Page - 77 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/01

Activist Citizenship, Film and Peacebuilding | 77www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/1, 73–89 political community that at the time was determined by ethnic and religious identity and belonging, and finally it asks, at a very personal level, Who is my neighbour? Set in the midst of the Yugoslav conflict of the 1990s, the film is not simply a historical recon- struction but rather a reflective piece on human belonging, as well as an exploration of how identity is constructed not by ethnicity but through a good deed, surpass- ing the category of otherness. In Wadjda (Haifaa al-Mansour, SA/D 2013), Haifaa al- Mansour uses film in a similar way, as a performative space that she occupies as both filmmaker and the Other simultaneously, and additionally as a reflection of freedom and what it means to be the Other – in this case a woman in Saudi Arabian society. Al-Mansour does not create conflict but uses film as her own space in which she be- comes an equal citizen, creator, actor, and person. ON ACTS AND ACTIVISM Isin’s distinction between act, action, and actor is pertinent for my reading of film as a scene through which a filmmaker becomes an actor and activist. For Isin, “act” has an ontological meaning, in the sense that act has “virtual existence that can be actualized under certain conditions”.22 Drawing upon Martin Heidegger, Isin discusses the act as “the call of conscience” that “discloses my potentiality- as-being”.23 Being ontological, the call therefore “comes from and is directed towards the being that I am”.24 The caller to act is our own being, concerned over its own “thrownness”,25 and so “our own being is called forth to its potentialities”.26 In other words, acts precede morality in the sense that they are the very expression of the ontological questions of who I am and how the notion of the Other is inseparably intertwined with one’s own Being, which through the Other relates to Self and through the love for the Other becomes Self, that is a person in the fullest sense of the word. Act can be defined both as dynamis (δυναμις), internal power, the potentiality of a being, and as energeia (ενεργεια), an active state of being.27 Perhaps this distinction between and interrelation of dynamis and energeia could also be understood as the capacity of a human being to become a person in the fullest sense.28 We can say that through the act the nature of being is manifested. 22 Isin/Nielsen 2008, 25. 23 Isin here draws upon Heidegger and Bakhtin. Also, conscience should be understood here “beyond its everyday meaning of guilt as debt”, Isin/Nielsen 2008, 32. 24 Isin/Nielsen 2008, 32. 25 Isin/Nielsen 2008, 32. 26 Isin/Nielsen 2008, 32. 27 Aristotle distinguished the concepts of dynamis and energeia. While dynamis stood for potency and capability – a reality capable of changing – “reaching the fullness of being it can become”, energeia was for Aristotle “the completely realized dimension of a reality”. See Richardson/Bowden 1983, 3. 28 Zizioulas 1985, 58.