[film descriptions]

Behind Closed Eyes
What happens when a child soldier is both a criminal and a victim of his country's war in Liberia? How does Eranda, a 7-year-old refugee from Kosovo, adjust to her life in a Macedonian refugee camp, in a temporary shelter in the Netherlands and then back in her war torn country in less then two years without bitterness? A young Rwandan girl becomes a mother before her eighteenth birthday. How does she learn to love her child and herself despite the violence that brought about the child's birth? BEHIND CLOSED EYES explores how four children of war learn to build a future, despite their past. These children develop compassion for themselves on their journey to survival. Their stories leave you at the edge of your seat and teach us the meaning of courage.
       -description courtesy of human rights watch
Bombies
Between 1964 and 1973 the United States conducted a secret air war, dropping over 2 million tons of bombs and making tiny Laos the most heavily bombed country in history. Millions of these 'cluster bombs' did not explode when dropped, leaving the country massively contaminated with 'bombies' as dangerous now as when they fell a quarter century ago. Bombies examines the problem of unexploded cluster bombs through the personal experiences of a group of Laotians and foreigners and argues for their elimination as a weapon of war. Unfortunately they are still a standard part of the US arsenal and were dropped both in Kosovo and now Afghanistan.
       -description courtesy of Bullfrog Films
Bougainville: Our Island, Our Fight
The story of an indigenous people taking up arms against the ecological devastation of their lands by a multi-national mining company. Our Island, Our Fight covers the struggle for independence on the island of Bougainville, which smuggles us into the world of a besieged people, cut off from all humanitarian aid. Their only resource is their resolve to fight for independence and the right to preserve their culture and environment.
       -description courtesy of Jennifer Cornish Media


Breaking Bows and Arrows
"On the island of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, victims and perpetrators are coming together in traditionally based reconciliation ceremonies after a decade-long civil war left the community bitterly divided. In the largest reconciliation ceremony yet to take, BBA follows fighters who have killed each other's families as they come together to break bows and arrows in a traditional gesture of peace.
The Diamond Life
The Revolutionary United Front's (RUF) attack on Freetown in January of 1999 was the culmination of a decade-long and bloody struggle between the RUF and the government of Sierra Leone. The rebel forces, bolstered by the former Sierra Leonean Army, which had turned on the government, swept into the city, killing, mutilating, and raping thousands in the continuing war over the control of the country's rich diamond fields. RUF units burned houses with civilians inside, shot and raped people at random, killing an estimated 6,000 people in the span of three weeks. Since 1990, half the country's population of five million has been displaced. Today, Sierra Leone produces more refugees than any other country in Africa. The country is full of war victims, whose amputated limbs serve as living testimony to the brutality of the rebels. This Rights Alert feature, with footage and commentary by Sierra Leonean journalist Aroun Rashid Deen and music by Peter Gabriel, provides a disturbing glimpse into the greed and violence that fuels the diamond war. A Guerilla News Network production in association with Witness.
       -description courtesy of Witness
Daresalam
Two childhood friends, Koni and Djimi, flee from their village after a visit by tax collectors goes wrong. They run away to join the guerrillas, persuaded that they will be able to transform their country to help the victims of injustice. Between armed struggle and the fight for new ideas a gulf grows. The events described in this feature film take place in Chad, an African country which, during the last century experienced nothing else but colonisation and civil war. Many countries in Africa, Asia and America have been plunged into this madness for decades and do not know how to get out of it. Based on the myth of Cain and Abel, Daresalam is the story of how a war machine finally opposes two friends like twin brothers who were initially inspired by the same ideals.
       -description courtesy of human rights watch


La Espalda del Mundo (The Back of the World)
La Espalda del Mundo is a feature documentary on human rights told through three stories: a child worker in Peru, a Kurdish prisoner of conscience in Turkey and a death row prisoner in Texas. Born out of an idea to document the 50th anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the film slowly acquired a life of its own through the individual experiences of each of its protagonists.
       -description courtesy of Maria Carrion
Going Home
Mohammed is just 10 years old. For most of 1997 he was forced to act as a young fighter with rebel forces in the jungles of Sierra Leone. His duties included carrying heavy equipment, acting as a personal servant to other soldiers, and torturing and disciplining any of the other child soldiers who stepped out of line. Eventually he escaped to Guinea, where he is one of thousands lining up to register at the Gueckedou refugee camp. In 1997 Guinea was host to an estimated 430,000 refugees: 190,000 Sierra Leoneans, and 240,000 Liberians who'd escaped the 8-year civil war there. This film evaluates the success of the Guinean government and the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in protecting the rights pledged this huge African refugee population under the OAU Convention.
       -description courtesy of Bullfrog Films
Good Kurds, Bad Kurds: No Friends but the Mountains
A war of national liberation or a war against terrorism? It's all in how you define "good" and "bad": ":"Good Kurds" are those in Iraq; they're Saddam Hussein's victims whom we want to help. "Bad Kurds" are those waging an armed insurrection against US ally Turkey; they're at the receiving end of US weapons. Good Kurds, Bad Kurds brings sharp clarity to a complicated history while providing disturbing insight into both US immigration and foreign policy. The film travels from Santa Barbara, home to a small Kurdish refugee community, to Washington D.C., where an activist struggles to gain the attention of lawmakers and the media and fight his deportation, and to Turkey, where the anti-Kurd campaign continues.
       -description courtesy of human rights watch
ICC: A Call for Justice
What is the International Criminal Court (ICC)? Who will benefit? Why won't America ratify the treaty? Through archival footage, spoken word poetry and interviews with survivors of torture and ICC advocates, the Youth Organizers explore these and other questions surrounding the ICC.
       -description courtesy of human rights watch


