nwFilmCenter

Global Concern:
Human Rights on Film

While cinema can provide entertainment and escape, for many committed filmmakers and viewers it is a vital medium of information and a powerful tool for social change. Tackling wide ranging, thought-provoking issues, activist filmmakers help deepen our awareness of the values of dignity, equality, and justice as they tell universal stories of human struggle, sacrifice, and triumph. We hope that the works presented in Global Concern will broaden understanding and stimulate involvement as they reveal the hardship, courage, and commitment of those whose hearts and minds are focused on the many challenges confronting humanity.

Fri, Sep 28, 2007 at 7 PM Sat, Sep 29, 2007 at 4:15 PM Sun, Sep 30, 2007 at 2 PM	BAMAKO DIRECTOR: ABDERRAHMANE SISSAKO MALI/FRANCE Are Western financial institutions responsible for African poverty? Is globalization the cause or the solution of economic injustice? Sissako artfully ponders these questions with a comic but serious, inquiry staged as a mock trial held in the courtyard of a house in Mali. The plaintiff is African civil society and the defendants are the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, accused of bringing about the continent's doom. They are tried in absentia. As citizens give testimony regarding the impact of these organizations on life and debt, we watch the marriage of a bar singer, and her unemployed husband come apart, their fate and the fates of all around them inextricably linked to the trial. Winner of the Best French Language Film award at France's Lumières, BAMAKO is both intellectually provocative and defiantly unique . . ."a work of cool intelligence and profound anger, a long, dense argument that is also a haunting visual poem."—NEW YORK TIMES. ( 118 min ) ^ Top
Sat, Sep 29, 2007 at 7 PM Sun, Sep 30, 2007 at 5 PM	CROSSING ARIZONA DIRECTOR: JOSEPH MATHEW, DANIEL DEVIVO US Each day thousands of migrants attempting to enter the United States are diverted into the treacherous terrain of Arizona's brutal desert. The perilous journey, which can take up to four days, has caused a dramatic rise in the number of migrant deaths. Those who make it through—the undocumented immigrants who live and work in the U.S.—invoke a wide range of impassioned responses over human rights, culture, race, class, and national security. Seen through the eyes of frustrated ranchers, border patrol agents, local politicians, farmers dependent on illegal workers, seasoned humanitarian activists, desperate migrants preparing for their journey north, and the Minutemen who have become darlings of the national media, this perceptive and expertly balanced documentary unveils the complicated dilemmas presented by the border crisis and the surprising political stances people take when immigration and border policy fails everyone, on all fronts. ( 95 min ) Sponsored by First Unitarian Church of Portland. ^ Top
Thu, Oct 4, 2007 at 7 PM	THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK DIRECTOR: ANNIE SUNDBERG, RICKI STERN US/CHAD Captain Brian Steidle quit the Marine Corps to accept a six-month post with the African Union as an unarmed military observer in the western Darfur region of Sudan. Soon after arriving in Darfur, however, Steidle realized that things were going terribly wrong in this huge, remote province bordering Chad. Unable to intervene, Steidle used his camera to document what some, including the U.S. Government, have called a genocide, and what international law calls "crimes against humanity and war crimes" on a massive scale: the conflict in Darfur, which has claimed at least 200,000 lives and displaced 2.5 million people since early 2003. Sundberg and Stern's emotionally charged film allows us to witness Steidle's transformation from soldier to observer to witness and, finally, to activist. "An outstanding film. It's superb, period."—NEW YORK TIMES. ( 85 min ) ^ Top
Sun, Oct 7, 2007 at 7 PM	THE UNFORESEEN DIRECTOR: LAURA DUNN US THE UNFORSEEN follows the career of Gary Bradley, an ambitious west Texas farm boy who went to Austin and became one of the state's most powerful real estate developers, capitalizing on Austin's boomtown growth beginning in the 1970s. At the peak of his powers, Bradley transformed 4000 acres of pristine Hill Country into one of the state's largest and fastest-selling subdivisions. When the development threatened a local treasure, "Barton Springs"—a natural spring-fed swimming hole—the community fought back and the subdivision became a lightning rod for environmental activism of the kind that flourished under Governor Ann Richards. However, when George W. Bush became governor, development laws change, and the water quality at Barton Springs, as well as the surrounding landscape of Austin, was irreversibly altered. Dunn offers a powerful meditation on the destruction of the natural world and battle between property rights, and the public good. ( 93 min ) Film provided courtesy of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. ^ Top
