film festivals

Illuminating Oppression: 6th Annual Human Rights Film Festival

Thursday, September 25 – Saturday September 27

The three-day festival features award-winning documentaries by independent filmmakers from
Africa, Europe, Latin America, North America, South Asia, and West Asia.

Life Sciences Complex Auditorium

Theme: Gaze Engendered

Thursday, September 25, 7 p.m.

The Women’s Kingdom

Director: Xiaoli Zhou
(23 minutes, 2005–06, China/USA)
A short film offering a rare glimpse into the extraordinary society of Mosuo women,
keepers of one of the last matriarchal societies in the world, who live beyond
structures of mainstream Chinese culture.

A Jihad for Love

Director: Parvez Sharma
(81 minutes, 2007, USA/UK/France/Germany/Australia)
This film presents a struggle for love in Muslim society and gives voice to gay
and lesbian characters, emerging in all their human complexity, challenging
assumptions about a monolithic Muslim community and defining jihad as a
struggle rather than a war.

THEME: Triumph of the Will

Friday, September 26, 7 p.m.

I Want to be a Pilot

Director: Diego Quemada Diez
(12 minutes, 2006, Kenya/Mexico/Spain)
Deep in the slums of East Africa, a 12-year-old has only one dream—to be
able to fly. This moving film depicts a poverty stricken orphan boy, living in
Kenya, who looks towards the heavens and dreams of being an airline pilot and
of escaping his bleak life of poverty.

China Blue

Director: Micha Peled
(86 minutes, 2005, China/USA)
This critically acclaimed film is a powerful and poignant journey into
the harsh world of sweatshop workers. Shot clandestinely, it is a deep-access
account of what both China and the international retailers don’t want us to see.

THEME: Vanishing Histories

Saturday, September 27, 1 p.m.

The Mall on Top of My House

Director: Aditi Chitre
(6 minutes, animation, 2006, India)
The film explores the consequences of rampant land reclamation and the
flouting of environmental laws through the eyes of a fisherman who lives in a
dark underground tunnel. He constantly negotiates with the chaos of traffic, fancy
malls, and luxury housing built on land that was once his to reach the sea that
once sustained him and his community.

VHS Kahloucha

Director: Nejib Belkadi (80 minutes, 2006).
“VHS Kahloucha” is a story about a charismatic, impassioned house painter, named Moncef Kahloucha, who has always harbored a great love for cinema, especially 1970s cinema. Armed with his VHS Panasonic 3500 and deep in production on his latest feature, Tarzan of the Arabs, we see Tunisia's Quentin Tarantino employ the help of local acting talent to stage intense chases, choreograph fight sequences and fantastical plotlines. We observe to what lengths Kahloucha will go for the perfect shot. For anyone who has ever dreamed of making a movie, Kahloucha's story is an inspirational revelation.

THEME: Imaginary Homelands

Saturday, September 27, 4 p.m.

El Charango

Director: Jim Virga
(22 minutes, 2006, Bolivia)
This short, Spanish-language film explores the relationship between the
Bolivian stringed instrument, known as the charango, and Cerro Rico (Rich
Mountain), the richest silver deposit in the world, and the peasant miners, who
were forced to work the mines, and their struggle for human rights.

My First Contact

Directors: Maria Correa and Karane Ikpeng
(83 minutes, 2007, Brazil)
This critically acclaimed film chronicles the story of a tribe of native Ikpeng Indians
in Brazil who were relocated by white men to a reservation more than 40 years
ago. The film gives painful testament to memory and captures how tribal elders
re-enact the “first contact” with the white men for the younger generation.

THEME: Gaze Engendered

Saturday, September 27, 7 p.m.

Devil Came on Horseback

Directors: Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg
(85 minutes, 2007, Sudan)
The film documents genocide in Darfur through the eyes of Brian Steidle, a former
U.S. Marine who lands a job through the Internet as an unarmed military observer
taking photographs for the African Union in Darfur. Stark footage makes the film
challenging to watch as Steidle captures Sudan’s natural beauty as well as its
turmoil from helicopters, moving vehicles, and inside people’s homes.