Posts Tagged ‘film festival’

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Defamation campaign and threats against human rights defender Tolekan Ismailova

October 26, 2012

On 14 October 2012, TV channel LTR broadcast a program in which human rights defender Ms Tolekan Ismailova was depicted as spreading propaganda for homosexuality in Kyrgyzstan and being destructive to Kyrgyz values. Similar accusations were published in several Kyrgyz-language newspapers. Ms Tolekan Ismailova is the director of Human Rights Centre ‘Citizens Against Corruption’. These accusations refer to the documentary ‘I Am Gay and Muslim’, which was part of the human rights film festival Bir Duyno – Kyrgyzstan (One World  Kyrgyzstan), organised annually in Bishkek. The documentary was scheduled to be shown on 28 September 2012 in Bishkek. The film explores the problematic issue of gay rights in the Islamic world, taking the example of Moroccan young men who speak about their sexual and religious identity.

On 26 September 2012, the organisers of the festival had received phone calls and text messages threatening them with physical harm while the director of the cinema was threatened that the building would be set on fire unless the film’s screening was cancelled. Dublin-based Front Line Defenders condemns the smear campaign and threats against Ms Tolekan Ismailova and the other organisers of the human rights festival, and is concerned for their physical and psychological integrity and security.

For actions see: https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/node/20249/action


This information was received through the International Secretariat of Women Human Rights Defenders International Coalition. 

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Human Rights Watch film festival started in New York

June 19, 2012

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‘Words of Witness’

The 2012 Human Rights Watch Film Festival (HRWFF) opened on June 14, and runs for two weeks at New York City’s Walter Reade Theater, screening 16 films set in 14 countries. Among the strong slate of documentary features are Alison Klayman’s Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (IFC Films), about the eponymous Chinese dissident and conceptual artist, and Katherine Fairfax Wright and Malika Zouhali-Worrall’s Call Me Kuchu, a portrait of Ugandan LGBT activist David Kato, who was murdered in 2011.

Women and girls take center stage in several documentaries, among them David Fine’s Salaam Dunk, a delightful season spent with the first women’s college basketball team in Iraq, and Little Heaven, about a young woman in an Ethiopian orphanage for children with AIDS. In Mai Iskander’s Words of Witness, we meet a female journalist on her first assignment in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

Narrative features include Maggie Peren’s Color of the Ocean, a moving story of a German tourist unable to turn away from illegal immigrants she encounters on the beach, and Kim Nguyen’s War Witch (Tribeca Films), which chronicles the life of a female child soldier in the Congo. The latter screened at HRWFF’s opening-night benefit. Susan Youssef’s Habibi, a love story set in Palestine, made its New York premiere the first weekend of the festival.

HRWFF has been showcasing the work of human-rights filmmakers for 23 years, each year awarding one the Nestor Almendros Prize, named for the late filmmaker-cinematographer who was a festival founder. The winning documentary at HRWFF 2012 is Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick’s The Invisible War, an emotionally charged look at rape in the U.S. military. The United States is also the focus of Matthew Heineman and Susan Froemke’s Escape Fire (Roadside Attractions), in which doctors, insurance executives and patients discuss the failures of our healthcare system.

While HRWFF often features advocacy documentaries, this year it screens several documentary films that are distinguished by their investigative approach and objectivity, compelling viewers to assess their shared responsibility for safeguarding human rights. See the full article below by Maria Garcia below for interviews with five of these filmmaker-journalists

Cinema for change: Human Rights Watch Fest sheds light on injustices.

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Iraq to hold first human rights film festival

February 15, 2012
Gulfnews reports that Iraq’s first human rights film festival, Baghdad Eye, will be launched on February 25.  The films selected for the inaugural festival are documentaries and feature films, addressing human rights issues in three major areas: violence and discrimination against women, children’s rights and freedom of thought and expression. Screenings will be followed by discussions involving academics, researchers and people specialising in Iraq ‘s human-rights issues. Organisers hope it will help Iraqis understand and claim their rights. Some of festival events will be taken to the cities of Basra, Najaf and Salahuddin. Baghdad Eye was launched with the support from the Czech non-government organisation, People In Need, as well as the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The Iraqi Association for the Support of Culture, an independent, non-profit organisation that supports cultural activity and production in the country, was founded in 2005 by a group of Iraqi intellectuals, including the late artists Mohammad Ghani Hikmet and Muayid Ni’meh. The Independent Film & Television College was founded in 2004 by Iraqi filmmakers Kasim Abid and Maysoon Pachachi, as a free-of-charge TV and film training and development centre that supports students, provides them with equipment to make their own films and informs them of training courses inside the country and abroad. source: http://gulfnews.com/news/region/iraq/iraq-to-hold-first-human-rights-film-festival-1.981075

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