The Human Rights Film Festival 2006 is bringing extraordinary documentaries and dramas to the big screen near you. With a programme that includes the inspirational Australian documentary Breaking Bows and Arrows: Search for Reconciliation and Forgiveness, the frightening no holds barred documentary about California's reproduction dream world Frozen Angels, and the true account of an Indian family who would rather drown than allow the destruction of their land, home and culture in Drowned Out, this year's Human Rights Film Festival promises to both educational and inspirational.
Image: Three choices. Move to the slums in the city, accept a place at a resettlement site or stay at home and drown. Drowned Out at the Human Rights Fest 2006.The Human Rights Film Festival 2006 is bringing extraordinary documentaries and dramas to the big screen near you. With a programme that includes the inspirational Australian documentary Breaking Bows and Arrows: Search for Reconciliation and Forgiveness, the frightening no holds barred documentary about California's reproduction dream world Frozen Angels, and the true account of an Indian family who would rather drown than allow the destruction of their land, home and culture in Drowned Out, this year's Human Rights Film Festival promises to both educational and inspirational.
Image: Three choices. Move to the slums in the city, accept a place at a resettlement site or stay at home and drown. Drowned Out at the Human Rights Fest 2006.2006 World Press Freedom Day is dedicated to the theme "Media and Good Governance", and as a tribute to those journalists who have lost their lives The Human Rights Film Festival is proud to present Miguel, ne terren (Miguel, on the spot) a moving portrait of a brave and principled war reporter.
Throughout the Festival a host of thought-provoking and inspiring documentaries, features, animations and shorts display for New Zealand audiences the dignity, courage and humour of ordinary people in extraordinary situations - fighting to protect their communities, families and environment The films in our festival tell stories which touch lives, and we are delighted to be bringing them to New Zealand audiences" festival co-director Carol Nelson says.
"Our festival joins well-established human rights film events throughout Europe and the USA including London, New York, and Paris."
"These films bypass the usual stereotypes - they are fresh, raw and real," says co-director Boris van Beusekom. "We're seeing a global explosion in documentary film making as people take advantage of exciting advances in camera and editing technology and are now able to document human rights abuses and victories in their own back yard."
The festival is the initiative of the Human Rights Network of Aotearoa New Zealand, an independent, non-partisan, non-government organisation formed in 2000.
"Knowing what is happening around the world is the first step towards protecting human rights both here and abroad," Carol Nelson says.
"We want these sessions to open up dialogue on human rights issues, to show their relevance to our lives here in New Zealand, and to give people the opportunity to take that interest further if they wish to do so."
www.humanrightsfilmfest.net.nz
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Miguel, ne terren Miguel, on the spot
"I feel like a papparazi - ..I feel I am fulfilling a need the Western world has - - they need pain for some reason and I'm not a psychiatrist and I don't know why that is but I know we play a role in the business and we are actually delivering a product".
These are the conflicted words of Miguel Gil, who in 1993 left his comfortable life as a solicitor in Spain to become a war correspondent. He was gunned down by rebels on his return to Sierra Leone in May, 2000. He is said to have foretold his own death.
Miguel, ne terren (Miguel, on the spot) is a moving portrait of a brave and principled war reporter told candidly and with warmth by colleagues and friends who served alongside him. Directors Eric Miro and Lluis Jene ally these testimonies to the arresting, emotionally charged images Gil captured while covering bloody conflicts in Kosovo, Chechnya, Bosnia, Zaire, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan.
The documentary shows a morally centered man who is torn over his position as disseminator of news, a role he continually reevaluates. A picture emerges of a man who built genuine trust and rapport with his subjects who was motivated by a sense of justice as he attempted to give a voice to the many victims of the savage, misrepresented and often overlooked wars that raged around the world throughout the violent decade that closed the millennium.
The film is an indictment of the Western media. Miguel, ne terren incisively questions the ethics of wartime reporting. One correspondent describes modern journalism as a form of virtual reality in this case accusing NATO of distorting information about the war in Kosovo - a war he says was packaged as though it were a video game. A technique he says dehumanized and muddied understanding of the conflict.
Miguel Gil's footage of thousands of dispossessed victims of the war in Kosovo being herded onto a train realigned perceptions of that war with the sad and brutal reality of what was actually happening on the ground. In doing so he refocused the world on the moral necessity of liberating the people he was videotaping.
He touched the lives of thousands of people with fearless integrity and a seemingly innate need to expose the truth hidden by layers of fiction, fictions which all too often typify ethically destitute war reporting. Miguel Gil's story reminds us that great journalism can change the world.
"He didn't seem to lose his sense of humanity like the rest of us"
The Festival is an initiative of the Human Rights Network of Aotearoa New Zealand, an independent, non partisan, non-governmental organisation formed in 2000.