Last night Aimee and I went to see Paul Rusesabagina (the guy the film Hotel Rwanda was about) talk at Iowa State.
The event, while worth seeing, was made disappointing by several things:
First, the great hall was packed beyond capacity. A lot of people came to hear him speak, which is great. I think they could have planned for this better by choosing a bigger venue like Stephen's Auditorium, instead of the Great Hall of the Memorial Union set up with folding chairs.
Second, the lady who is in charge of the lecture series at Iowa State, you know who I'm talking about if you went to ISU, was even more annoying than she has been in the past. After all the seats filled up, people began simply standing along the walls. There were several hundred people standing. The lady comes out about fifteen minutes after the event was supposed to start and says they are working on getting things going, and that people are working on opening up another section of the Great Hall for people to sit, while adding "You people are slowing us down." What?? Who is she addressing? She made no mention of how "we" were slowing them down at all. She did nothing but aggravate an otherwise overcrowded (and rising-temperature) room. Then, a few minutes later, instead of politely asking people to move to the newly-available section, she says "Ok, you people are going to have to move NOW or else I'm going to get the fire marshall to make EVERYONE leave." This lady is crazy.
Third, the audio/public address system was terrible. Feedback at the beginning, a horrible echo, and the rest of the time totally over-modulated and distorted. The guy flew all the way from Belgium to speak and is one of the top-requested world-wide speakers ... can we at least get him a decent audio level?
Rusesabagina talked for a little less than an hour and then answered questions. His talk was very informative and interesting, and it was probably good that it was on the short side since everyone was cramped and uncomfortable. There were some very good questions, too. Read more about the event here.
Some of the things that Paul talked about that were different from what happened in the film (might not want to read this if you haven't seen the movie):
The last time Paul saw his brother-in-law Thomas, Paul's wife was not there at the house.
Paul's son that witnessed his friends' murder was older than depicted- he was about 14 (he looked about 7 or 8 in the movie), and didn't talk for about 4 days (if I remember correctly) after the event.
When Paul talked/bribed the guards for the lives of the people in the van for the first time, it took several hours instead of a couple minutes as in the movie.
At the time of the events, Paul actually was working at a different hotel than where everyone ended up seeking refuge, but had worked there in the past.
It sounded like when he was awoken by the gunman and demanded he be downstairs in 15 minutes, he didn't call the French hotel owner but rather local contacts, since it was 6 a.m. at the time in France (and where he was). The night before he was up until 4 a.m. faxing different people for help.
When he was separated from his wife and kids (when the wife and kids tried to flee, but Paul overheard the orders to attack the U.N. trucks on the radio), his wife was more hurt than depicted in the movie and took a week (?) in bed to recover.
Posted by alangage at October 27, 2005 06:16 PM
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