Jung (War): In the Land of the Mujaheddin
Jung chronicles the construction of a war hospital for land-mine victims in Afghanistan by the Italian relief agency Emergency in 2000. The film, shot in 1999 and 2000, puts a face on the phrase "humanitarian aid".
       -description courtesy of the village voice and offoffoff
Long Night's Journey Into Day
Long Night's Journey Into Day, winner of the Grand Prize for Best Documentary at the 2000 Sundance Festival and ALA Booklist's Editor's Choice Award for best video of 2000, follows several cases before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commision over a two-year period. Long Night's Journey Into Day provides the definitive record of one of the most ambitious and innovative attempts at social reconciliation in human history.
       -description courtesy of California Newsreel
Operation Fine Girl
The story is told through the eyes the survivors - women and girls, as well as the child soldiers and perpetrators. It will support the efforts of Witness partners in Sierra Leone to increase the funding to provide psycho-social support and health care to the estimated 500,000 survivors of rape in the country. -50 min
       -description courtesy of Witness


Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq
In Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq, the award-winning journalist and filmmaker takes the former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations Denis Halliday back to the crippled country for the first time since he resigned in protest over the sanctions in September 1998. Together, they reveal an extraordinary portrait of life in a country with a decaying infrastructure and a population that Pilger says is being held hostage to the compliance of Saddam Hussein.
       -description courtesy of Arab Film Festival
Refugees: A Last Resort
A WITNESS Production in association with Asphalt Films and the International Institute. This powerful video demonstrates the brutal violations of human rights that force people to flee from their homes and become refugees. Narration and music by Peter Gabriel. -5 min
       -description courtesy of Witness
Sexual Exiles
Sexual Exiles is a documentary about the impossibility of returning home for lesbians and gay men once they come out while living in exile. Recording the stories of nine women and men who have come to the US seeking an opportunity to be open about their homosexuality, the program explores both the reasons they have left their homes and their complex experiences while living in exile. Whether from Africa, Asia, or Central America, the subjects describe their complicated relationships to home and family, as well the way they discover new identities through the process of migration and relocation.
       -description courtesy of freespeech.org
The Sky: A Silent Witness
Produced in association with Amnesty International, this meditative documentary about human rights follows journey to reclaim the remains of 180 massacre victims. Intercut throughout the telling of this story is riveting black-and-white footage of women from across the globe, including a Tibetan Buddhist nun, a Tiananmen Square demonstrator, and an African American civil rights worker, testifying about human rights abuses in their own countries.
       -description courtesy of Women Make Movies


War Criminals
The Nuremberg Trials established shattering new precedents in international justice and the punishment of people for criminal acts committed during wartime. More than 40 years later, their legacy remains powerful but new cases show that they did not fulfill all the expectations that participants had for them. In this look at the impact of the famous trials, Nuremberg prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz details what he and his colleagues hoped to accomplish, and modern cases are examined in the light of the Nuremberg legacy. Part of the 20th Century with Mike Wallace series. -50 min
       -description courtesy of media rights
Well-Founded Fear
Imagine that your life has fallen apart -- maybe you've been tortured or raped, or maybe you've gotten out just in time. You'll have one chance to start a new life in the U.S., and an hour to tell your story to a neutral bureaucrat. Now imagine yourself on the other side of the desk, listening to people seeking refuge from any one of a hundred countries. The law says you can offer asylum if you find that someone has a "well-founded fear of persecution." Three times a day, your job is to decide their fates. Political asylum--who deserves it? Who gets it? With unprecedented access, filmmakers Michael Camerini and Shari Robertson enter the closed corridors of the INS to reveal the dramatic real-life stage where human rights and American ideals collide with the nearly impossible task of trying to know the truth.
       -description courtesy of human rights watch
A Work in Progress: Human Rights in Haiti
In a delicate blend of paintings and exclusive footage, this documentary - the first of its kind - takes viewers through the history of Haitian people and the struggle for their rights. Through the eyes of victims, human rights defenders and observers with the International Civilian Mission in Haiti (MICIVIH), one gets an insight into the prison system, the courts and the police.
       -description courtesy of the United Nations

 

 

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