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Mikael Wiström - Perú/Sweden - 2004 -90m - doc
Available on Beta SP and DVD In Spanish with English subtitles
In 1974, the Swedish photographer and journalist Mikael Wiström traveled across Perú chronicling the lives of people who literally had nothing and were forced to live off what they could find in rubbish dumps. There, Wiström met Daniel Barrientos, a young man stricken with polio. Daniel asks Mikael what a man his age is doing with such an expensive camera. From that moment, a complicated friendship, lasting over 30 years, develops between these two men. Following Wiström’s 1991 documentary The Other Shore, which chronicled Daniel’s family’s continual struggle to create a decent life for themselves, Wiström returns once more to Perú in 2003 in hopes of coming to terms with both his responsibility and Daniel’s plight. In Compadre, Wiström documents the daily life of Daniel’s family and also involves the viewer in the great dilemma of the Western filmmaker being confronted with dire poverty, an existential inequality that puts great pressure on the friendship. Wiström may call Daniel his brother, but how far does his “fraternal” responsibility extend?
Filmmaker Mikael Wistrom mikael.wistrom@chello.se
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Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt - USA - 2005 - 76m - doc
Available on Beta SP and DVD In English
The national debate over federally funded “abstinence-only” sex education programs plays out in full force in The Education of Shelby Knox. Fifteen-year-old Shelby Knox of Lubbock, Texas is a self-described “good Southern Baptist girl,” who herself has pledged abstinence until marriage. When she finds that Lubbock has some of the highest rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases in the nation, and her county’s high schools teach abstinence as the only safe sex, she becomes an unlikely advocate for comprehensive sex education, profoundly changing her political and spiritual views along the way. “I think that God wants you to question,” Shelby says, “to do more than just blindly be a follower, because he can’t use blind followers. He can use people like me who realize there’s more in the world that can be done.” Here is a story for our times, where the combustible mix of politics, family, and faith are not as predictable as the red state/blue state divide would suggest.
Film’s website http://www.incite-pictures.com/Shelby_Knox.html
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Maria Ramos - The Netherlands - 2004 - 100m - doc
Available on Beta SP and DVD In Portuguese with English subtitles
How and for whom does the judicial system work in Brazil? Without attempting to provide definite answers, Maria Ramos takes her camera to a place where many Brazilians have never been: a criminal courtroom in Rio de Janeiro. She observes the daily routine of several individuals, people on both sides: those who work there every day (public attorneys, judges, prosecutors), and those who are merely passing through (the accused). Strongly reminiscent of the work of Frederick Wiseman, the camera is used as an instrument to see the social theater and the structures of power—things generally invisible to us. The corridors of the Courts of Justice, the design and layout of the courtroom, the discourse, the codes, postures—all the little visual details and sounds become relevant. The filmmaker does not interpret what she films: she gives us no interviews or narration; the camera simply records what goes on in front of it. The film cuts between scenes of hearings and images shot outside the closed world (in the detention centre, at some of the characters’ homes), linking the courtroom with the society of which it is part and showing its impact on people’s lives.
First Run/Icarus Films http://www.frif.com
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Sean McAllister - U.K. - 2004 - 75m - doc
Available on Beta SP and DVD In English and Arabic with English subtitles
Held up in a heavily fortified Baghdad hotel pianist Samir Peter and filmmaker Sean McAllister try to survive the “peace” of post-war Iraq. Samir Peter, once Iraq’s most famous pianist, now plays in a half-empty hotel bar to contractors, mercenaries, and besieged journalists. In his heyday he described himself as the “Liberace of Baghdad,” but today he sleeps in a hotel room with bricked-up windows, too afraid to cross town to his seven-bedroom mansion. His string of western girlfriends has led his wife and two of his children to leave for the United States. Now Samir has a visa to live in America too, to find fame and fortune in what he calls his “one last adventure in life.” But Sahar, his pro-Saddam daughter who remained in Iraq, hates America for what it has done to her country. She refuses to go and Samir prepares to leave alone. Over eight months of filming the violence escalates, kidnapping is rife, and Samir’s neighbor is murdered on her doorstep. Will Samir now sacrifice his American dream for the sake of his family left in lawless Iraq?
