Human Rights Nights is a festival of cinema, arts and music dealing with human rights issues. Through the art expression of directors, artists and musicians, the festival aims to present the different realities that exist in contemporary society. Camera, sound and creativity are the means through which the human rights artists share their vision of the present-day world and express their concerns and their anger towards humanity condition. At the same time, art and cinema, as well as music, allow us to dream, to picture a different world, a better world, where no abuses on mankind are committed. A world where the right of “being human” is both respected and protected. At its 9th edition, Human Rights Nights chose “in-differenza” (in-difference) as central topic. Because, in contemporary society, diversity is now normality and it is experienced in everyday life, today more than ever. Today’s reality is the one of a plural society where diversity is a well established fact as well as a mass phenomenon and no more a minor reality. However, diversity- that is one’s specific culture, religion, sexuality and sensitivity- must be defended as a means of comparison as well as a human right to be protected. Moreover, a person has also the right to in-difference: whether one is African, Arab, Asian, European, American, ugly or handsome, whatever sexuality one is, one’s own spirituality or language, or one’s own appearance, a person should have the right to walk down the street without being “looked at” or feeling like acting a “diversity” performance. In the end, in-difference because there is an extreme and evidently dangerous indifference and a lack of sensitivity towards unacceptable violence- from wars to racial discriminations, from humiliation to extreme greediness... by now, there is only a general addiction and callousness towards contemporary society’s horrors.
The festival opens with two important events: the convention Plural Cities. Young migrants and urban contexts. Research experiences curated by the Anthropology Department of Education Science of the University of Bologna together with the Institutions and Society Department and Human Being and Territory Department of Perugia University; and a meeting with Wislawa Szymborska, Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996, organised by the Collegio Superiore of the University of Bologna. The city is a plural space, necessarily migrant, flowing, hybrid, but also a planning and a political object, an object of cultural innovation and of social resistance forms. Plural Cities convention, reporting the results of a research funded by MUR, presents the dynamics of the youth and of the “second generations” which live and cross the city reinventing its practises and representations. The research is coordinated by Matilde Callari Galli. Ralph Grillo, Emeritus Professor in Anthropology at Sussex University, will attend the convention. He is an expert in pluralism issues in urban contexts. In Aula Magna of Santa Lucia, Wislawa Szymborska will read some of her poems and a world premiere of Katarzyna Kolenda-Zaleska (TVN) interview with Woody Allen, talking about the poet, will be screened. Szymborska, a cult author, knows how to deal with taboo issues such as love, death and life in general, turning them into verses of informal naturalness and of (deceptive) simplicity. Jaroslaw Mikolajewski, poet and department head of Polish Institute of Rome, and Michal Rusinek, lecturer at Jagellonica University of Cracow, will be attending at the meeting, curated by Andrea Ceccherelli, Polish Literature Professor at Bologna University.
Human Rights Nights Film Festival opens with Tulpan by Sergei Dvortsevoy, a film presented at Cannes 2008 and multi awarded in various international festivals, which deals with the tragicomic story in the Central Asia steppe. Closing film is Africa Unite by Stephanie Black, director of the first years of Human Rights Nights (in 2003 she was in competition with Life and Debt). The movie, shot in Addis Ababa on occasion of Bob Marley’s 60th birthday, is an inspiration for young African generations to join together for the future of their country. Among the previews and the fictions presented at the festival: Below Sea Level by Gianfranco Rosi, Venice Horizons Documentary Award 2008, is about the life of Los Angeles’ homeless who penetrated California’s desert, 40 metres below the sea level, hoping to find calm in a border life. Russia 88 by Pavel Bardin, already contested docu-fiction on the rise of a group of skinheads in contemporary Russia; Resolution 819 by Giacomo Battiato, awarded at 2008 Rome Film Fest, a journey in search of the truth and justice in Srebrenica, place associated with the tragic events of Serbian genocide and with the images of mass graves. The Hurt Locker by Kathrin Bigelow, awarded with the Human Rights Film Network Award in 2008 in Venice, is an intense portrait of everyday life between life and death of the soldiers who disarm bombs in Iraq; Mar Nero by Federico Biondi, presented in occasion of the Festival’s Rumanian soirée, deals with the story of the friendship between an elderly bourgeois woman, Gemma, and her Rumanian carer Angela, two generations and two cultures. Waltz with Bashir by Ari Folman, is the narrated experience of a former Israeli soldier on the horrors of a nonsensical war, in the context of the massacre of Chabra and Shatila; in the end, Miracle in Sant’Anna by Spike Lee is the story of four soldiers of Buffalo Division of the American army who, during the II W.W., fight alongside the Partisans in Tuscany’s Apennines.
