The New York Peace Institute

and

Lysistrata: The Gender Working Group at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs invite you to a special screening of the documentary

"Our School"

When: Thursday, March 8, 2012, 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Where: The New York Peace Institute, Brooklyn Mediation Center, 210 Joralemon St, Room 618

The event is free and open to the public. Online RSVP required. Seating is limited.

Join the New York Peace Institute, Lysistrata and director Mona Nicoara for a screening of the illuminating feature documentary, Our School followed by a Q&A session with Ms. Nicoara

Our School

Three Roma (“Gypsy”) children from a small Transylvanian town participate in a project to desegregate the local school, struggling against indifference, tradition and bigotry with humor, optimism and sass. Our School is a captivating, bitter-sweet and often funny story about hope and race.

Shot over four years, this vérité documentary acts as a primary document on how human rights principles play out on the ground, and illuminates the day-to-day workings of race relations anywhere in the world through the deceptively distant world of “Gypsies” and Transylvanian peasants. By telling a compelling human story that is part of a broader rights movement, the film seeks to mobilize new energies at a moment that is ripe for change, when Europe finally has its Brown vs. Board of Education moment.

About Mona Nicoara

Producer and Director Mona Nicoara has been a human rights activist since the 1989 Revolution that overthrew Ceausescu regime in her native Romania. She is a graduate of the University of Bucharest and the Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Over the years, she has worked for the Romanian Helsinki Committee, Human Rights Watch, the Open Society Institute, and the European Roma Rights Center. She started working in film as Associate Producer on CHILDREN UNDERGROUND, which received the Special Jury Prize at Sundance and went on to be nominated for an Academy Award. OUR SCHOOL, which premiered in the Tribeca Film Festival and went on to receive the Grand Jury Prize at SilverDocs, is her first film as Director.