last year came upon a newspaper story about Darfur and an accompanying photo of a dead child that brought tears to her eyes. "It's hard to see, as a parent, a dead baby and think that could be my child," Cook said.
Cook, 42, formed the Chicago Alliance to End Genocide last spring and held her first meeting in her Arlington Heights home with 25 people. She has collected hundreds of letters and postcards that ask the U.S. government to support the African Union peacekeeping force and sent them to the White House.
Nearly a decade ago, Jackie Kraus, a mother and grandmother, led an effort to forge a partnership between her church, St. Michael's Episcopal in Barrington, with the Episcopal diocese in southern Sudan. Kraus, also profiled in the film, is currently on her third trip to Sudan to watch the blessing of a Bible college that her church helped rebuild.
Kraus has supported so many of the "Lost Boys of Sudan" since they arrived in Chicago in 2001 that they have come to call her "Mom."
"I don't remember my life before they came," Kraus said. "I dedicate my relationship with them to their mothers. I think of their mothers all the time."
Janu capped a monthlong unit on genocide with a forum, repeated eight times earlier this week before 700 students, with cuts from the film.
Many students filed out of the theater silently, while others talked about trying to help Sudan. More than 200 students filled out postcards to the president calling for more action.
"We're so concerned with facts and dates. In the end that's not important," Janu said. "Trying to create empathy and trying to understand the role of this country in the world are more important than what happened on such and such a date."
March 1
On Monday, a presentation about Genocide was given at John Hersey High School. Clips from Facing Sudan were included. Over 700 people saw the presentation, which generated hundreds of postcards urging President Bush to end the genocide in Darfur.
Click here to download a podcast of the event.
January 24
Facing Sudan has officially been accepted for fiscal sponsorship by The International Documentary Association (IDA). Being a non-profit organization dedicated to the art of non-fiction filmmaking, IDA can accept donations on behalf of a sponsored film. The donations are fully tax deductible under the law as a charitable donation. IDA will then distribute the money to the film.
This is a great way to not only contribute to raising awareness about an important issue, but all people donating to the film will have their names appear in the credits. Those who donate $100 or more will also receive a copy of the film on dvd once it is released. For more information about donating to the film, click here.
January 15
LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTIVISTS!
SEVENTH GRADERS TO HELP FUND DOCUMENTARY
Local filmmaker, Bruce David Janu, is getting help on his documentary from an unexpected source: 7th grade students.
Janu is producing and directing a film entitled Facing Sudan. The film tells the story of that war-torn nation through the eyes of some ordinary people who have been so moved by the situation there that they needed to act. Janu hopes the film will raise awareness of this important issue and help encourage others to act as well. And a group of seventh graders want to help.
As part of a service project in Ms. Sarah Police's Advanced Literature and Reading class at South Middle School in Arlington Heights, the students decided that they will help raise funds for the film. Students will create a commercial about the film and encourage others to donate money to help in the film's completion.
"This is great," says Janu. "It's great to see young people get involved in this issue. And this is one of those instances when we, as adults, can learn from the children."
Local Darfur activist Martha Cook has a daughter, Lizzie, in Ms. Police's class. Lizzie presented the idea to fundraise for the documentary to her fellow students. They went to Janu's web site and watched the preview and decided that raising money for the film and raising awareness about the situation in Sudan was an important goal. Janu plans on visiting the class soon to discuss the situation in Sudan and answer any questions the kids might have. In addition, he will place the names of all the students in the film's credits.
"It's the least I can do," he says.
January 1
The new movie poster has been offically released.
Click on the poster to view a larger version.
December 31
This week we wrapped up principle photography with an interview of Kenneth Elisapana. Kenneth is a Sudanese national, living now in the United States. He currently works for World Relief and is the founder of South Sudan Voices of Hope. Brian Burns met Kenneth while a student at Taylor University and even accompanied Kenneth on a trip to Sudan. We are indeed fortunate to have Kenneth in the film. He brings not only a Sudanese perspective to the film, but also an historical perspective as well. Kenneth is an expert on the recent history of Sudan and often talks about Sudan and its history to large groups.
November 17
On Thursday, November 17, Bruce David Janu will be presenting information about Sudan and the film at the Arlington Heights Historical Museum. The presentation begins at 7:00 pm and is sponsored by the area's League of Women Voters.
Martha Cook will also discuss her recent activies with the Chicago Alliance to End Genocide.
The Arlington Heights Historical Museum is located at 110 W. Fremont St., Arlington Heights, IL 60004.
Phone 847-255-1225 Fax 847-255-1570.
