By Soula Saad It may be hard initially to grasp the role of culture in strengthening and ensuring the rule of law. We expect government to establish the rule of law on its own, even as we question its capacity to do so. But prior experiences have shown that the rule of law requires concerted action by state and society alike -- including the education sector, business, government, centers of moral authority, and above all, the media. Im a documentary filmmaker who in my own way has tried to advance the culture of lawfulness through my work. Among peers in this field -- producers, editors, and writers I know -- too often I have noticed a tendency to underestimate our potential to meaningfully influence our audiences. Id like to explore with you today the potential for advancing the rule o

Television has played a crucial role in the process that we call the “Palermo Renaissance”. As we will see there are specific reasons, but the main one is that television was, and is still, the most powerful media in our societies when it comes to create positive or negative models. A recent study tells us that Europeans spend in front of television around 3 hours a day, more than half of their daily free time. This figure was even higher during the nineties, when the internet and the new digital media were not available to the young generations in Palermo. Television was and is the main source of information, the main source of entertainment, the main source of distraction for the citizens of Palermo, as for the high majority of Italians and Europeans. And among television programming i

By the late ‘eighties and early ‘nineties, Colombia faced one of the worse crises in its history. The dark power of drug trafficking had taken hold of a large portion of society – and the lives of all citizen were gravely affected by this terrible scourge. Hardly a Colombian was impervious to the violence and destruction that drug trafficking produced. Both the sovereignty of the country and the legitimacy of its institutions were thoroughly compromised. Only a strong determination of the civil society – that great majority of people who, although victims of organized crime, were still alien to the phenomenon – could stop the crisis from wiping out the viability of the country. In this context, a consortium of privately-leased television channels came together to plan a concerted project

John Kuri and Peter Collier We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path… where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.” These are words spoken by Joseph Campbell, the world’s foremost authority on mythology and a preeminent scholar, who devoted much of his life to the role of heroes in all cultures. We live in an era of storytelling when political and cultural messages are often best conveyed through personal narratives. In Western media, the memoir has invaded the novel’s traditional space. “Reality” shows filled with real-time personal