The ambassadors decided they wanted to make and distribute a film to put across their points of view and challenge negative attitudes towards them. They felt the film could help redress poor media coverage of disabled young people and the issues that affect them.

The film was screened at Channel 4 in London in November, but you can see it for yourself here!

You can learn more about the Young Ambassadors here.

The film opens with a re-enactment of Raja’s encounter with an armed settler described in his novel Palestinian Walks. The discussion which follows reflects the total contradiction between the two ideologies and the apparent hopelessness of ever finding common ground between them. We see the countryside around Bethlehem brutally transacted by the separation wall and irrevocably damaged by illegal settlements.

We meet Ashraf Affore, a young musician and composer from Ramallah who taught himself to play the Nye, a type of flute known since Babylonian times. His delicate musical laments underscore the images of a divided land.

In the hills near the Dead Sea we meet Eid of the Hathaleen Bedouin tribe chased from its ancestral territory in Negev Desert and now fighting for survival in the arid hills near Hebron. His elder cousin, keeper of the tribe’s oral history, recites a poem appealing for justice and for peace.

The film ends with Raja’s clear analysis of the present political stalemate as he offers a glimpse of a possible future resolution.

The Writer and the Flautist premiered at the South Bank Literary festival in London and was recently shown at The Filmhouse in Edinburgh as part of the Beyond Borders Festival.

You can see the whole 30-minute film here.

In October 2010, Simon Norfolk began a series of photographs in Afghanistan, which takes its cue from the work of nineteenth-century photographer John Burke. Norfolk’s photographs re-imagine or respond to Burke’s Afghan war scenes in the context of the contemporary conflict.

This film looks at Norfolk’s work and practice in Afghanistan and examines the relationship between the two photographers.

The film was part of an exhibition this year of the same name at at the Tate Modern. You can also see the film on the Tate Channel.

Ukraine, Russia and Belarus continue to live with the invisible, poisonous legacy that has demonstrated the dangers of nuclear power. The International Federation of Red Cross Societies, along with the Red Cross societies of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, started CHARP, the Chernobyl Humanitarian Assistance and Rehabilitation programme, in 1990.

The basis of the programme is mass thyroid gland screening in the most rural and inaccessible areas in three regions of Ukraine, three in Belarus and one Russian region. Each year seven mobile laboratories screen some 100,000 patients using ultrasound machines or fine needle biopsy.

This film shows the work done in one day in one mobile laboratory. If a new donor is not found soon, the CHARP programme may have to be wound down, which would be a tragedy within a tragedy.

You can see the film on the Red Cross channel.

The former Soviet state of Uzbekistan has become an important ally for both the US and NATO; its border with Afghanistan providing an invaluable supply route for the West’s war on the Taliban.

But its government, led by Islam Karimov, the country’s president, has a dreadful human rights record. It is a country where political and religious expression is heavily restricted, and where security services allegedly use torture and murder indiscriminately.

Thousands of Uzbeks have fled abroad – a few to Europe or the US, the majority to neighbouring countries in Central Asia. Mostly practising Muslims, they seek sanctuary from the violence and a chance to live in peace.

Instead, many of them face arrest and deportation back to a country where brutal repression is an everyday occurrence.

You can also see this film on the Al Jazeera Channel.

Nick Allen’s book in progress, EMBED – Among the World’s Armies in Afghanistan, offers a unique, first-hand look at the experiences of foreign contingents deployed in Afghanistan. Some are engaged in heavy fighting while others in more stable areas still face the challenge of working with communities that after three decades of war and oppression are endemically suspicious of outsiders.

This film shows a path through the pilot website, giving a taste of some of the videos, text and photos available.

Nick Allen worked as a journalist in Moscow from 1996 to 2006, when he moved to Pakistan as the German Press Agency’s Islamabad bureau chief, responsible also for Afghanistan. Allen first visited the country in 2001, and has spent up to three months in the field at a time, visiting members of the 41-country International Security Forces (ISAF) in Afghanistan and filing numerous articles on the conflict. This is his first book.

This is an online film project that dust+scratches is developing with the author. We are presently editing the footage Nick has filmed over the last two years in Afghanistan to expand the site and launch it with the book.

People Like Us shows the lives of some of those living with HIV in Ukraine and the efforts of Red Cross Visiting Nurses and other groups to care for them and stem the further rise of the disease.

For more information on the IFRC’s work on HIV/AIDS, please visit their site.

Please visit the Ukrainian Red Cross to see how you can help.

With a national housing shortage in the headlines, its no wonder tempers are at boiling point along London’s North Circular road. The rows of empty, decaying houses that line the road are an eyesore for permanent residents. But for new arrivals from Eastern Europe they represent a cheap housing opportunity.

The last of a four-part series broadcast on Channel 4, E4 and at the Sheffield Documentary Film Festival. North Circular Stories was co-directed by Simon Ostrovsky and Luke Tchalenko.

He’s penniless, jobless, Latvian and freshly released from an English prison. But one thing he’s not is worried. Janis knows that all he needs is a pair of scissors and some upper body strength to find shelter on London’s North Circular Road.

Part three of a four-part series broadcast on Channel 4, E4 and at the Sheffield Documentary Film Festival. North Circular Stories was co-directed by Simon Ostrovsky and Luke Tchalenko.