Award-winning Peace Corps documentary screens Monday in Shepherdstown
SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.Va. — Filmmaker Alana DeJoseph will screen her film "A Towering Task: The Story of the Peace Corps" on Monday at the National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, W.Va.
Narrated by Annette Bening, "A Towering Task" tells the story of the Peace Corps and takes viewers on a journey of what it means to be a global citizen.
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy gave Americans the opportunity to serve their country in a new way by forming the Peace Corps. Since then, more than 200,000 volunteers have traveled to more than 140 countries to carry out the organization's mission of international cooperation.
Nearly 60 years later, Americans young and old still want to serve their country and understand their place in the world; current volunteers work at the forefront of some of the most pressing issues facing the global community.
Yet the agency has struggled to remain relevant amid sociopolitical change. More than once it had to fight for its very existence, and now — between pandemics, climate change and a rise in nationalist sentiment — the Peace Corps is again confronting a crisis of identity: What role should it play around the world and in the lives of engaged citizens?
From 1992 to 1994, Peace Corps Volunteer Alana DeJoseph was an enterprise development advisor in a small town in Mali, West Africa. As a returned Peace Corps volunteer and a filmmaker, she believed that as walls are being built and nations are turning inward, a comprehensive documentary of this globally engaged American government agency was needed.
“In a time when the American public either has a very antiquated notion of the Peace Corps, informed by an almost mythological awe of the 60s, or is not even aware that the agency still exists, it is high time to bring this unique organization back into the public discourse, to raise the level of the discussion from quaint to crucial,” she said.
DeJoseph has worked in video and film production for more than 40 years. She began her career as a 10-year-old actress. Since then, she has served as a producer, director, videographer and editor. But her heart has always been in documentaries. Between 2003 and 2013, she was associate producer of the PBS documentaries The Greatest Good (about the U.S. Forest Service) and Green Fire (about conservationist Aldo Leopold).
In 2013, DeJoseph began working on the first feature documentary about the history of the Peace Corps: A Towering Task. The film premiered Sept. 22, 2019, to a full house at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. In December 2020 she won the Best Director award in the feature documentary category at the Indo Global International Film Festival in Mumbai. The film has screened at 11 film festivals and won numerous awards.
The screening begins at 7 p.m. at the Byrd Auditorium, National Conservation Training Center, 698 Conservation Way, Shepherdstown.
These talks are a part of the NCTC Conservation Lecture Series, which is cosponsored by The Friends of the NCTC — http://www.friendsofnctc.org. No tickets or reservations are required.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: See Peace Corps documentary 'A Towering Task' Monday in Shepherdstown
