RALPH BUNCHE: AN AMERICAN ODYSSEY (117 minutes) USA Director: William Greaves Producer: William Greaves and Louise Archambault

RALPH BUNCHE: AN AMERICAN ODYSSEY, narrated by Sidney Poitier, is story about the legendary African-American scholar/statesman Ralph Johnson Bunche who rose to the position of Under-Secretary general of the U. N. and was the first person of color to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950. Based on the biography by Sir Brian Urquhart, the film reveals the little known role Bunche played in drafting the sections of the U. N. charter that led to the independence of a large part of the colonial world. The film tells the behind-the-scenes story of Bunche's successful mediation in 1949, of a series of armistice agreements between the new nation of Israel and its four Arab neighbors - Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. This was the first, and only, time in the long turbulent history of the Middle Eastern conflict that all four Arab nations signed peace agreements with Israel. Also, the film highlights the unique and controversial role Bunche played during the Congo crisis of 1960. An independent filmmaker based in New York, WILLIAM GREAVES has produced more than 200 documentaries that have earned more than seventy international film festival awards. An Emmy Award winner, he has been untiring in chronicling the lives and concerns of African Americans in award winning films like Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice, featuring Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, for The American Experience series; From These Roots, a social, political and cultural review of the Harlem Renaissance. He is the recipient of an Indy, the special Life Achievement Award from the AIVF. LOUISE ARCHAMBAULT, co-producer and researcher of RALPH BUNCHE: AN AMERICAN ODYSSEY has been an associate and co-producer with William Greaves Productions for the past fifteen years. Her credits include Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice which won over 20 film festival awards; Frederick Douglass: An American Life, Resurrections: A Moment in the Life of Paul Robeson for Black Entertainment Television and Booker T. Washington which won ten festival awards. William Greaves Productions, Inc. 230 West 55th Street, Ste. 26-D New York, NY 10019 E-mail: info@williamgreaves.com URL: www.ralphbunche.com ______________________________________________________________________ all material ©2002 UNAFF / contact: infounaff.org / design: infocontext.fm