Thu, Oct 11, 2007 at 7 PM	WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN DIRECTOR: STEVEN OKAZAKI US As global tensions rise, the once unthinkable threat that nuclear weapons of mass destruction will be used again is more real and more frightening than at any time since the height of the Cold War. Even after 60 years, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki continue to inspire argument, denial and myth. Surprisingly, most people know very little about what happened on August 6 and 9, 1945, two days that changed the world. Featuring unforgettable interviews with 14 atomic bomb survivors, many of whom have never spoken publicly before, and four Americans intimately involved in the bombings, Okazaki's film reveals both unimaginable suffering and extraordinary human resilience and lessons we cannot afford to forget. ( 86 min ) Film provided courtesy of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. ^ Top
Thu, Oct 18, 2007 at 7 PM	HOT HOUSE DIRECTOR: SHIMON DOTAN ISRAEL About 9,000 Palestinians are imprisoned in Israeli jails on "security" charges. Shot inside the Beer Sheba, Sakhalin Had rim, and Megiddo prisons, HOT HOUSE is a unique, probing documentary feature that explores the emergence of a Palestinian national leadership within Israeli prisons. The film offers a rare look at the experiences, motivations and mindsets of a number of key inmates—men and women, from Fatah and Hams, serving multiple life sentences—and the remarkable degree to which they influence the political process in the outside world. Dothan's film offers a unique opportunity to observe events of historic proportions at their inception while shattering the two-dimensional stereotypes presented by the mainstream media on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Winner of the Special Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival. ( 89 min ) Sponsored by Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights. Film provided courtesy of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. Sponsored by ^ Top
Sun, Oct 21, 2007 at 5 PM	COCALERO DIRECTOR: ALEJANDO LANDES ARGENTINA COCALERO is a film about controversial Bolivian president Evo Morales and his rise to prominence. The story follows the presidential campaign of Morales, an outspoken critic of the United States whose political power base is in the coca-growing areas of central Bolivia, as he moves from union meetings in the Andes and Amazon to formal fundraising dinners and mass rallies in cities. The political rise of Morales dates to his work with farmers resisting a coca eradication drive prompted by the U.S.-backed war on drugs. In 2005 Morales, of Aymara Indian heritage was elected as Bolivia's first-ever indigenous president, winning the election by the largest majority in the country's history. Grand Jury Prize Nominee, Sundance Film Festival. ( 94 min ) Film provided courtesy of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. Sponsored by ^ Top
Thu, Oct 25, 2007 at 8:15 PM	ENEMIES OF HAPPINESS DIRECTOR: EVA MULVAD, ANJA AL-ERHAYEM DENMARK Winner of the World Cinema Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, ENEMIES OF HAPPINESS is a film about personal courage and conviction. It centers on Malalai Joya, who became one of Afghanistan's most famous and infamous women in 2003 when she challenged the power of warlords in the country's new government. Two years later, the 28-year-old ran in her country's first democratic parliamentary election in over 30 years. A survivor of repeated assassination attempts, she campaigned surrounded by armed guards. How do you introduce democracy in a country where the majority of the people are illiterate, votes are for sale, warlords use threats and bribes to control the ballots, and many women cannot leave their children to vote? As the film eloquently illustrates, it takes more than Western soldiers and diplomats. Joya is a controversial voice for a nation ruined by war, still ruled by fear, but desperate for a change for the better. ( 59 min ) Mercy Corps will be in attendance. Sponsored by ^ Top