Filmmaker’s website http://www.seanmcallister.com
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Duco Tellegen - Japan/Kenya/Belarus - 2004 - 83m - doc
Available on Beta SP and DVD
In Japanese, Maasai and Russian with English Subtitles
Filmmaker Duco Tellegen (whose Behind Closed Eyes featured in the 2002 HRWIFF) has made a career of exploring the rich psychological terrain of children and young adults in critical moments of change. In Living Rights, his emotionally powerful and visually striking new film, Tellegen explores dilemmas facing three young people on three different continents. His remarkable ability to relate to these youths is evident as their lives unfold before our eyes.
YOSHI tells the story of sixteen-year-old Yoshinori who has Asperger’s Syndrome—a form of autism exposed in Mark Haddon’s extraordinary novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Yoshi’s dream is to attend a regular Japanese high school. With humor, wit, and creativity Yoshi makes a strong case for all of us to believe he should.
TOTI is a Maasai girl of fourteen. When she was eleven, her mother told her that she would be married off. The cattle her family would receive from her marriage were badly needed for the family to survive. Toti decided to run away, so her twin sister was married off in her place. Three years later, Toti tries to reconnect with her sister and family.
Eleven-year-old LENA lives with her foster mother Galah in a village near the nuclear reactor of Chernobyl. Lena’s biological mother lives in Minsk, where radioactivity readings are much lower. She is unable to take care of Lena who is exhibiting health problems, and hopes Lena will choose to go live with an Italian family that has offered to adopt her. Pulling Lena the other way is Galah, who hopes Lena will choose to stay with her.
Filmmaker's website http://www.dovanafilms.nl
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David Redmon - USA - 2004 - 72m - doc
Available on Beta SP and DVD
In English, Cantonese, Fujianese and Mandarin with English subtitles
Mardi Gras: Made in China tracks the “bead trail” from the factory in China to Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras, poignantly exposing the inequities of globalization. Filmmaker Redmon gained unprecedented access to follow the stories of four young Chinese women working and living in the largest Mardi Gras bead factory in the world, located in Fuzhou, China. We witness their economic realities, self-sacrifice, and dreams of a better life. Redmon inter-cuts these stories with strikingly candid interviews with the factory manager and the US businessman (who owns the factory) who offer their own visions on why globalization is a success. Brilliantly interweaving factory life with Mardi Gras festivities, the film opens the blind eye of consumerism by visually introducing workers and festivalgoers to each other. A dialogue results when bead-wearing partyers are shown images of the Chinese workers and asked if they know the origin of their beads, while the factory women view pictures of Americans exchanging beads, soliciting more beads, and celebrating.
Film’s website http://www.mardigrasmadeinchina.com
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Helene Klodawsky - Canada - 2004 - 79m - video - doc
Available on Beta SP and DVD In English
A story of love, revolution, and betrayal, No More Tears Sister explores the price of truth in times of war. Set during the violent ethnic conflict that has enveloped Sri Lanka over decades, the film beautifully renders the courageous and vibrant life of renowned human rights activist Dr. Rajani Thiranagama. Wartime mother, university professor, wife, activist, and symbol of hope, Rajani was assassinated at the young age of thirty-five in 1989. Fifteen years after Rajani’s death, her older sister Nirmala, a former Tamil militant and political prisoner, journeys back to Sri Lanka. She has decided to break her long silence about Rajani’s passionate life and her brutal slaying. Joining her are Rajani’s husband, sisters, and grown daughters, as well as fellow activists forced underground. Superbly filmed, using rare archival footage and intimate correspondence, the story of Rajani and her family delves into rarely explored themes—revolutionary women and their dangerous pursuit of justice.
Distributor’s website http://www.nfb.ca/nomoretearssister
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Garrett Scott and Ian Olds - USA - 2005 - 78m - doc
Available on Beta SP and DVD
In English and Arabic with English subtitles
Occupation: Dreamland offers a rare and intimate window into the daily life of one group of US soldiers stationed in Iraq to “keep peace” less than one year after President Bush announced mission accomplished. The film follows one squad in the US Army’s 82nd Airborne deployed in the doomed Iraqi city of Falluja during the winter of 2004. Featuring a series of remarkably candid interviews with the squad’s soldiers who detail their sometimes shocking daily life and the creep of disillusionment with their mission, Occupation: Dreamland brings a first hand view of the moral and operational complexities inherent in American warfare in the 21st century. As low-intensity conflict proliferates, distrust between the Iraqi civilians in Falluja and the US soldiers stationed there increase leading to greater confusion and skepticism on all sides. The film presents a fascinating look at the last days before a final series of assaults in the spring of 2004 effectively destroyed Falluja.
