Sean & Andrea Nix Fine, War/Dance - a film

War/Dance uncovers a deeper truth: that kids broken by trauma can make a decision to let the genie of their talent come pouring out.

I was reading about the winner of the 2007 Sundance Documentary Directing award .

Sean and Andrea Nix Fine made a film about Patongo ... similar to a refugee camp, not of exiles but of Ugandans who had lost homes and family to murders and violence by rebel soldiers.

Andrea is recorded as saying that the kids are not wildly special. “They need something special just to survive.” That is music. And so the Fines challenge their audiences by making beauty a character in their story — the gorgeousness of the landscape and the heart-punch thrill of the music.

The Fines hypnotize audiences into imagining the camp’s huts are a Four Seasons compound. Why shouldn’t there be beauty in horrors? That is the undersong of War/Dance.

Their approach has so disconcerted critics that they have challenged the Fines on whether horrors and atrocities should be filmed in images of beauty. The Fines deplore these criticisms: “To say that a child’s face is too beautiful is just ridiculous,” Andrea says.