Thu, Oct 25, 2007 at 8:15 PM	SARI'S MOTHER DIRECTOR: JAMES LONGLEY US In SARI'S MOTHER, filmed in Iraq over a period of one year, Longley (GAZA STRIP, IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS) follows a courageous mother as she struggles to get medical help for her 10-year-old son, Sari, who is dying of AIDS. An intimate, revealing portrait, SARI uncovers an aspect of life in Iraq that few outside the country have witnessed. ( 21 min ) ^ Top
Thu, Nov 1, 2007 at 7 PM	BANISHED DIRECTOR: MARCO WILLIAMS US In towns throughout the United States, in the years between the Civil War and the Great Depression, thousands of African American families were violently driven from their land by their white neighbors. The choice was simply get out or die. More than a century later these towns remain all white. Filmmaker Marco Williams (TWO TOWNS OF JASPER) brings this shameful legacy to light, as he investigates three such towns, addressing questions of racism, truth, and reparations. In Forsyth County, Georgia, he follows reporter Elliot Jaspin as he uncovers what happened to the property of African Americans who were driven out. In Pierce City, Missouri, two brothers try to persuade the town to relocate their ancestor's remains to a more hospitable location. In Harrison, Arkansas—the current headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan—a group of white citizens tries to find ways to overcome the town's racist past; but with no Blacks involved, how can they understand the damage done and what would constitute moral reparations? Many questions are raised in this powerful film, but Williams leaves it to the viewers—and the American people as a nation—to come up with answers that respond to this overwhelming American tragedy. ( 86 min ) Sponsored by ^ Top
Wed, Nov 7, 2007 at 7 PM	ELECTION DAY DIRECTOR: KATY CHEVIGNY US ELECTION DAY follows an eclectic group of voters on election day 2004, from the early morning until well after midnight. Capturing people from all walks of life, including an ex-felon voting for the first time at age 50 and a factory worker debating gay marriage with his co-workers, the film presents a glimpse of the real life stories that lie underneath the complex electoral process. Jim Fuchs, a Republican poll-watcher, takes us on an energized ride through the precincts of largely Democratic Chicago, railing against the city's "machine" politics. Rashida Tlaib of Dearborn, Michigan, mobilizes Muslims to vote. Eighteen-year-old Franny Fisher, of Stockholm, Wisconsin registers and votes at the same time in a one-room building staffed by her neighbor from down the road. Meanwhile, an international elections observer in St. Louis, Missouri is shocked to see voters waiting in line for two hours. As these stories intertwine, an intimate portrait of the American democratic process emerges that is rich with both humor and unsettling revelation. ( 89 min ) Film provided courtesy of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. Sponsored by ^ Top
Thu, Nov 8, 2007 at 7 PM	LUMO DIRECTOR: BENT-JORGEN PERLMUTT, NELSON WALKER III, LOUIS ABELMAN, LYNN TRUE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO/US The agonies of war-torn Africa are deeply etched in the bodies of women. In eastern Congo, vying militias, armies, and bandits use rape as a weapon of terror. Recently engaged to a young man from her village, 20-year-old Lumo Sinai can't wait to have children and start a family. But when she crosses paths with marauding soldiers who brutally attack her, she is left with a fistula—a condition that renders her incontinent and threatens her ability to give birth. Rejected by her fiancé and cast aside by her family, Lumo finds her way to the one place that may save her, a hospital for rape survivors. Buoyed by the love of the hospital staff, including a formidable team of wise women known to all as "the Mamas," Lumo and her friends keep alive the hope of one day resuming their former lives, thanks to an operation that can restore them fully to health. On this uncertain road to recovery, Lumo proves that the solidarity of women can bind even the most irreparable of wounds. In Swahilli and French with English subtitles. ( 72 min ) Film provided courtesy of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. Mercy Corps will be in attendance. Sponsored by ^ Top