Saul Ebema: An African Faith Odyssey
Posted by timfrakes | Filed under Africa, Faith Based Production, Non-Profit, Spiritual Journey, Tim Frakes Productions
After his family was murdered in Southern Sudan’s second civil war, Saul Ebema began an odyssey and profound spiritual journey that took him from life as an orphaned African child soldier to seminary at the Northern Seminary in Lombard, Illinois.
Tags: Africa, Child Soldier, Faith, Spiritual Journey, Sudan
Streetlights Music Video
Posted by timfrakes | Filed under Africa, Faith Based Production, Interesting Places, Music, Tim Frakes Productions, Travel
In February 2007 I visited Ziway, Ethiopia with Food for the Hungry. We were shooting footage for a music video with the Christian band “Willet“. Here are the results.
www.frakesproductions.com
Tags: Ethiopia, Food for the Hungry, Music Video, Streetlights, Willet
Internally Displaced Persons in Kenya
Posted by timfrakes | Filed under Africa, Education, Interesting Places, News, Peace and Justice, Tim Frakes Productions, Travel
Last month I was in Nairobi, Kenya. My friend George Arende took us to an IDP (Internally Displaced Person) camp outside the Madera Slum. Following the national elections in December, ethnic/tribal violence erupted across Kenya.
Typically, it is the poor who suffer the most. The people in this video were forced to flee their slum homes with what they could carry. Now, they make their homes in tents, supplied by ACT International, the Kenya Evangelical Lutheran Church and others.
Tags: Elections, IDP camp, Kenya
YouTubeing East Africa
Posted by timfrakes | Filed under Africa, Education, News, Peace and Justice, Tim Frakes Productions, Travel
Internet video is changing the world. As developing nations leapfrog old communication technology in favor of new, digital Internet based forms of telling the story, a window of opportunity opens. In the fall of 2006 I was in Kitgum, Northern Uganda shooting footage for a documentary about forgiveness in the aftermath of war. During our visit, we shot, edited and uploaded short video clips from a tiny, phone line connected Internet café on the dusty streets of Kitgum.
Later conversations with staff from ELCA Global Mission and the ELCA World Hunger Appeal led to a grant, which allowed me to purchase four high-powered laptop computers, video cameras and software.
In March 2008, George, a web developer friend Len Mason, myself and five East Africans from Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Madagascar will meet in Nairobi. We will spend four days at the Methodist Guest House, shooting, editing and uploading video clips to the Internet. When the workshop is over, the team will return home with their equipment, charged with the mission of teaching others how to use it.
Originally we planned the workshop for January 2008. However, the post election violence in Kenya forced a postponement. The chaos underscores the need for clear communication. By March, we trust things will have calmed down and our project will move forward.
The East Africans I have met are smart and technologically savvy – they just don’t have the right tools. Equipped with proper technology, perhaps African can begin to solve problems on its own.
www.frakesproductions.com
Tags: Africa, Education, Youtube
St. Catherine’s Monastery, Mt. Sinai, Egypt
Posted by timfrakes | Filed under Africa, Middle East, Travel
This video clip is from St. Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt. To get there, we took a taxi from Elat, Israel to the Egyptian border crossing at Taba. After paying the usual departure taxes and customs screenings, we walked into Egypt. The Egyptian customs officials pulled us into a side office and grilled us for fifteen minutes. They wanted to know about our video camera. Egypt understands that Hollywood can pump millions of dollars into a local economy. Customs officials are on the lookout for film crews and make sure that you are paying for permits. Of course, we have a tiny budget and no permits. When they figured this out, they let us go.
Taba is a dusty border town. The most lively thing going is the taxi stand. Tourists make their way across the border en route to Egypt’s classy coastal resorts. They also take passengers to Mt. Sinai. After negotiaiting a rate for the three-hour drive to Mt. Sinai and back, we climbed into a ragged old station wagon with our driver, Suleiman, and two Israeli tourists. The shared taxi system is common in Taba.
Soon we were whipping south along the coast road headed for Nuweiba, a resort town, where we dropped off our two Israeli friends. The young men were going on a hiking adventure in the desert.
One of them spoke English. Suleiman, our driver did not. So, from that point on, we had limited communication. The Sinai Desert is amazing. The rugged mountains are ablaze with rich color. Every ten or fifteen kilometers you pass a Bedouin village consisting of a few shacks, some camels, an SUV and a satellite dish. You can count the number of towns in the southern Sinai on one hand. It was a desert when Moses came through. It is a desert now.
We reached Mt. Sinai just before noon – not a good time to be out in the desert sun. Fortunately, the weather was fairly cool, around 85 degrees. Located at the base of Mt. Sinai is St. Catherine’s Monastery. Christian Emperor Justinian built the monastery here in the 6th Century to honor an early Christian martyr, St. Catharine. Christians believed then, as they do today, that this is the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments from God. St. Catharine’s is a big tourist trap in the middle of a huge desert. You can’t walk five feet without someone trying to give you the hustle.
