| Anne Aghion | |||||||||||
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| Born | Anne Aghion 1960 Paris, France |
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| Occupation | Director, Producer, Screenwriter | ||||||||||
| Years active | 1996 – present | ||||||||||
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Anne Aghion (born 1960) is a French-American Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and Guggenheim fellow.
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Aghion is best known for her two documentary films examining the situation in post-genocide Rwanda, In Rwanda We Say…The Family That Does Not Speak Dies, and Gacaca, Living Together Again In Rwanda? In the former film, Aghion interviews a genocide offender who has been released back into his community, as well as victims of the genocide.[1] In Gacaca, which is a community-based system of justice meaning "grass" in Kinyarwanda, Aghion is filmed as a prosecutor who tried the prisoners.[2] The proceedings would occur on grass where anyone who had a denouncement against the accused would be free to speak. If no one accused the prisoner, then that prisoner would be freed.[3] The films were shot in a small rural community over seven years and have been widely used by non-profit organizations for educational and training purposes. The third and final installment of her Rwanda trilogy is due to be released in 2009.[4]
Her first film, Se Le Movió El Piso (The Earth Moved Under Him) — A Portrait of Managua, was shot in the skid row of Managua. The film gives viewers an inside look in the life of Nicaraguan slum dwellers as they recount the numerous obstacles they have had to overcome in their lives.
Aghion's latest project, Ice People, brings the filmmaker to Antarctica where she filmed the lives of geologists and North Dakota State University professors Dr. Allan Ashworth and Dr. Adam Lewis and the McMurdo Station staff over four months.[5] The scientists, accompanied by two undergraduate students, researched fossils of ancient specimens as they sought to uncover the climatic evolution of the world's coldest continent.[6] The film premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival in April 2008[7] and was screened at the Jerusalem Film Festival in July 2008.[8]
Anne Aghion splits her time between residences in New York City and Paris.[9]
Before becoming a filmmaker, Aghion held various posts at The New York Times Paris bureau and the International Herald Tribune.[10] Prior to her debut as director and producer of her own films, she worked as a videographer, as well as production and post-production manager.
Aghion earned a Bachelor of Arts Magna Cum Laude in Arab Language and Literature from Barnard College at Columbia University in New York,[3] and following her studies, lived in Cairo, Egypt for two years.[5]
Anne Aghion won an Emmy Award in 2005 for her feature documentary In Rwanda We Say…The Family That Does Not Speak Dies[11][12][13] and a UNESCO Fellini Prize for Gacaca, Living Together Again In Rwanda?.[14] In 1996, her first documentary Se le movió el piso: A portrait of Managua won the Coral Award for "Best Non-Latin American Documentary on Latin America" at the Havana Film Festival in Havana, Cuba.[15] Aghion is also a recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship and has received significant praise for her work.[16]
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