September 25
Tom Flannery has written the first song specifically for Facing Sudan. The song is entitled "Crayons and Paper" and is about the drawings made by children living in refugee camps in Darfur. The drawings were collected by Dr. Jerry Ehrlich, who appears in the film. The song is a beautiful, stirring ballad that highlights just how terrible war is, especially for children.
Helicopters in the sky
mounted guns and mother's cry
if this is war please tell me why
we're the only ones allowed to die
give me crayons and paper
I'll draw what I see
if I close my eyes
can you still see me?
To see the lyrics and hear the song, click here.
Thursday, May 9
The following article appeared in the Pioneer Press.
Documenting suffering in Sudan
BY MYRNA PETLICKI
CONTRIBUTOR
The trials facing the people of war-torn Sudan are almost unimaginable. Rolling Meadows High School graduate Brian Burns of Arlington Heights has seen them firsthand.
"I read about what was going on in Sudan and I really wanted to go there and make a difference," he said.
Burns spent two weeks there in 2000, volunteering at refugee camps through Safe Harbor International Relief, a California-based ministry. Battles raged around the camps as Burns assisted a team of doctors and nurses.
"They did surgery out in the open, with no anesthesia," he reported. "In one case, I had to hold a little baby down while they tried to remove a tumor. Most of the time I was giving malaria medicine to little babies."
Burns returned to Sudan in 2003, this time as co-founder of South Sudan Voices of Hope. The 2003 graduate of Taylor University, with a degree in youth ministry, is determined to make a difference.
Cary resident Bruce David Janu, a history teacher at Hersey High School in Arlington Heights, as well as a videographer and filmmaker, is creating a documentary about Burns' experience. "Facing Sudan: A Personal Journey" is scheduled for completion this fall.
Filmmaker and subject connected when Burns was a temporary maintenance employee at Hersey. Janu was teaching a unit on racism to freshmen, and agreed to sponsor a club on genocide in Sudan. Burns saw signs about a meeting and introduced himself to the teacher.
A week later, Janu interviewed Burns, planning to create a 10-minute film for his class. "We ended up talking for about three hours," Janu said. "Since then, it's grown even bigger."
Janu has contacted aide organizations, and other people have contacted him. One Barrington woman he met works with 150 "lost boys" from Sudan in Chicago.
The film will include "People from all walks of life that have been somehow touched by the situation and felt they have to do something," Janu said.
South Sudan Voices of Hope has already made a difference. "Their first need was for a medical clinic to be built. There's nothing in that area for hundreds of miles," Burns said. The organization has acquired land and started construction, but additional funding is needed.
The documentary may help to realize that objective.
"The situation in Sudan is so complex," Janu said. "It's more than people killing one another. There are socio-economic factors that go back a long time. Sudan's the largest country in Africa and it's been wracked by Civil War for some 34 years out of the 46 years of its existence. The stories of suffering have basically gone unnoticed in our country. Two million people have died in South Sudan in the last three decades."
Burns said, "I'm hoping that my stories and my experiences can be a bridge between the people that need help and the people that need to know."
Monday, May 9
Today, a great article appeared in The Daily Herald . It was
accompanied by a photo of two of the Teens Against
Genocide students Kelly Wojnarowski and Annie Zicher.
Common cause
Activists join forces to raise
awareness of the tragedy in Sudan
By Stacy Vogel
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Monday, May 09, 2005
Sudan:
A group of Hersey High School students and their geography teacher. A school maintenance worker. An Arlington Heights textbook editor and her family.
Until a couple of months ago, these people had never met. They are a medley of ages, backgrounds and interests. In fact, they have little in common except a passion for helping the people of the Darfur region of Sudan, Africa.
They all came together last month when Martha Cook, the textbook editor, invited the public to her house to join the cause.
Cook is collecting signatures on letters to elected officials asking them to take action against the Sudan genocide.
Volunteers such as the Teens Against Genocide group from John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights, Hersey geography teacher Bruce Janu and Brian Burns, a Northwest Suburban High School District 214 maintenance worker, collected donations, made presentations and encouraged participants to sign letters to President Bush and Illinois congressmen.
Each activist has a different reason for getting involved, but they all share a common goal of trying to help.
Sudan has a long history of ethnic and religious conflict. In 2003, the Islamic fundamentalist government unleashed "self-defense militias" in the western Darfur region after a rebel uprising. Now the Janjaweed army, with the apparent backing of the Sudanese government, appears to be trying to wipe out the tribal African population. An estimated 200,000 civilians are dead and 200,000 more have fled to the neighboring country of Chad.
Last year, the Committee on Conscious of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum declared a "genocide emergency" in Sudan and in July Congress passed resolutions defining the Darfur situation as genocide.
