It is fitting that the One World Human Rights Film Festival be held in Prague where intellectuals, writers, musicians, artists and filmmakers struggled for years against Soviet oppression, a struggle that culminated with the Velvet Revolution in 1989. The festival is sponsored by People In Need (PIN), a Czech nonprofit, non-governmental organization committed to assisting people in war torn regions and those who work against totalitarianism, through the promotion of human rights, such as democratic freedoms, the support of political prisoners and their families, and the documentation of torture, killings and crimes against humanity. 

PIN’s recognition of people willing to engage with and publicly illuminate human rights issues was apparent at this eight-day festival where the power of film to speak for those unable to speak for themselves, was the theme. Films, made by men and women who willingly put themselves in situations of extreme danger, in the midst of military conflict, natural disaster, racial violence, poverty and illness, in order to bear witness, provide the viewer with an understanding of unbearably painful and violent human injustice and abuse. The films have a startling immediacy showing the viewer an increasingly technologized world where violations to the lives and freedoms of people are commonplace. The human rights film as a genre is a cinematic appeal to empathy, solidarity and human decency that is strongly rooted in common feelings about right and wrong. “The only thing we can do is to remind ourselves again and again that joy, desire, love and sorrow are felt and lived in the same way throughout the world and that there is no alternative,” said Vaclav Havel, the first president of the Czech Republic and now the current Minister of Culture and a sponsor of the festival.  

Igor Blasevic, the festival’s founder, modeled One World on the film festivals sponsored by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. He feels that in a very old-fashioned sense, the subject of these films makes viewers better human beings, helps them to reject injustice and makes them less complacent. “The novelty of the human rights film,” he notes, “is its intent…to promote understanding and awareness, to portray people and facts truthfully and honestly so that both the filmmaker and the viewer have a normative basis upon which to make judgments.”

More than one hundred feature length and short documentaries as well as workshops, debates, concerts and photographic exhibits made up this year’s rich and exciting festival. What follows are some of the highlights. 

One World Human Rights Film Festival held in Prague, Czech Republic, March 2-9, 2006. Poster. Photo courtesy of C. Hermine Muskat 2006.

Sasa Gedeon’s UNISONO, a humorous, five minute look at the state of confusion in the European community, opened the festival. Instructing several ambassadors to sing the Czech Republic’s national anthem, rehearsing alone and then with commingling voices, we are treated to what he describes as a “thundering, blundering” view of people attempting to perform, separately and as one voice, as they try to preserve tradition while knowing that to assure a future, they must cooperate.

The festival’s first feature film, DARWIN’s NIGHTMARE, is Hubert Sauper’s (Austria) evastating look at the effects of globalization, greed and disregard for the livelihood of local Tanzanian farmers surviving along the shores of Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake. The lake’s ecological balance was destroyed by the west Nile perch, a predatory fish let loose in its waters in the 1950s. Now all indigenous fish are gone and most of the villagers are employed by the Nile perch industry. The fish, considered a delicacy in Europe, is harvested, packaged and transported on ex-Soviet cargo planes, and sold for huge profits while the local people have become impoverished and need to forage through leftover, rancid fish carcasses to feed their families. Their children are abandoned and living on the streets. The film raises the possibility that the transport planes are smuggling arms into Tanzania before departing with their Nile perch cargo.

Peter Forgacs’ master classes were a festival highlight. Forgacs, a Hungarian documentarian, began work as an archivist collecting home movies, “found footage,” of amateur filmmakers living in Europe in the 1930’s and 1960s, showing the daily lives of people during the Second World War, the holocaust, the fall of the Berlin wall and the Soviet occupation of Europe – what Forgacs calls “a private history in front of the curtain of the public history.” He believes home movies are truthful records of unique times and, “do not lie.” His films attempt to complete the memories of those no longer able to do this for themselves. Forgacs discussed why private histories are so powerful and why amateur films are a path to authentic memory. He likened film to an intimate conversation where meaning is created between the film and the viewer by reshaping the hidden intention of the (original) filmmaker. One example is DUSI AND JENO, a film diary shot by Jeno in Budapest between 1936 and 1966, which portrays a middle class couple’s daily rituals, against the ominous backdrop of pre- and post World War II Europe.  His footage of forced labor and roundups of Jews is more startling when one realizes it was taken from the window of Jeno’s home. Forgacs says that Jeno “might have been the best cameraman of our age.”

A workshop on the challenges of making human rights films was conducted by six directors of films shown at the festival:  Olivier Zuchuat (Switzerland, DJOUROU, A ROPE ROUND YOUR NECK), Jens Schanze (Germany, WINTER’S CHILDREN-THE SILENT GENERATION), Pelin Esmer (Turkey, PLAY), Tomas Kudrna, (Czech Republic, TROUBLEMAKING GENIUS), Lina Makboul (Sweden, LEILA KHALED HIJACKER) and Aleksandar Manic (Serbia and Montenegro, THE SHUTKA BOOK OF RECORDS).      

The directors discussed how they chose their subjects, artistic freedom, continual lack of funds, and the difficulties of working alone. Jens Schanze, chosen as best director for WINTER’S CHILDREN, spoke of the silence in his family about the holocaust and how he crafted his film around his mother’s haunted memories.

Everyone agreed on questions that confront every filmmaker: can we convey information without manipulating or exploiting our subjects? And, is there a way to know if our work matters?

Films that won major festival awards were: The Vaclav Havel Special Award for the film that made the most significant contribution to human rights awareness was Milena Kaneva’s TOTAL DENIAL, about enforced slave labor in Burma and one person’s courage in filing a lawsuit on the peoples’ behalf against two transnational oil companies, in France and the United States.     

Czech Ministry of Culture Award for Best Film: HERE WE ARE by Jaro Vojtek (Slovakia) Rudolf Vrba Right to Know Award: COCA-THE DOVE FROM CHECHNYA by Eric Bergkraut (Switzerland)

Honorable Mention: OPERATION SPRING by Angelika Schuster & Tristan Sindelgruber (Austria)

Viewers’ Favorite: THE SHUTKA BOOK OF RECORDS by Alexandr Manic (Serbia, Montenegro, Czech Republic, Finland)

Best Short Film: DEAR MUSLIM by Kerstin Nicking (Germany, Poland)

Best Director: Jenz Chanze for WINTER’S CHILDREN.

Honorable Mention:  Miroslav Janek for VIERKA (Czech Republic), Grzegorz

Pacek for GO TO LOUISA (Poland)

Prize for the Creative Use of Music: TOUCH THE SOUND by Thomas

Riedlshemier (Germany)

The Most Relevant 2006 award: Greenpeace’s film of short promos addressing social issues such as domestic violence, environment protection, animal cruelty and testing, bullying and drunk driving.

Selecting which films and events to attend, were the major dilemmas facing this writer at the One World Festival, where the power and immediacy of film to capture the lives and stories of people suffering human rights abuses, people unable to speak for themselves, in places too remote or unknown to ever enter our awareness, were so well and often painfully represented. You can read more about the festival at www.oneworld.cz.

---

Hermine Muskat is a recent graduate of the Center for Digital Imaging Arts (CDIA) in Waltham. She is also a licensed psychologist and is currently working on a documentary film about religion and American politics.