Film for Peace

"The Power of Film & the Arts to Build Peace"
Held Parallel to the Berlin International Film Festival 2015
(Berlin; February 10th - 13th, 2015)

Conference Overview

For already decades, Film and Cinema have served as a powerful, effective vehicles to inspire and enable people to come together towards peaceful relations. Over the course of many years now, people have discovered the unique potential of the media of film, the arts and in particular music to transcend cultures, serving as common languages to bring together different groups and communities. These unique qualities have the unparalleled strength to continuously effect people and over time sculpt human society closer to the ultimate goal of global peace.

The technological developments of the last decades have changed the political and cultural center of the human race from the city centers into the video and photo sharing platforms as well as other social networks; this dramatic change enables both producers and the public audience greater access to each other through film than ever before possible across the history of humanity.

By telling stories that reflect the social, cultural and political landscapes of their origin, film serves as a powerful means to promote peaceful relations between peoples on the one hand and at the same time challenge stereotypes and the status quo and foster intercultural understanding on a scale never before imagined. Ultimately, film, the arts and music serve as powerful vehicles to break stereotypes, fight discrimination and provide hope to situations of conflict that have not yet concluded in peace.

Conference Agenda

These contributions to international relations will be celebrated during the Film for Peace conference taking place in Berlin. The conference will examine the immense transformative value that film, as well as the arts and music hold as vehicles of Cultural Diplomacy. The vision of the conference is to bring an interdisciplinary mixture of celebrated artists, high level representatives from the film industry and practitioners of Cultural Diplomacy in order to prepare an agenda for after the conclusion of the conference, which will initiate programs and initiatives that will support global peace.