March 08, 2009

“Compared to Asian countries, the European nations care more for human rights,” the remark by Zhenchen Liu, maker of the short film, Under Construction, set the tone of the fifth TCFF (Tri-Continental Film Festival) on human rights violation, which concluded recently in Mumbai, India. The festival was organised by Breakthrough, an international HR body.

Human rights is still not taken seriously nor is it considered an issue of importance in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Arab world, etc. The 26-odd films encountered and explored the narratives of violence, exploitation, destitution, apathy as well as the internal turmoil of real people using the genres of investigation to fiction. Issues related to HIV victims of the sub-Saharan region of South Africa, contemporary slavery in rural Brazil, seasonal labourers in the ship-breaking yards in Chittagong (Bangladesh), game reserve evictees of Kenya, project-affected families of the Three Gorges Dam in China, asylum seekers in UK, Palestine women prisoners in Israeli prisons and other stories.

Zhenchen Liu’s Under Construction told the story of families forced to leave their homes and move into buildings on the edge of the city as city planners pulled down parts of Shanghai’s old town in order to regenerate the city. The 10-minute long film that has won string of awards including the best short film at the 31st Sao Paulo International Film Festival (2007) has still to be shown in China.

Iron Eaters, the 85-minute long film by Shaheen Dill-Riaz, brought forth the conditions of 25,000 ship breakers in Bangladesh who work for less than $1 a day. Workers here are entrenched in debt, bondage and exchange hard labour for inflated loan repayment. Working in inhuman conditions, the labourers are not equipped with safety equipment and are constantly exposed to hazardous waste, which runs rampant through the shipyards.

The Bangladesh-born Dill-Riaz is now settled in Berlin and his documentary won the best documentary film at the Achtung Festival in 2008. In an email interview he said, “These are very simple-minded people. I met them several times and was touched by their plight and sufferings. The ship-breaking industry is a place where the Bangladeshis are in fact taking care of the garbage of the western civilisation. Through Iron eaters I want to sensitise the western audience towards this issue of human exploitation.”

The Iraq war also came to the fore at the TCFF with On that Day, an investigative insight into the Haditha Massacre. On November 19, 2005, Iraqi insurgents detonated a roadside bomb under a US marine convoy from Kilo Company. The blast killed a popular soldier and in the ensuing few hours 24 innocent Iraqis lay dead, including several kids. Using exclusive interviews with the two HR activists responsible for exposing the massacre to Time magazine, coupled with testimonies from the three Marines involved, the film wove together the shocking and tragic event.

The Haditha incident represented HR abuses at its worst, as Americans troops sought retribution in the form of non-combatant lives and subsequently covered up their actions. Incidentally, only one Marine has been arraigned and the US Army is not too keen to charge him as it considers the testimonies of the Iraqis not “reliable.”

The 105-minute documentary film, There was a Queen, made by two FTII (Film and Television Institute of India) graduates brought forth the enormity of the two decades-long Kashmir issue and presented the problems faced by the women of Kashmir who regularly confront violence in their day to lives and how they deal with it.

Said Kavita Pai, one of the directors, “It took us more than two years to complete the documentary. We didn’t have experience of working with any NGO or any other group of people working in such heartrending situations, where families have either lost a son, a father or a brother.” In the film, a young Kashmiri girl who comes to attend a sewing class says, “Bomb blasts, curfew, killings have become part of our lives.”

“That is why I have applied lot of lipstick today. I love lipstick. Who knows if I will be alive tomorrow or not,” says another girl from the class.

Tapologo is one of the most beautiful films and it gives a positive message of hope in the miserable life of HIV + victims. It is set in Freedom Park, a squatter settlement in South Africa where the population comprises mostly of illegal immigrant labourers from the sub-Saharan region flocking there to work in the mines. The local men pick up poor women willing to cook, wash and bed with them for some money and food. In the process the women get infected with the HIV virus.

In such a harsh scenario, a group of HIV-infected former sex workers created a network called Tapologo (or place of shelter) with the help of the church and workers. They learnt to become home-based caregivers for their community, transforming degradation into solidarity and squalor into hope with the help of retired nurses, social workers and religious leaders. One such caregiver jovially remarks, “I told my new boyfriend that I am HIV positive. If he wants me to be with him, he has to use contraception. Other men used to refuse, so I refused them. He agreed, so I am staying with him.”

The film’s director-and-sister duo, Sally and Gabriela Gutierrez-Dewar, explained, “While making the film we shot several feet of footage of the horrible plight of the sex workers of the Freedom Park in South Africa. But we didn’t include it in the final cut because the purpose was not to sensationalise but to show the change happening in the lives of HIV victims and how they triumphed despite severe odds.”

The award-winning, heart-touching film Brides of Allah also dealt with human helplessness and tragedies, but in a different way. “We may look like monsters to you, killing innocent people. We don’t want to do it. But what other alternatives do we have? Either we die as suicide bombers and hope to reach Allah or die in inhumane conditions, forced to live in a small strip of land, and get humiliated by the Jews occupying it,” said Kahira, an inmate in an Israeli prison.

Kahira, along with many others, aged between 18 to 32 years, are serving their terms after being arrested for their alleged terrorist activities — of being a suicide bomber or aiding others for similar activity. Life in Gaza and the West Bank, home to the lakhs of Palestine refugees, is harsh and almost subhuman.

The film by Israeli director, Natalie Assouline, said it took over two years to shoot the film in the women’s prison. The film had several poignant moments like one of the girls delivering a baby; another inmate parts with her son because children above two years aren’t allowed to stay with their mothers; then there were shots of women talking about their husbands who have abandoned them.

In a world of despair brimming with stories full of human tragedies and hapless victimisation, hope did spring among these celluloid narratives as in the tale of Ka Hswa Wa, a human rights activist, wanted by the police in Myanmar as well as Thailand and one of the leaders of the student movement for democracy in Myanmar in 1988. The film Total Denial offered hope, though getting justice for the ethnic victims of Burma from the American oil companies was not an easy task.

“I came across the story of Ka Hsaw Wa and the lawsuit he had filed on behalf of the victims of abuse in Burma, against two American oil companies — Total and UNOCAL,” explained Milena Kaneva, director of Total Denial. Milena was born in Bulgaria, and moved to Italy before the fall of Berlin Wall. She went to Myanmar when the country opened its doors for tourism. What she saw there compelled her to make the film that took more than five years to complete. The American companies had invested in Myanmar to lay down a gas pipeline, which ran across the country, connecting it to Thailand.

In a shot in the film, a teary-eyed Ka Hsaw Wa, the film’s protagonist explained, “I can never understand as to how human beings can ill-treat one of their own kind. The turning point in my life to expose the military regime of Myanmar was when I saw a dead woman with one of her nipples cut and a tree branch shoved up her private parts.”

He won the case and got compensation for the affected people. But his work is not yet over. Film festivals such as the Tri-Continental Film Festival act as eye openers to people who otherwise have access to information given by the ruling government.

1. Iron Eaters
2. Under Construction
3. Total Denial
4. Milena Kaneva
5. Tapologo
6. There was a Queen
7. Kahira