Reflection: HOtel Rwanda! =)

Over the past couple of days we have been watching the movie, Hotel Rwanda in class. This was my second time watching the movie and after watching it again my perspective changed and I saw things in the movie that I didn't see before.
Question: How this movie was intended to impact you and its actual effects.

While watching this movie I took notes on certain scenes, quotes, and general ideas that really impacted me. Overall, I think that this movie was intended to show the truth of the Rwandan genocide and to convey the true emotions and disorder that occured there. The movie was really powerful and really captured the time and setting in which the genocide occured. Personally, I think that this movie was very well done and fully conveyed the distress and anger of the two people groups. Through this movie we can obviously see that there were killers "bad guys" and victims. This is evident through the amount of people killed and their actions were not at all justified.

Some scenes that really impacted me were:

-When Gregoire and Paul drove along the riverside and came across many dead bodies.

-When the foriengers were all evacuted (There was a sense of hopelessness and helplessness).

-All the scenes in which houses were destroyed and people were being beaten or killed.

-The Hutus entering the hotel.

-Paul staying behind at the hotel and seeing his family leave.

-Paul crying after he cannot butten his shirt.

(These are some of the many scenes that really effected me and really impacted me throughout the movie.

SOme quotes that really impacted me were:

*Quote from the beginning of the movie, "When people ask me, good listeners, why do I hate all the Tutsi, I say, "Read our history." The Tutsi were collaborators for the Belgian colonists, they stole our Hutu land, they whipped us. Now they have come back, these Tutsi rebels. They are cockroaches. They are murderers. Rwanda is our Hutu land. We are the majority. They are a minority of traitors and invaders. We will squash the infestation. We will wipe out the RPF rebels. This is RTLM, Hutu power radio. Stay alert. Watch your neighbours. "

*"There will be no rescue, no intervention for us."

* " I think if people see this footage, they'll say Oh, my God, that's horrible. And then they'll go on eating their dinners."

* "You're black. You're not even a nigger. You're an African"

* "Please don't let them kill me. I... I promise I won't be Tutsi anymore."

* "They're not going to stay, Paul. They're not going to stop the slaughter."

In conclusion, I think that this movie was intented to get people to stand up and to realize some of the true things that we should be worried about in this world. We can take a stand and we should take a stand for what is right. This movie shows a glimpse of what our world has come to... and who knows where it will go in the future if we don't stop things before thousands of people get killed.

- Furthermore, the actual affects of this movie left me speechless. I cannot even begin to imagine what an experience like this would be like. I don't know how people would/could ever recover from so much trauma, fear, and heart-ache. Personally, I don't think that I could ever recover from such events. The intentions of the movie and the actual affects of the movie are very similar. Both aspects were intented to open peoples eyes and show the truth, these two things were both conveyed with emotion and were shown in a way that makes people want to do something about it. Therefore, both aspects are very similar in their intentions and both conveyed the injustice and fear that took place in Rwanda.

Comments and thoughts on the Rwandan Genocide~

*After reading and thinking about the articles and interviews on the genocide that took place in Rwanda, I felt a burden on my heart and a terrible feeling in my stomach. I personally, could never ever imagine what it would be like to live in fear daily and after reading the articles it made me really appreciate what God has provided my family and I with. I really connected with the words of one news reporter who captured the Rwandan genocide and experienced the crisis for what it truly was. One thing he said really made me contemplate how powerful the genocide was and how it really changed his life,

"Just after the genocide, when I'd wake up in the night, this was a dream of being hidden under corpses, and a man with red eyes and a machete pulling the corpses away to get at me. And that was just born. I know where that came from. That came from the road blocks, and the looks on people's faces.But now it's kind of waking up with a sense of failure as a human being. And I can't really describe the dreams themselves, except that it's just crowds of people, crowds of people and, then, waking up and just feeling a sense of failure. It sounds bizarre, but that's what Rwanda has left me with as a human being."

*For some reason I really connected with this quote and it seemed to capture some of the emotions I have felt while watching Hotel Rwanda for a second time. This time, while watching the movie, I have noticed certain things that I didn't see the first time and I have really been able to understand the situation more thoroughly. I think that it is very importante to watch this movie more than once because, you notice new things and can really understand just a small portion of what the genocide was like.

* During class we have been taking notes on how media plays a big part throughout the crisis in Rwanda. I have noticed that things like; TV, communication systems, news, and news reporters play a huge role in publizing information. However, I think that the radio is the most important piece of media that affected the extremity of the Rwandan genocide. It instilled fear, anger, destruction, and above all, hate.