Monitoring World’s Atrocities
Movie Review of Human Rights Watch International
Film Festival
Volume four, Issue 23 | June 09 - 15,
2005FILMHUMAN
RIGHTS WATCH INTERNATIONAL FILM
FESITVALWalter Reade
TheaterLincoln
Center165 W. 65th St., Plaza
levelFor complete information,
call 212-875-5600
Or visit
hrw.org/iffCOURTESY
OF HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH INTERNATIONAL FILM
FESTIVALIn “The Liberace of
Baghdad,” filmmaker Sean McAllister spends seven months in Iraq, assessing
the impact of the American invasion, as he is hosted by Samir Peter, an
acclaimed Iraqi
pianist.Monitoring
World’s
AtrocitiesHuman
Rights Watch Film Festival keeps humanity’s dark side in
focusBy SETH J.
BOOKEYGovernments around the globe who
commit human rights abuse are responsible for massive suffering and
exploitation, but just as damaging can be the indifference of those who turn a
blind eye to the situation, a group that is far larger than the perpetrators
themselves.The Human Rights Watch
International Film Festival, an annual event in New York, is accordingly never
at a loss for material. One interesting trend in this year’s selection of
films is the focus on narrower, quality-of-life issues alongside the more
obvious abuses facing
people.Here’s a closer look at
four films from this year’s
festival.“No
More Tears, Sister: Anatomy of Hope and Betrayal” is Helene
Klodowky’sdocumentary about a Sri
Lankan ex-pat who returns home to raise her voice about
the brutal slaying of her sister, human
rights activist Dr. Rajani
Thiranagama.Making its New York premiere
is “The Education of Shelby Knox,” made for the PBS “Point of
View” series, airing on Channel 13 on June 21. This documentary tells us
how Lubbock, Texas, has abnormally high rates of teenage pregnancy and sexually
transmitted diseases, and yet, the board of education there refuses to pursue a
sex-ed policy that goes beyond advising abstinence—an approach clearly
failing the community.The film focuses
on high school sophomore Shelby Knox, who is part of the town’s youth
initiative to provide realistic alternatives to abstinence. She is a good
Southern Baptist who pledges to wait until marriage to have sex, but she’s
refreshingly non-judgmental and open to questioning opinions and doctrines.
Directors Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt show how Knox’s journey
winds up including other groups, like gay kids seeking a gay-straight alliance
at the school, and how Shelby sometimes finds herself without allies in her
insistence that everyone be included in the
effort.If you ever wondered where all
those beads in New Orleans come from, “Mardi Gras: Made in China”
provides the answer. Director David Redmon shows us the Chinese factory where
young women make hundreds of pounds of beads for about $12.80 a week, along with
the kids who are trading “beads for boobies” stateside. Redmon
captures the reactions of Mardi Gras revelers he stops to show images of the
bead-makers. While some are indifferent and just want to see “Girls Gone
Wild” behavior, others are genuinely upset about the Chinese work
conditions. The women in China are just as surprised to discover that all of
their hard work goes toward behavior they find socially embarrassing and
unacceptable—and that most of those beads quickly wind up in the
trash.Also making its New York premiere
is “The Liberace of Baghdad,” an illuminating look at what America
has wrought in Baghdad, as seen through the lens of filmmaker Sean McAllister
and his host, Samir Peter, an Arab Christian and once Iraq’s most
prominent pianist. McAllister seems surprised when Samir’s daughters voice
admiration for Saddam Hussein and say that things were better before the war, an
opinion for which they are rebuked by their father, who reminds them of the
former dictator’s many crimes. Clearly believing the Anglo-American
message that Iraq’s “liberation” is a godsend to the populace,
he soon discovers the everyday realities of life for the average Iraqi.
Everybody is armed and, sometimes, just leaving the house means risking your
life.After seven months of being driven
around by Samir, McAllister, who is British, hears his host complain that the
job is causing him a lot of stress because the insurgents are stepping up their
targeting of foreigners. McAllister says that the more security the hotel for
foreign journalists gains, the less safe he feels, and he starts to see why
Samir’s daughters preferred the security of Hussein’s
regime.Another frightening example of
the harsh balancing of democracy and security is presented in the opening night
film, “State of Fear,” which provides a 20-year history of Peru, in
which society was beset not only by Shining Path terrorism, but also by the
dictatorship of Pres. Alberto Fujimori. The meticulous chronicling of this
tumultuous period—in which 70,000 Peruvians were killed—is as
fascinating as it is disturbing. The
film begins with the origins of the Shining Path, a revolutionary movement led
by Abimael Guzman, a charismatic Marxist-Maoist who appealed to the indigenous
Peruvian’s sense of betrayal by the system. Within months, many Andean
villages fell prey to these fanatical revolutionaries with a Pol Pot mentality;
already impoverished peasants were terrorized and boys as young as eight were
kidnapped for indoctrination and
soldiering.“State
of Fear” chronicles 20 years of turmoil in Peru, during which Shining Path
revolutionariesterrorized indigenous
Andean communities, resulting in Pres. Alberto Fujimori’s dictatorial
seizure of power.Meanwhile, in Lima,
there was a willful ignorance of what was happening, until the late 1980s, when
the violence reached the capital, with car bombs and policemen killed at the
rate of two a day. In fear, the nation elected Fujimori in 1990, who moved
within his first year and a half in office to suspend democracy by dissolving
Congress and ruling by decrees. Even after Guzman’s capture and the
disintegration of Shining Path, the Fujimori government continued to invoke fear
of terrorism as a cover for media domination and the silencing and
“disappearing” of political opponents.
After Fujimori’s ouster in 2000,
Peru followed in the steps of post-apartheid South Africa by setting up a truth
commission and demonstrating it was willing to confront its recent past with a
clear eye. “State of Fear” serves as a chilling reminder of the
potential for democracies to slip into fascism when terrorism does its deadly
work.Other noteworthy films also deserve
mention.Heidi Ewing and Rachel
Grady’s “Boys of Baraka” explores at-risk inner-city boys from
Baltimore who go to an experimental boarding school in Kenya. They face strict
academic and disciplinary programs to which they are unaccustomed, but they also
are able to build skills that may have eluded them back
home.In “No More Tears, Sister:
Anatomy of Hope and Betrayal,” Helene Klodowky explores the life and the
brutal murder in 1989 of Sri Lankan human rights activist Dr. Rajani
Thiranagama, and her sister’s journey home to Sri Lanka to break the
silence that followed in the wake of the
slaying.In “The Wall,”
Simone Bitton talks to Israelis and Palestinians about the merits and downside
of the wall that Israel is building in the West Bank to prevent suicide bombers
from crossing into its
territory.“A Midwinter’s
Night’s Dream” is Goran Paskaljevic’s narrative film that
explores post-war Serbia through the experiences of a soldier who comes home to
find Bosnian refugees squatting in his former
home.“Videoletters” is a
series of 20 short documentaries made by Katarina Rejger and Eric van den Broek
during a five-year period that chart the attempts for war-weary Yugoslavians to
find ways to reconnect by sending someone of a different ethnicity a message of
introduction done on video.
Posted: Thu - June 9, 2005 at 10:40 PM
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Published On: Jun 20, 2009 07:03 PM
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