Remarkable Women project by Armelle Falliex: #7 Angelina JOLIE

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Angelina Jolie was born June 4, 1975 in Los Angeles. She is an American actress, filmmaker, and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) ambassadorship. Jolie adopted her first child, Maddox Chivan, from an orphanage in Battambang, Cambodia then she and her husband actor Brad Pitt, adopted Zahara Marley, from an orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In 2006 Jolie and Pitt traveled to Namibia for the birth of their first biological child, a daughter, Shiloh Nouvel, in Swakopmund, and adopted a son, in 2007, Pax Thien, from an orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. On July 12, 2008. She gave birth to a son, Knox Léon, and a daughter, Vivienne Marcheline.

Her film career began in earnest a decade later with the low-budget productions and won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the drama Girl, Interrupted (1999). Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) made her an international superstar.

Jolie first witnessed the effects of a humanitarian crisis while filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) in war-torn Cambodia, an experience she later credited with having brought her a greater understanding of the world. Upon her return home, she contacted the UNHCR for information on international trouble spots. To learn more about the conditions in these areas, she began visiting refugee camps around the world. In February 2001, she went on her first field visit, an 18-day mission to Sierra Leone and Tanzania; she later expressed her shock at what she had witnessed.

In 2002, when asked what she hoped to accomplish, she stated, “Awareness of the plight of these people. I think they should be commended for what they have survived, not looked down upon.”

Over the next decade, she went on more than 40 field missions, meeting with refugees and internally displaced persons in over 30 countries.

She is very active in conservation and community development through the creation of the Jolie-Pitt Foundation. She has also advocated for children’s education:  Jolie had built more than ten schools in Cambodia. She opened the Maddox Chivan Children’s Center, a medical and educational facility for children affected by HIV, in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh. In Sebeta, Ethiopia, she funds a sister facility, the Zahara Children’s Center, to treat and educate children suffering from HIV or tuberculosis.

Jolie also advocates for human rights and women’s rights:  After Jolie joined the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in June 2007, she hosted a symposium on international law and justice at CFR headquarters and funded several CFR special reports, including “Intervention to Stop Genocide and Mass Atrocities.” In January 2011, she established the Jolie Legal Fellowship, a network of lawyers and attorneys who are sponsored to advocate the development of human rights in their countries. Its member attorneys, called Jolie Legal Fellows, have facilitated child protection efforts in Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake and promoted the development of an inclusive democratic process in Libya following the 2011 revolution.

Jolie has fronted a campaign against sexual violence in military conflict zones by the UK government, which made the issue a priority of its 2013 G8 presidency. In May 2012, she launched the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI) with Foreign Secretary William Hague, who was inspired to campaign on the issue by her Bosnian war drama In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011). PSVI was established to complement wider UK government work by raising awareness and promoting international co-operation. Jolie spoke on the subject at the G8 foreign ministers meeting,  where the attending nations adopted a historic declaration, and before the UN security council, which responded by adopting its broadest resolution on the issue to date. In June 2014, she co-chaired the four-day Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, the largest-ever meeting on the subject, attended by 123 nations. It resulted in a protocol endorsed by 151 countries.

In February 2015, Jolie and Hague launched the UK’s first academic Centre on Women, Peace and Security, based at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The Centre aims to contribute to global women’s rights issues, including the prosecution of war rape and women’s engagement in politics, through academic research, a post-graduate teaching program, public engagement, and collaboration with international organizations.

Her commitment is an integral part of her life and is another example of ‘Remarkable Woman’ says Armelle Falliex

 

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This time, Armelle Falliex has created two paintings

First one was the one at the bottom of the article. It was covered with red color to express Jolie’s passion.

But Falliex felt it is not reflecting enough the feeling she had about Angelina Jolie. So, she decided to create another painting which combines better Angelina Jolie commitment and passion

 

 

 

 

That red (on her face) is the anger and the energy she has to deploy when facing horrors she sees in the camps. This red color shows also suffering and violence against which we cannot give up. This is why I wrote “don’t give up” says Armelle Falliex.