Going global

While West Hollywood is known for promoting the rights of its
gay and lesbian community, this week the city will go international
““ Amnesty International, that is ““ as it hosts the
organization’s fourth annual film festival.

This year, the festival will showcase 26 films from around the
world, many of which would otherwise be unavailable to audiences in
the United States. The festival covers a wide array of human rights
issues, from North Koreans’ attempts to flee their homeland
to the chemical industry disaster in Bhopal, India. In highlighting
the worldwide struggles for freedom, Amnesty hopes to inspire its
audience to advocacy.

The festival opens on May 24 with a screening of “Strip
Search,” a film from acclaimed director Sidney Lumet
(“Network,” “Dog Day Afternoon”). The film,
which integrates different interrogations of female Americans in
China and an Arab male in New York, captures the current
problematic trade-off between security and freedom.

“Strip Search” runs only an hour long and will be
followed by a panel discussion of the war on terror by guest
speakers and the filmmakers themselves, with Lumet and executive
producers Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson present.

Many guest speakers and filmmakers will be on hand at the
festival to follow up the screenings with analysis of the human
rights issues pertinent to the films.

For example, “Shake Hands with the Devil” follows
the man the United Nations entrusted to maintain peace in Rwanda
during the genocide, Canadian General Romeo Dallaire. Director
Peter Raymont documents his return to Rwanda 10 years after
witnessing a tragedy he was unable to stop. Raymont, as well as
international experts on the central African region, will be on
hand for a question-and-answer session following the screening.
Similarly, after “Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua ““ Search
for Justice” is shown, guest speakers will discuss the
abductions and murders of hundreds of young women in the Mexican
city of Juarez.

Samer Rabadi, deputy director for Amnesty’s Western
Regional Office, sees the film festival as a great educational tool
that he hopes will make some of the issues more salient and inspire
action.

“We’re trying to make it appealing in many ways. As
films, they are sources of entertainment, but if someone walks out
and feels really connected to an issue, we will have letter writing
available on the spot,” Rabadi said.

While many chapters of Amnesty International, including
UCLA’s, rely on letter writing to voice their discontent over
human rights abuses, many of these smaller groups are utilizing
film to spread the message of human rights.

“While Amnesty International gives us a supply of films
and advice about which ones to screen, we’re pretty
autonomous about selecting the issues we want to deal with and the
films that address those issues,” said Casey Johnson,
president of UCLA’s Amnesty chapter.

This quarter, UCLA’s chapter will focus on three issues in
particular and will launch massive letter writing campaigns for
three consecutive weeks, beginning eighth week. The first week will
spotlight the current crisis in Darfur, ninth week will open a
discussion about acid burn victims in Bangladesh, and 10th week
will address child trafficking.

Although none of the films at the West Hollywood film festival
will deal specifically with these issues, “Shake Hands with
the Devil,” the film that covers the Rwandan genocide,
certainly carries certain links with the current situation in
Darfur.

“The current (discussions) of Rwanda have brought greater
awareness about issues in Africa,” Johnson said. “The
Darfur Action Committee is trying to make the connection between
Rwanda and Darfur in order to get the current genocide
recognized.”

Although the film festival will travel to several other cities
throughout the year, West Hollywood’s has become the flagship
festival, partly because California, and Los Angeles in particular,
is such a hotbed for activism, with 20 percent of Amnesty members
residing in the state. Additionally, the West Hollywood venue has
gained prominence as Amnesty tries to find inroads into the
entertainment industry. Amnesty’s Los Angeles office houses
the “Artists for Amnesty Program,” which reaches out to
the film and television community in order to secure spokespeople
and transmit messages.

“One of Amnesty’s early strengths was its ability to
put a human face on the abstract idea of human rights
abuses,” Rabadi said. “Film is one of the primary modes
of storytelling that exist right now and as human beings, we
respond to and have huge appetites for stories. To ignore film as a
storytelling mode for human rights abuses would be a disservice to
those on whose behalf you’re working.”