Human
Rights Watch
International Traveling
Film Festival
co-presented
by
Soros Documentary Fund
The
Human Rights Watch International Film Festivals in New York and London are the
world=s leading showcase for distinguished drama, documentary, and animated
films that incorporate human rights themes. Each year highlights from these
festivals are presented in our Traveling Film Festival. The Traveling Festival
presents works that give a human face to and provide the personal histories
behind the widespread threats to political and individual freedom - drawing on
the power of film to communicate across borders, both physical and ideological.
This
year the Traveling Festival is proud to feature a selection of award-winning
films that received significant support from the Soros Documentary Fund (SDF).
SDF is a program of the Open Society Institute New York that supports the
production and distribution of documentary films and videos which seek to raise
public consciousness about human rights abuses and restrictions of civil
liberties, to give voice to diverse speech - which is crucial to an open
society - and to engage citizens in debate about these issues. Titles marked with an asterisk indicate
selections from SDF.
If you are interested in presenting the Human Rights Watch
International Traveling Film Festival, please review the following pages which
outline our 1999/2000 program.
For more information on our festivals, please visit our International
Archive at http://www.hrw.org/iff
Program One
Secret People*
John Anderson & Laura Harrison, USA, 1998; 58 min (16mm or video, doc)
Imagine being brought in handcuffs and placed behind barbed wire for
the rest of your life, stripped of your constitutional rights, forgotten by family
and friends ... all because of an illness. ASecret People@ recounts the shocking
past and present of leprosy in America. It explores the incessant damage of a
powerful stigma that destroyed the lives of many in our nations only remaining
leprosarium, but mobilized others to accomplish the remarkable act of transforming
their prison into a home.
with
Within Four Walls*
Zemira Alajbegovic, Slovenia, 1998; 34 min (video, doc)
AWithin Four Walls@ explores the lives of women who have
escaped from violence in their own families and sought help in local
shelters in Slovenia. They speak of abuse, violence, rape, and isolation.
Through interviews with these victims of violence, with those who seek
to help them, and with those who study this epidemic of violence, Zemira
Alajbegovic paints a picture of hope for women who have come from the
depths of despair.
Program Two
American Gypsy*
Jasmine Dellal, USA, 1998; 85 min (video, doc)
There are one million Gypsies, or Rom, in America, who most people
know nothing about. "AMERICAN GYPSY: A STRANGER IN
EVERYBODY'S LAND" is a feature length documentary which, for the
first time, takes a camera in to explore this secretive Romani world
and the history it came from. "AMERICAN GYPSY", shot over the course
of five years, takes a narrative approach by focussing on the story of Jimmy Marks,
a flamboyant man in the American Northwest who becomes passionately
obsessed with a decade‑long civil rights battle to defend his family
and his culture.This is a journey into an American immigrant world that is either on
the verge of extinction or at a critical turning point for survival. It is a
world that most of us have never had the chance to visit as this is the first time
it is being presented on screen.
Program Three
Photographer*
Dariusz Jablonski, Poland, 1998; 56 min (35mm or video, doc)
In 1987, in a Viennese Antique shop, about four hundred color slides were found
in mint condition. As it turned out, they had been taken in the Lodz Ghetto by Walter
Genwein, the Ghetto=s Austrian chief accountant. So consumed by recording his job=s
achievements, Genewein never realized he was creating one of the most vivid pictorial
documents to the >final solution=. Genewein meticulously monitored the color and hue
of his pictures (as to better reflect his achievements), yet never, not even once,
did he notice the human faces and suffering of his subjects.
with
House of the World*
Esther Podemski, USA, 1998; 53 min (16mm or video, doc)
A film about the journey of memory, the powerful longings that link generations,
and one American womans long overdue appointment with the dead. Tracing the
history of an old family photograph, the filmmaker travels to Poland with a group
of her parents= contemporaries. Holocaust survivors, these elders are returning to
conduct a memorial service in the Jewish graveyard in their hometown, Poddebice.
But all that is left of the graveyard after the wartime desecration is a lone marker.
As the filmmaker and her camera travel from this destroyed graveyard, through the
town of Poddebice and on to the nearby city of Lodz, we meet
Layb Prazkier who
serves as custodian of the immense, crumbling Jewish cemetery of Lodz. Here we
discover that Poland herself is all but cleansed of Jews.
Program Four
Super Chief*
Nick Kurzon, USA, 1998; 75 min (video, doc)
In the opening sequence of Nick Kurzon's SUPER CHIEF, a van mounted
"Bingo" sign darts ominously back and forth across a parking lot, evoking
a shark plying the murky waters in search of its prey; a fitting beginning for
this rousing, spirited and illuminating documentary that chronicles an
Ojibwa tribal election at the White Earth Indian Reservation in western
Minnesota. Invited by his friend Erma, a tribal activist, Kurzon focuses his
camera on the drama surrounding the tribe's upcoming election for tribal
chairman, a position long held by Darrell "Chip" Wadena, the self
proclaimed "Super Chief", better known to his constituency as "Super
Thief". With a cast of characters that Hollywood could hardly dream up,
the Capraesque story is less an expose of insider politics than a life‑affirming
character study
where democracy prevails.
Program Five
Crime and Punishment
Maria Fuglevaag Warsinski, Norway, 1998; 75 min (video, doc)
Nanjing, Mai Lai, Srebrenica.