But some Americans, including Cook, say the U.S. government is not doing enough.
"The biggest issue is to let our elected representatives know that we care about the genocide in Sudan," she said.
Cook said a New York Times article by Nicholas Kristof last February prompted her to get involved. She said the story and the accompanying pictures, including one of a dead child, kept her awake that night.
"It was the pictures that got me," she said. "I was so upset by what I read in the New York Times article that I realized I can't remain inactive."
Enter Hersey
For Kelly Wojnarowski, a freshman at Hersey High School in Arlington Heights and founder of the school?s Teens Against Genocide club, the impetus came from a 17-year-old woman who lived through the Rwandan genocide of 1994.
She came to speak at Hersey recently at the invitation of Hersey human geography teacher Bruce Janu, as part of a forum about racism. As Wojnarowski learned about the turmoil in Rwanda, she was shocked to find out it was happening again in Sudan.
"Halfway through her stories I just started crying and I couldn't stop," she said. "I just felt like I would be so disappointed if I didn't do anything."
Wojnarowski and fellow freshman Annie Zicher talked to Janu and Mindy Bowes, also a geography teacher at Hersey, and Teens Against Genocide was born. More than 30 students, mostly freshmen, came to the group's first meeting in early March.
The club gathered hundreds of signatures for petitions urging politicians to take action and raised $460 through the sale of buttons and "Save Darfur" wristbands during Darfur Awareness Week in early April.
Members are currently making plans for a rummage sale and penny drive to collect more money for the region, and a community night where they will show the documentary "The Lost Boys of Sudan."
The circle grows
The circle of activists widened a week after the student group's first meeting when Brian Burns, who does maintenance work for District 214, walked into Janu's room after school. Burns, 23, of Arlington Heights had seen signs for the student group in the hallway and wanted to tell Janu his story.
Burns learned about the situation in Sudan his freshman year of college at Taylor University in Upland, Ind., when he made friends with a Sudanese refugee named Kenneth Elisapana.
Elisapana's father was killed in Sudan and his mother and siblings were sold into slavery before he escaped to the United States.
Burns and Elisapana started South Sudan Voices of Hope in 2003. The group has bought land in Mvolo, a town on the edge of Darfur, and is trying to raise the funds to build a medical clinic there to help refugees. Burns has made two trips to the Sudan and says he will never forget what he saw there.
"It has completely changed my life," he said. "My first trip I held babies dying in my arms, and that kind of thing marks you."
Janu originally thought Burns would make a good speaker for his classes or for the student group, but as he listened to Burns' story he decided they could do more together.
Janu, who creates educational videos for his classes and runs a business shooting wedding videos, decided to film a documentary about Sudan activists, focusing around Burns.
"I thought we could use him to tell the story of Sudan and the story of activism in general," Janu said.
The documentary, "Facing Sudan," is in its early stages but has already involved people from across the country. Janu is gathering contacts, photos and film and has even written two songs for the project.
Janu said he hopes to finish the film by the end of fall and has a tentative release date of Dec. 26. He wants to submit it to film festivals and then release it on DVD for classroom use.
Circle is complete
Janu learned about Cook and her letter-writing campaign through a mutual friend, and the circle was complete.
Janu made a presentation about the Sudan conflict at the event in Cook's home while Burns talked about his experiences. Wojnarowski and Zicher held up signs outside Cook's home and encouraged anyone who drove past to sign a letter. They also brought the Save Darfur wristbands that Cook's 10-year-old son Sam helped sell.
All told, Cook and the other volunteers collected 174 signed letters and nearly $500 for the relief effort. Cook sent the money to the Save Darfur Coalition, which will use it to buy food for refugees. Cook said more than 50 people came to the campaign.
"It far exceeded my expectations for a three-hour event," she said.
And the circle continues to grow. Cook said she met a woman at the event who would like to send medicine to Sudan, and she is also talking to one of her daughter's teachers from South Middle School in Arlington Heights about forming a group there to help Darfur.
Janu interviewed Cook and several of the people who came to the event for his documentary.
Cook says she's not surprised so many people want to get involved after hearing about the situation in Darfur.
"People feel so strongly about it, once they know what's going on," she said. "You have a certain vision of yourself as a good person....but you have to put your money where your mouth is."
Wojnarowski compared the relief efforts to a drop of water, where one drop starts a ripple that could grow to an entire waterfall.
"I think it starts with something small and you work your way up," Wojnarowski said.
She said she thinks people committed to a cause are destined to find each other so they can combine their efforts.
"It's kind of like fate," she said.