Film's website http://occupationdreamland.com/
Distributor's website http://www.rumur.com/
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Saverio Costanzo - Italy - 2004 - 94m - drama
Available on Beta SP and DVD
In English and in Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles
Winner of the Golden Leopard for Best Film and Silver Leopard for Best Actor for Mohammad Bakri (Locarno Film Festival 2004), filmmaker Saverio Costanzo’s Private approaches the Israeli Palestinian conflict through the eyes of one Palestinian household - a well-educated, middle-class family who own a luxury car and a spacious home in the countryside. The family members are totally divided about what they should or should not do. Understandably worried about the safety of her sons and daughters, mother Samia wants to leave. Her husband, Mohammed, feels quite differently, insisting that they stay in their house and deal with the situation as it develops. Soon, their domestic arguments give way to a harsher reality when a group of Israeli soldiers enters the home unannounced and occupies it as an observation post, effectively turning the family into prisoners. They divide the house into three areas: one for the Israelis, one for the Palestinian family, and a common space to be shared. Humiliated at being rendered powerless in their own home, the elder teenage children, Yousef and Miriam, start to vent their anger at their parents and take matters into their own hands.
Distributor’s website http://www.arabfilm.com
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Margaret Loescher - U.K. - 2004 - 63m - doc
Available on Beta SP and DVD In English
In August 2003, Gil Loescher went to Baghdad on a humanitarian research trip. He and his colleagues were in a meeting with the head of the United Nations in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, when a truck full of explosives was driven into the side of the building. Gil was the only survivor from the most devastated section of the building. All of the other people in the meeting died. Through poignantly honest narration, and observational scenes of high emotion, his daughter records the family’s recovery during the months after the bombing. Filming becomes her way of dealing with the suddenness of the family’s changed reality, and a way of re-visiting the haunting images of the bomb site—a place of both horror and hope.
Film’s website http://www.pulledfromtherubble.com
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Pamela Yates, Paco de Onís and Peter Kinoy - USA/Perú - 2005 - 94m - doc
Available on Beta SP and DVD
In English and Spanish with English subtitiles
How can an open society balance demands for security with democracy? State of Fear dramatizes the human and societal costs a democracy faces when it embarks on a “war” against terror, a “war” potentially without end, all too easily exploited by unscrupulous leaders seeking personal political gain. The film follows events in Perú, yet it serves as a cautionary tale for a nation like the United States. Filmmakers Pamela Yates, Paco de Onís and Peter Kinoy masterfully blend personal testimony, history, and archival footage to tell the story of escalating violence in the Andean nation and how the fear of terror undermined democracy, making Perú a virtual dictatorship where official corruption replaced the rule of law. Terrorist attacks by Shining Path insurgents provoked a military occupation of the countryside. Military justice replaced civil authority. Widespread abuses by the Peruvian Army went unpunished. Terrorism continued to spread. Nearly 70,000 civilians eventually died at the hands of Shining Path and the Peruvian military.
Filmmaker’s website http://www.skylightpictures.com
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Marshall Curry - USA - 2005 - 83m - doc
Available on Beta SP and DVD In English
Called "the best American political documentary since 1993's The War Room" by the Washington Post, Street Fight tells a riveting story about the underbelly of American democracy. It chronicles the bare-knuckles race for Mayor of Newark, N.J. between Cory Booker, a 32-year-old Rhodes Scholar/Yale Law School grad, and Sharpe James, the four-term incumbent and undisputed champion of New Jersey politics.
Fought in Newark's neighborhoods and housing projects, the battle pits Booker against an old style political machine that uses any means necessary to crush its opponents: city workers who do not support the mayor are demoted; "disloyal" businesses are targeted by code enforcement; a campaigner is detained and accused of terrorism; and disks of voter data are burglarized in the night.
Even the filmmaker is dragged into the slugfest, and by election day, the climate becomes so heated that the Federal government is forced to send in observers to watch for cheating and violence.
The battle sheds light on important American questions about democracy, power and -- in a surprising twist -- race. Both Booker and James are African-American Democrats, but when the mayor accuses the Ivy League educated Booker of not being "really black" it forces voters to examine both how we define race in this country. "We tell our children to get educated," one Newarker says, "and when they do, we call them white. What kind of a message does that send?"
