Rwandan refugees stand in lines at the Musange Transit Camp outside Butare, Rwanda, after being transported by UN trucks across the border from camps in northern Burundi. As many as 8,000 refugees were repatriated from Burundi. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
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Film Festivals Give Voice to The Invisible
By Alyssa Pankalla
The list of ongoing conflicts – whether in Sierra Leone, Burundi, Rwanda, Yemen, Israel, or China – is both long and very real. Yet, to many in the US they also seem very distant. The occasional media headline, without accompanying context, about these conflict areas do little to create a sense of urgency to invoke change. To counter this, two Human Rights Film Festivals, one hosted by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) and the other by the Human Rights Watch Organization (HRW), are using documentary and feature films as a way to foster a world community that is knowledgeable and educated on the happenings throughout the world.
Indigenous descendants of the Aymara ethnic group dance on the outskirts of La Paz, Bolivia during the last day of Carnival. (AP Photo/Dado Galdieri)
Traveling the World to Dance for Peace
By Vanessa Hooper
Seattle resident Matt Harding believes that education and the breakdown of barriers is what is most needed in achieving peace. So, he traveled the world to dance! Doing his signature dance in 42 countries over 14 months, he invited anyone and everyone to join him in his jig. His short films hit it big on YouTube and the company Stride offered a sponsorship, making traveling much easier. In each country Matt spends time with locals and getting to know the culture. By sharing video tidbits of his travels, he doesn’t really expect to achieve world peace … just to send the message that we all have at least one thing in common: dancing.
According to a New York Times article by Stuart Klawans, past films have included documentaries like ‘Manufactured Landscapes’ that “incorporates…close-ups of people [who] in photographs would be antlike or absent.” This theme correlates precisely with the Human Rights Watch website which states, “…we give voice to the oppressed and hold oppressors accountable for their crimes…Human Rights Watch has worked tenaciously to lay the legal and moral groundwork for deep-rooted change and has fought to bring greater justice and security to people around the world.”
The Human Rights International Film Festivals use the arts and media as a way to bring voice to many who have been silenced. The documentaries address what is really going on and have the ability to sift through the sanitized corporate media that dominates air waves and to reach people in meaningful ways. The use of documentaries gives audiences a multifaceted perspective on each unique conflict versus the typical ‘ethnic warfare’ frame favored by mainstream media. This is very much in line with a key goal of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) decade long Culture of Peace Initiative: to give voice to many instead of just one. The focus of UNESCO and the Initiative as stated on their website is to “[help] Member States to build their human and institutional capacities in diverse fields,” as well as “create conditions for genuine dialogue based upon respect for shared values and the dignity of each civilization and culture.”
Through the combined efforts of photographers, filmmakers, journalists, and organizations such as UNESCO and the Human Rights Film Festival, the true – and often overlooked – stories surrounding these conflicts can be heard and, perhaps, make a positive difference by bringing security and justice to oppressed citizens. In this role the media, instead of being used a weapon to spark conflict, can be used a tool to bring social equality and peace to individuals and their respective countries.