By: Shayna Glazer, Carlsbad, CA – July 24, 2019

Filmmaking day. Participants can be seen running around with delegation flags wrapped around their shoulders, talking straight into cameras for their projects, and overall creating a sense of excitement amongst themselves as ideas blend and divide to create unique stories per group. 

During this process, some groups fall into the rhythm of script writing, planning and filming with ease. Lia, a Hand from the American delegation, described her experience as “[being] really good. We were able to finish really fast, we all were able to agree and work together.” Stav, a Jewish Israeli Hand, held similar beliefs. Her group “started by working on making sure everyone could share their opinion[s] and learn everything together, we can really see that happening. There isn’t really someone telling everyone what to do, it feels great because everyone has a place to say something.” 

Filmmaking is a time for participants to come together to portray a message to their audience. Antonios is an XL from the Palestinian Citizens of Israel delegation and his hope for their video is he “want[s] all the Americans to learn about the conflict and the problems that we go through back home so they can be more cautious about what happens back there.” Another message that will be seen in the end product of the films was voiced by Stav, “I’m hoping that people will see the progress we are making here. We are showing how different and how our opinions change at first and how we are closed off. And then in the middle how everything was so heated and different and at the end we feel so connected.”    

The videos created by participants are screened at the Farewell Celebration on Sunday July 28th. 

Shayna Glazer was a first year participant in Hands of Peace in 2017 and was an XL in 2018. She is an incoming freshman at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and is intending to study Philosophy.