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 nation’s 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 woman’s 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.

 

 

Program Ten

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