History sadly repeats itself. While the International Criminal Court in
the Hague proceeds at its own pace, filmmaker Maria Warsinski takes
action, presenting a searing, moving visual indictment of Radovan
Karadjic and General Radko Mladic, orchestrators of the destruction of
Srebrenica, the sight of the worst civilian massacre in Europe since WW
II. Utilizing clandestine, startling footage of the town's final days,
Warsinski unflinchingly documents Western guilt and the UN's final,
bloody capitulation. Powerful interviews detailing the disparate views
of combatants on both sides are woven together with vivid descriptions
of the impossible journeys faced by the few civilians who made it out
alive.
Program Six
The Terrorist
Santosh Sivan, India,1998; 95 min (35mm or video, drama)
Seducing the eye with luminous, textural cinematography, THE TERRORIST
has been hailed as one of the most beautiful films to come out of India
in years. Set in present‑day India, against the backdrop of a
mysterious revolutionary movement, the film focuses on Malli, a woman
who has lost her entire family to this all‑engulfing cause. Devastated
and alone, she drowns herself in the rebellion, accepting the ultimate
assignment: a suicide‑assassination of a local politician. In the final
days before the mission Malli rediscovers love, but is it in time? The
clock ticks down to the final seconds and she alone must choose her fate.
Program Seven
Regret to Inform
Barbara Sonneborn, USA, 1998; 72 min (35mm or video, doc)
! 35mm print available ONLY to the first five requesting sites !
Nine years in the making, and nominated for a 1998 Academy
Award, Regret
to Inform is filmmaking and storytelling at its finest. Filmmaker
Barbara Sonneborn, a Vietnam War widow, takes us to a Vietnam we have
never known. As she boards a train in Hanoi, traveling through the lush
countryside to the physical site of her husband's death in the small
farming town of Que Sanh, Ms. Sonneborn presents an unforgettable group
of war widows, from both North and South Vietnam and the U.S. From the
Vietnamese women, whose culture seeks to bury personal suffering, to the
U.S. women whose culture has collectively buried this tragedy, the
filmmaker manages to connect with all on the most intimate level,
drawing out in singular interviews a haunting and decisive clarity that
illuminates the soul of emotion, memory and loss.
Program Eight
South (ASud@)*
Chantal Akerman, France, 1999; 78 min (video, doc)
Originally conceived as a meditation on the American South and inspired
by her love of William Faulkner and James Baldwin, ASud@ was transformed
by a racist crime that occurred days before her arrival. James Byrd, Jr., a black
family man, was severely beaten by three white men, then chained to their truck
and dragged three miles through predominately black parts of the county. ASud@
investigates this brutal slaying and examines its impact on the community.
Program Nine
Forgotten Fires*
Michael Chandler, USA, 1997; 57 min (16 mm or video, doc)
Forgotten Fires investigates the burning of two black churches near Manning, South Carolina,
by a young convert to the Ku Klux Klan. Frank interviews with the victims, the perpetrators,
their families, and people who live in the community transform a simple black and white news
item into a complex account of racism, poverty, denial, repentance, and forgiveness. Proclaiming
that black churches taught their congregations how to manipulate the welfare system and procure
government subsidies, the Klan set up shop in 1994 in field near Macedonia Baptist Church. Its
members were forced to listen to the Klan's message of hate as it blared through the church windows.
One of the young white men listening outside, a friend and neighbor of Macedonia parishioners,
helped burn the church.
with
School Prayer : A Community at War*
Slawomir Grunberg & Ben Crane, USA, 1998; 57 min (video, doc)
ASchool prayer is as much a part of us as baseball, apple pie and mama,@
says one resident of Potontoc County in Mississippi. So when newly
arrived Lisa Herdahl set out to challenge this policy on grounds of
religious freedom the whole community turned against her. This searing
tale of religious passion and intolerance in a small southern town
explores the fabric that holds a community together, exposing the gap
between what is deemed acceptable by the community (even when under the
law school prayer is unconstitutional), and individuals who question the
community's practices.
Odds Against Tomorrow
Robert Wise, USA, 1959; 96 min (35mm ONLY, drama)
! Only available on 35 mm film !
Slater (Robert Ryan) is a hard‑bitten, racist ex‑con given to impulsive
acts of violence and fits of depression and self‑doubt. Less criminal
than the rest of his gang, Ingram (Belafonte) still exudes moral
ambiguity. The organizer of the robbery, Burke (Ed Begley) is an ex‑cop,
ruined when he refused to cooperate with State Crime Investigators (a
pointed reference to the Blacklist). Broke, bitter and disaffected, the
trio band together for the purpose of pulling off a bank heist, but
their resolve is threatened by uncontrollable racial tension.
* Titles marked with an asterisk indicate selections from Soros Documentary Fund.
If you are interested in licensing the package, it includes :
· 1/2" VHS previewing cassettes of all titles
· a selection of black and white photographs for publicity purposes
· promotional literature
· the festival logo
· descriptive materials
· and a presentation guide with specific suggestions and ideas for each title
The programs are available in a choice of formats :
35mm film, 16mm film, 3/4" Umatic video, or 1/2" VHS video.
** PLEASE NOTE THAT CERTAIN TITLES ARE ONLY
AVAILABLE IN CERTAIN FORMATS **
The full package of ten programs can be rented for $2000, or
a half package of five programs can be rented for $1000,
plus the cost of one way shipping. The package can be rented
for a weekend marathon or for up to a semester (sixteen weeks)
anytime between November 1999 and May 2000.
For further information, please contact :
Andrea Holley, Human Rights Watch International Film Festival,
350 Fifth Avenue, 34th Floor, New York, New York 10118
tel:(212)216-1263 fax:(212)736-1300 email: fil_in3@hrw.org
drawing
on the power of film to communicate across borders
HRWIFF
Human Rights Watch International
Film Festival
350 Fifth Avenue, 34th Floor
New York, NY 10118-3299