Street Fight presents a rarely-seen look at a kind of electioneering that is not about spin doctors, media consultants, or photo ops. In Newark, we discover, elections are won and lost in the streets.
Street Fight is the winner of the Audience Award at Tribeca Film Festival, SilverDocs Festival (Washington DC) and Hot Docs Festival (Toronto), and was given the Jury Prize for Best International Documentary at Hot Docs.
Filmmaker’s website http://www.marshallcurryproductions.com
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Katarina Rejger and Eric van den Broek - Bosnia and Herzegovina/Slovenia/Macedonia/Croatia/Serbia and Montenegro (including Kosovo) - 2004/2005 - 75m - doc
Available on Beta SP and DVD
In Albanian, Bosnian, Croatian, Macedonian, Serbian and Slovenian with English subtitles
With strong vision and intense dedication, filmmakers Rejger and van den Broek (The Making of a Revolution) present Videoletters, a truly groundbreaking and emotionally uplifting series of twenty short documentary films—a selection of which will be featured in this year’s festival in two independent programs (‘group 1’ and ‘group 2’). Videoletters is remarkable for many reasons, not least because it exemplifies the power of change inherent in the documentary form; the very making of the films fostered reconciliation between estranged individuals of the war-scarred former Yugoslavia. After the war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and drove millions from hearths and homes, the country crumbled into five separate republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro.
In Videoletters, which was shot over the past five years frequently in tough and often dangerous conditions, the filmmakers act as initiators, mailmen, and recorders of a dispersed population who hardly have contact beyond the borders. In each episode, two people of different nationalities send each other a video letter, explaining how this could have happened. In each case, they were friends, neighbors, or colleagues before the war drove them apart.
“We are still friends, none of you are guilty, we don’t blame all Serbs,” a Croatian man says on the screen; on the couch a Serb family is in tears as they watch the video letter of their friend whom they have not seen since the 1990s, when war drove the two families apart. People express their anger and sadness. They try to put rumors and false information behind them. They admit guilt. This stunning series of films literally reaches across the emotional and physical divide to open up a new path for the future. After exchanging the video letters, the participants usually arrange a meeting, the first since the war erupted.
And, in a true testament to the power of the series and commitment of the filmmakers, they have managed the remarkable feat of convincing every public television station in the former Yugoslavia to broadcast at least ten of the video letters. This is the first time the stations have agreed to work together on joint programming since before the war. The series began these broadcasts on April 7, 2005, ten years after the Dayton peace agreements that ended the 1992-95 war in Bosnia were signed. *Winner of the 2005 HRWIFF Nestor Almendros Prize.
Film's website http://www.videoletters.net
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In addition to this year's officially booked Traveling Festival titles, we recommend the following films that can be contacted independently using the links below and/or the emails on our site. They are:
If you have questions about these titles or would like further information on them, please contact Andrea Holley at holleya@hrw.org.
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Also in addition to this year's Traveling Festival films, we are offering a downloadable photo exhibit. Full details, image files and instructions are available at http://hrw.org/iff/2005/traveling/openwound/index.htm.
December 2004 marked a decade since Russia launched war in Chechnya. Ten years on and two conflicts later, the international community‘s policy of disengagement has not worked. Tens of thousands of civilians are dead and hundreds of thousands are displaced yet the international community continues to look the other way. Since the U.S.-led war on terror began after September 11, 2001, international concern for human rights abuses in Chechnya has virtually disappeared while the Russian government‘s brutal campaign against civilians continues. The muting of this concern has not been lost on the Kremlin, which has used the “war on terrorism” to justify its actions in Chechnya.
Over the last ten years, Stanley Greene made some twenty trips to Chechnya as a photographer and he has come back as a witness to the death and destruction that took place, is taking place, and will go on unless the international community refuses to be deceived any longer.
With Open Wound: Chechnya 1994 to 2003, an exhibition of images taken from his recently published book of the same title (Trolley http://www.trolleybooks.com), Stanley Greene does not ask us to pity the people of Chechnya. What he demands is our outrage. Stanley Greene is the recipient of the 2004 W. Eugene Smith Award in Humanistic Photography and Open Wound: Chechnya 1994 to 2003 is the first prize award-winner for the 2004 World Press Photo for Daily Life stories. To view the images, please visit http://hrw.org/iff/2005/traveling/openwound/index.htm
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