The 18th edition of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in London will be presented from 18 to 28 March, 2014 with a programme of 20 award-winning documentary and feature films.This year's programme includes ten UK premieres and three exclusive previews organised around five themes: Armed Conflict and the Arab Spring; Human Rights Defenders, Icons and Villains; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights; Migrant Rights and Women and Children's Rights.
Nelson Mandela: The Myth and Me (winner of the Special Jury Award, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2013) is one of four titles in the Human Rights Defenders, Icons and Villains category.
South African filmmaker Khalo Matabane was an idealistic teenager with fanciful ideas about a post-apartheid era of freedom and justice when the great icon of liberation Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990.
In Nelson Mandela: The Myth and Me, Matabane embarks on a personal odyssey encompassing an imaginary letter to Mandela, conversations with politicians, activists, intellectuals, and artists, to question the meaning of freedom, reconciliation and forgiveness - and challenges Mandela's legacy in today's world of conflict and inequality.
The film juxtaposes Matabane's inner quest for coherence with the opinions both of people who knew Mandela and of those whose political perspectives were shaped by him. Matabane weighs equally the words of his subjects, leading viewers to question these concepts as well. Khalo Matabane will attend the festival screening of this film, which will be its UK premiere.
Watch the film on BBC iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03pzv9p/Storyville_20132014_Mandela_The_Myth_and_Me/
The Opening Night event on 20 March at the Curzon Soho will be the UK premiere of Dangerous Acts Starring the Unstable Elements of Belarus attended by the director Madeleine Sackler, the director. The Belarus Free Theatre is an acclaimed troupe that defies Europe's last remaining dictatorship. With smuggled footage and uncensored interviews, Sackler's film conveys not only the group's great emotional, financial, and artistic risks but also their risk of censorship, imprisonment, and exile.
The festival will close on 28 March at the Ritzy with the UK premiere of Return to Homs, winner of the World Cinema Jury Prize, Documentary, Sundance Film Festival 2014. Tamara Alrifai, Middle East/North Africa advocacy and communications director at Human Rights Watch, will discuss the film with a special guest. Between August 2011 and August 2013 Derki filmed a group of young revolutionaries in the western Syrian city of Homs who fight for justice through peaceful demonstrations. As the army acts ever more brutally and their city transforms into a ghost town, the young men begin to take up arms. The close-up camerawork takes the viewer right into the city, and scenes of grim battles in a deserted city soon replace those of lively protest parties in the streets.
The centrepiece event of this year's programme is a special preview of Ross Kauffman and Katy Chevigny's E-Team, winner of the Excellence in Cinematography Award, Documentary, Sundance Film Festival 2014. When atrocities are committed in countries held hostage by ruthless dictators, Human Rights Watch sends in the E-Team (Emergencies Team), a collection of fiercely intelligent individuals who document war crimes and report them to the world.
Kauffman and Chevigny take viewers to the front lines in Syria and Libya, where shrapnel, bullet holes, and unmarked graves provide mounting evidence of atrocities by government forces. The crimes are rampant, random, and often unreported, making the E-Team's effort to get information out of the country and into the hands of media outlets, policymakers, and international tribunals even more necessary. Kauffman, Chevigny and the film's subjects will attend the festival screenings.
Inspired by Samantha Power's Pulitzer Prize-winning book A Problem From Hell', Watchers of the Sky (UK premiere, winner of the Documentary Editing Award / US Documentary Special Jury Award for Use of Animation, Sundance Film Festival 2014), is the latest documentary by the award-winning filmmaker Edet Belzberg. In her characteristic cin ma v rit style, Belzberg interweaves the stories of five exceptional humanitarians - Benjamin Ferencz, Raphael Lemkin, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Samantha Power, and Emmanuel Uwurukundo - whose lives and work are linked together by the on-going crisis in Darfur. Through the stories of these contemporary characters, the film uncovers the forgotten history of the Genocide Convention and its founder Raphael Lemkin, the international lawyer who dedicated his life to preventing genocide.
A cautionary tale about the toll of American oil investment in West Africa, Big Men reveals the secretive worlds of both corporations and local communities in Nigeria and Ghana. The director, Rachel Boynton, gained unprecedented access to Africa's oil companies and has created an account of the ambition, corruption, and greed that epitomise Africa's resource curse.' The film uncovers the human impact of oil drilling and contains footage of militants operating in the Niger Delta. Rachel Boynton will attend festival screenings.
Armed Conflict and the Arab Spring
The Armed Conflict and the Arab Spring category includes Rachel Beth Anderson and Tim Grucza's First to Fall, a story of friendship, sacrifice, and the madness of war. Hamid and Tarek leave their lives as students in Canada and travel to Libya, their homeland, to join the fight to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi although neither of them has ever picked up a weapon. A second-hand video camera becomes Hamid's ticket to the front, where he documents battles to liberate the city of Misrata. He eventually earns
