(Logo courtesy of Invisible Children)
The crowd was abuzz after Invisible Children’s film screening of “Tony: Lose all. Gain everything,” Tuesday night in the Hughes-Trigg Theater.
“This is where the movie ends and where your story begins,” the screen read as the lights came back on in the theater.
From the commotion in the lobby, it seems as if SMU students and Dallas community members will be doing just that.
Everyone was talking about what they had just witnessed and about the power of a few college students to actually change the world.
“I think that this whole Invisible Children movement shows that peace is not meditation in a corner. Peace is not alone,” Brenton Harris, a student teacher at the School of Metaphysics in Dallas, said. “It’s active, it’s real and it can move in the minds and hearts of the people who have a passion for it.”
The film documented the life of Tony, a young Ugandan man, over the course of eight years as he struggled to live in a war-ravaged country.
The three founders of Invisible Children, all college students and filmmakers, met Tony on their first trip to Uganda in the spring of 2003.
Tony’s story drastically changed their lives and the film documenting his experiences was designed to call other young people to action.
Uganda has been plagued by civil war as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony, has terrorized the countryside for the past 25 years.
Kony has moved out of Uganda. However, he is currently moved into surrounding African nations where he continues to abduct children from the villages and forces them to become soldiers in the LRA.
The war in northern Uganda is Africa’s longest running war and has been largely ignored by other parts of the world.
After the screening, Tony came out and answered audience questions and encouraged viewers to get involved with the Invisible Children campaign.
Many audience members waited in the lobby after the screening to donate to the Invisible Children Protection Plan.
First-year Deborah Ogali first got involved with the organization in high school and was excited to see Invisible Children on SMU’s campus.
“This has reignited my commitment to Invisible Children because I’ve put it on the backburner since coming to college,” Ogali said.