Still, the old walled monastery is impressive. It looks like some place out of an adventure story. Our plan had been to spend the night at St. Catharine’s, then climb the mountain early the next morning. Unfortunately, Suleiman and the local hotels would only take cash. I didn’t have enough to cover both, so we just took some video footage of the mountain and St. Catharine’s, then headed back to Eilat.
www.frakesproductions.com
Tags: Egypt, Monastery, Mt.Sinai, St.Catherine's
Tanzania Jubilee
Posted by timfrakes | Filed under Africa, Education, Faith Based Production, History
This video recounts the history of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania. I produced it back in 1992 in the Swahili language with the help of Lutheran Missionary Howard Olsen.
The roots of organized Lutheranism in the nation now known as Tanzania had their origin in the late 19th century. The work began in 1887 in the capitol city of Dar es Salaam with the Bethel Mission Society and subsequently spread to Usambara in 1892 and then Bukoba in 1910. This video documents the growth of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania from its missionary beginings up to the 1960′s.
www.frakesproductions.com
Tags: Church, History, Jubilee, Lutheran, Tanzania, Tim Frakes Productions
ELCA News Release: Uganda: Ready to Forgive
Posted by timfrakes | Filed under Africa, Award winning video, Faith Based Production, Peace and Justice
CHICAGO (ELCA) — NBC television stations and affiliates will begin broadcasting “Ready to Forgive: An African Story of Grace” on Dec. 2. The 60-minute documentary about the faith and spirit of the Acholi people of Northern Uganda is a production of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).
Through 21 years of war, death, rape, torture and child abduction, rebels known as the Lord’s Resistance Army forced two million people into internally displaced person camps. Yet, the Acholi people are united in a belief that the only real solution is reconciliation and forgiveness.
“The program was recorded on location in Northern Uganda,” said Tim Frakes, writer and producer, Tim Frakes Productions, Lombard, Ill. “In this story, the Acholi people offer lessons of forgiveness that we can learn from,” Frakes said. “Most stories from Africa emphasize western nations helping Africans,” he said. “This is an example of Africans helping us.”
The host of the program is Immaculee Ilibagiza, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and author of “Left to Tell: Discovering God amidst the Rwandan Holocaust.”
“The Acholi people of Northern Uganda have been through so much and to be able to capture this amazing story of forgiveness and reconciliation was truly a blessing. Now our task is to bring their story to a wider audience,” said Ava Odom Martin, director for public media, ELCA Communication Services.
“If the Acholi people can forgive the Lord’s Resistance Army for the torture and massacre brought upon their community and get on with their lives, then hopefully someone else may be touched by their action
and find forgiveness for an injustice done to them,” said Martin.
The ELCA is one of 35 member communions of the National Council of Churches of Christ U.S.A. (NCC). The NCC is a founding partner of the Interfaith Broadcasting Commission (IBC), which provides television programming to the affiliates of three major broadcast television networks. NBC’s “Horizons of the Spirit” provides four hours per year for documentaries produced by the IBC faith groups.
Martin said “Ready to Forgive” will be available for broadcast through May 31, 2008. “Please contact your local NBC station for specific dates and times in your area,” she said. The production was made possible in part through a grant from Faith and Values Media, she added.
– — –
Information about the television program, “Ready to Forgive: An African Story of Grace,” is at http://www.elca.org/readytoforgive/ on the ELCA Web site and http://www.frakesproductions.com/ on the
Internet.
Tags: Africa, Forgiveness, LRA, Peace, Uganda
Uganda: Ready to Forgive Spot
Posted by timfrakes | Filed under Africa, Peace and Justice, Uncategorized
NBC This December After 21 years of war, the Acholi people of Northern Uganda are united in a belief that the only real solution to their problem is reconciliation and forgiveness. Join best selling author and Rwandan genocide survivor Immaculee Ilibagiza as she hosts “Ready to Forgive: An African Story of Grace. This is a production of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Contact your local NBC Affiliate for air dates and times beginning December 2, 2007 through March 1, 2008.
www.frakesproductions.com
Tags: Forgiveness, LRA, Peace, Uganda
Nekemte, Ethiopia, Sunday Morning
Posted by timfrakes | Filed under Africa, Culture, Education, Faith Based Production, Interesting Places, Music, Travel, Uncategorized
Jim Quattrocki and I recorded this footage in Nekemte, Ethiopia, a small market town west of Addis Ababa. The Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus is a Lutheran Church that began in Eritrea in 1899 when Swedish missionaries arrived.
www.frakesproductions.com
Tags: Ethiopia, Nekemte, Worship
Zam Zam; A Missionary Odyssey
Posted by timfrakes | Filed under Africa, Faith Based Production, Interesting Places, Spiritual Journey, Travel
Zam Zam; A Missionary Odyssey is a tale of faith, hope and adventure on the high seas. This 30-minute documentary tells the true story of an Egyptian passenger liner that was shelled and sunk off the coast of South Africa in the spring of 1941 by the German raider ship Tamesis.
Aboard the Zam Zam were 140 American Missionaries representing 20 Christian denominations bound for various fields of service on the African continent. Featuring the film work of Augustana Lutheran Missionary V. Eugene Johnson, action photographs from Life Magazine photographer David Scherman and interviews with survivors, the Zam Zam recounts in dramatic fashion, first hand accounts of this historic event. Go to more videos produced by Tim Frakes for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
www.frakesproductions.com
Tags: Africa, Faith, kansas, Linsborg, Missionary, Ship16, Zam Zam