“I wanted to work with Hauschka for a few main reasons”, explains Nicholas Ledner from UNICEF. “Instrumental music can resound globally, and I knew Hauschka thought creatively and wouldn’t be scared off by a project off this magnitude or depth. The music, to me, is almost spiritual and I felt that if a strong production company (like NAMUH – the creative collective who made the video) could connect the music with a powerful story, then there could be something startling created as a product that would go further than both video or music on their own and shake people watching to their core.”

The film tells the fictional story of a 10-year-old Liberian girl who is repeatedly raped by a family friend and who, with the support of her teachers, family and her community, reports the crime to the police.

“Despite strong laws on child rape, few suspected rapists are brought to justice in Liberia, and the majority of all reported rapes continue to be of children,” said UNICEF Representative Sheldon Yett. “Many in Liberia still do not treat child rape as the serious crime that it is and continue to view it as a private family matter.”

While the maximum sentence for child rape in Liberia is life imprisonment, relatively few suspected rapists are brought to justice. This is due to a combination of factors that also include reluctance to report by victims and families, who may instead opt to settle the crime informally, and the limited capacities of the security and justice sectors. In this context, while it is important to encourage reporting to the police, it is equally important to focus on changing individual perspectives on, and societal attitudes toward, rape.

More info on #ENDviolence here.

Hauschka’s Abandoned City is out now on Temporary Residence Ltd. (North America)/City Slang Records (EU).
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Hauschka
Abandoned City
Out now on Temporary Residence Ltd.

Tracklist:
Elizabeth Bay
Pripyat
Thames Town
Who Lived Here?
Agdam
Sanzhi Pod City
Craco
Bakersville
Stromness

http://hauschka-net.de/