Human Experience screening evangelises

TO evangelise and fundraise at the same time, nine pilgrims from the St Joseph’s Workers and the Emmanuel Community hosted a screening of The Human Experience in the parish hall at St Lawrence’s, Balcatta on 21 May.

About 40 people attended and the crew raised enough funds to cover costs associated with the pre-movie sausage sizzle and make a small profit to buy patriotic WYD merchandise to wear in August.
The most important thing, organisers and pilgrims Siobhán Hinton, Rebecca Thomas and Bridget Spinks said, was to create an environment for meaningful conversations and, at the same time, build the WYD team spirit.
“If there’s noise afterwards, you know it’s a successful event,” Siobhán said.
Many stayed long after the film had finished to socialise over a cup of tea and ginger snap, discussing life and the multi-award-winning documentary. The Human Experience is a true story that chronicles the adventures of Jeffrey Azize, 22, his brother Cliff, 29, and their friends as they live on the street to experience homelessness in New York; meet and spend time caring for Peruvian orphans and visit a leper colony in Ghana.
Their aim is to experience other walks of life where people are really struggling to find out what makes them so happy.
Grassroots Films, an independent company set up in 2001 by Joseph Campo, produced the documentary. Campo also runs the St Francis House in Brooklyn  – a refuge for young men from impoverished backgrounds founded by Fr Benedict Groeschel CFR in 1967 – where the Azize brothers live.
Since the film does not have a major distributor in Australia, the only way to show it publicly was to obtain a licence from Grassroots Films. “When the documentary drew such large audiences earlier this year when the Azize brothers visited Sydney and Melbourne and there was a lot of buzz on Facebook, we decided Perth was not going to miss out on this opportunity to build a culture of life and love,” Bridget said. Organisers said there was a lot of positive feedback after the movie night as many people were touched by the journey of the brothers and their experiences with the Peruvian orphans and Ghanaian lepers and wanted to buy the DVD.
“It created such great discussion on what it means to be human, the purpose of suffering and how one can be joyful during suffering,” Rebecca said.