When: Feb. 1, 2014
Where: Leadership Auditorium
Price: FREE

The eighth annual Third Goal International Film Festival will take place on Saturday — and it may just inspire you to go on your own global adventure.

Hosted by the Central Missouri Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, the festival screens films that focus on different regions and cultures throughout the world.

The “third goal” that the festival’s name refers to is part of the mission statement of the Peace Corps, coordinator Mike Burden says. The Peace Corps sends its volunteers off to faraway lands, and these experiences were what prompted the festival’s inception.

“It really started with some folks coming together — returned Peace Corps volunteers — to watch international films,” Burden says. “What it’s turned into is really an outreach event.”

Burden says the discussion panels that follow screenings serve to enhance the films’ messages.

“What we’re after broadly is to try and take folks on a journey across the world, and to provide some insight into the cultures,” he says. “Film is one way to do that, and then the other way is through the panel discussions following the films with Peace Corps volunteers who served in the countries where the films take place, and also folks from those countries.”

Sometimes a handful of directors are invited to participate, such as Ashley Tindall, the woman behind the third film in the lineup, “27 Months.”

Although the film is still in post-production, Tindall will show her rough cut of the documentary that follows three Peace Corps members on their culturally immersive journeys: killing snakes in Liberia, educating teachers and children in the Philippines and visiting a crumbling Soviet city in Azerbaijan along the way.

Another highlight of the lineup this year is a politically charged documentary titled “Call Me Kuchu.” Previously shown at the True/False Film Festival, the documentary is named for the derogatory Ugandan term for a homosexual, and focuses on the life and persecution of Uganda’s first openly gay man, the late David Kato, and the general struggles of the Ugandan LGBTQ community.

“Garden of Steven,” the second film to be shown, is a fictional story about a missionary’s spiritual journey in Guatemala to convert as many locals as possible, finding his own enlightenment in the process through Mayan locals. Its tagline hints at the comedic tone of the film: “A missionary walks into a bar.”

The last film, entitled “Mongolian Bling,” is a “fun wrap-up” that documents the unique scene that is Mongolian hip hop.

“Some of the traditional musicians in that film make the argument that hip hop originated there,” Burden says with a chuckle.

Burden, a former Peace Corps volunteer himself, got on board with the event when he and his wife returned from their service in Mongolia in 2008.

“We’d only been back in Columbia for a few days when we heard an advertisement for this on the radio,” Burden says. “So we call the phone number, and found out they were showing a film set in Mongolia, and we got to talk about our experiences after the film. And during our talk, we met a Mongolian family that was in the crowd.”

Although many Peace Corps volunteers are involved with the festival, it isn’t only centered on the organization.

“We don’t just show films about Peace Corps,” Burden says. “We show films about other countries as a way to try to accomplish this third goal, to try to bridge cultural gaps.”

The Corps’ first two goals emphasize meeting the actual expressed needs of the people of interested countries, and in the process promoting a better understanding of the Americans on the part of the other countries, as well.

The last goal is to promote a better understanding through the Americans who bring back the immersive lessons they have learned.

“I think it’s a great education event for that reason, and I hope people come away learning a little something that brings them a little closer to their global neighbors,” Burden says. “That’s the ultimate goal.”