Wednesday, April 20
Today, an article about the film appeared in The Daily Herald:
Hollywood ending?
District 214 maintenance worker Brian Burns says the people of Sudan are the strongest he knows. Now he's telling their story. Burns, who works out of several district buildings, is teaming up with John Hersey High social science teacher Bruce Janu to produce a film about the war-torn African country — a nation Burns has visited twice — its plights and its people.
Janu is the owner of a video company and also co-sponsors Hersey's "Teens Against Genocide" club, which this year has sold buttons and wristbands to raise awareness of the situation in Sudan. In Burns, Janu saw a chance to raise more awareness of an important issue.
The film tentatively is titled Facing Sudan: A Personal Journey. It will draw on interviews with Burns and use photos he took on his trips, telling a story through his eyes.
Burns, who plans on going back to Sudan at some point, co-founded the group "South Sudan Voice of Hope," and wants the documentary to raise enough awareness to get a medical clinic built there.
Burns and Janu hope to have the film done by the fall, and submit it to film festivals before releasing it on DVD. Janu also plans to write a lesson plan to accompany the film, allowing it to be used in the high schools.
For more on the film, check out www.bellbookcamera.com.
Quick fact: The Teens Against Genocide (TAG for short) group just mentioned boasts about 30 members, mostly freshmen. And it was founded by a freshman, too. Way to go!
Saturday, April 16
In today's Daily Herald, Facing Sudan is mentioned in an article about a woman named Martha Cook who is holding an open house to raise awareness about Sudan. Back in February, she read an article about the suffering in Sudan and decided to do something about it. The open house is tomorrow and we will be there filming.
Below is an excerpt from the article:
"Bruce Janu, a sociology teacher at Hersey High School in Arlington Heights, working on a documentary of the Sudan story, will be available. Members of Teens Against Genocide, a group organized by Janu, are volunteering as well. Brian Burns, who has traveled to Sudan...twice to assist in the relief effort there will also relate his experience caring for the sick and dying."
Wednesday, April 13
 We are pleased to announce Tom Flannery as a musical contributor to the film. Tom is a prolific singer/songwriter from Pennsylvania. The All Music Guide describes him as "one of the most gifted songwriters to emerge at the turn of the century." He has written two songs specifically about Sudan and a number of songs about Rwanda. Tom has a passion for the subject. As he stated in a recent email to me, "Just ignoring a genocide seems perverse from a humanity point of view, doesn't it?"
The two song to be included in the film are "Darfur" and "It's Called Genocide." You can listen to the songs by clicking the links below.
 "It's Called Genocide"
"Darfur"
To find out more about Tom and to listen to his music, visit:
http://www.tomflannery.us
http://www.songaweek.com
He has some great material there, from biting satire to very poignant ballads. Check out his blog and his prose. We are very pleased to have his work included in the film.
Saturday, April 2
For Immediate Release
TEACHER AND CUSTODIAN TEAM UP FOR DOCUMENTARY
Hersey social science teacher, Bruce David Janu, has teamed up with a District 214 maintenance worker, Brian Burns, to produce a documentary about the crisis in Sudan. Burns, who works at several buildings throughout the district, has been to Sudan twice and has witnessed not only the atrocities of the region but also the courage and strength of the Sudanese people.
"They are the strongest people I know," he said.
Janu, who co-sponsors a club at Hersey called Teens Against Genocide, met Burns by chance one day after school. As the owner of a successful videography company, Janu saw an opportunity to not only take his company to a different level, but to produce something for a wider audience and, in the process, raise awareness about an important issue.
"I have done many educational videos. My students, I think, are getting tired of seeing my face, not only in front of the class but also on tv as well," he stated.
The film is tentatively entitled Facing Sudan: A Personal Journey. Drawing on interviews of Burns and photos and video he took in Sudan, the film will document the story of Sudan through the eyes of Burns.
"Brian is a regular guy. He's someone we can all identify with," said Janu. They hope to raise awareness of the issues in Sudan and demonstrate that "seemingly ordinary people can do extraordinary things."
"Brian has seen and done a lot," said Janu. "He has given malaria medicine to children and comforted people dying of malnutrition. And, to top it off, he has had no medical training. He was able to rise to the occasion."
Burns, who graduated from Rolling Meadows High School and received a degree in Youth Ministry from Taylor University, still plans on returning eventually to Sudan. He co-founded the organization "South Sudan Voices of Hope" and wants this film to help raise awareness so that a planned medical clinic can be built in the area.
They are hoping to complete the film by the fall and release it on dvd.
Friday, March 25 The official Facing Sudan website is launched!
Check back for more news in the future.
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