The Doc competition presents 10 unedited documentaries from all over the world still too less present in cinema distribution process, though they express a strong and important message to understand the contemporaneity of human rights. Among them: Inside Buffalo by Fred Kudjo Kuwornu, African director living in Bologna, actor in Spike Lee’s movie, which delves into the relationship between Buffalo Soldiers and the Italian partisans. I Bring What I Love by Chai Vasarhelyi deals with Youssou N’Dour journey between Islam and baye fall spirituality in Senegal till the holy city of Touba, while promoting his album Egypt. War on Democracy is a reportage by the multi awarded journalist and filmmaker John Pilger about the influence United Stated’ politics has on the economic choices of Middle East and of Latin America. Democracy in Dakar by Ben Harson and Magee MacIlvaine, together with Sling Shot Hip Hop by Jackie Reem Saloum, present the Hip Hop Senegalese and Arab-Israeli’s Hip Hop scene as a means of resistance in situations of poverty and of war and to express a vision of peace and of democracy. Humilliados y Offendidos by César Brie, Pablo Brie and Horacio Alvarez deals with the racist attacks against the Bolivian campesinos, Evo Morales’ supporters, brought by the government opponents.
The Short competition presents a variegated collection of 12 short movies, from all over the world too, dealing with issues from human trafficking- as in Viko by Larjsa Kondracki about the web of sex-trafficking in Eastern Europe, Una Vida Mejor by Luis Fernandez Reneo about the tragic adventure of three Mexican children in the desert, between Mexico and USA, trying to cross the borders, or Mofetas by Inès Enciso, about two young clandestine who try to pass the frontiers hanged under trucks- to “white-deaths”, as in Portuale by Gregor Ferretti, a musical about the death of a boy on his first day of work in Ravenna’s port; child soldiers, as in Alfred by Leonardo Guerra Seràgnoli, or simply poor children, as in Hungry God by Sukhada Gliokhale-Bhonde, where they don’t eat, while their Gods are offered a lot of food; or they don’t have shoes to go to school, as the Romany children in Czech Republic in About the Shoes by Rozèlie Kohoutyovà.
In collaboration with Gender Bender Festival, we present two documentaries, Jihad for Love by Parvez Sharma (in competition) about the relationship between Islam and homosexuality and The Times of Harvey Milk, from which the recent movie, played by Sean Penn, Milk was adapted, about the life and the career of the first openly gay supervisor, elected in San Francisco and assassinated in 1978, together with the mayor George Moscone.
The experimental movie Life in the City by Abdoulaye Gaye, recognised in 2008 by Officina Cinema Sud-Est Award, created in order to support the production of films by foreign directors who live in Italy, deals with a foreigner without documents’ everyday life in Bologna. In 2009, Officina Cinema Sud-Est continues to promote migrant cinema through Gianandrea Mutti’s Award, thanks to the contribution of Amici di Giana Association and BIM Distribution, which, from this year, joined the vision of the prize, in memory of Gianandrea Mutti who always did his best to promote cinema from the South and the East of the world.
As every year, the collaboration between Human Rights Nights and the non-governmental organisations goes on, as Amnesty International presents the movies Taxi to the Dark Side by Alex Gibney about the tortures in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo; and Anna, 7 Years on the Frontline by Masha Novikova about the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, killed in front of her apartment in Moscow in 2006. Doctors without Borders Italy presents a disturbing reportage on the hygienic and sanitary conditions of the seasonal workers, often clandestine immigrants, in Southern Italy countries, Una Stagione all’Inferno; UNICEF presents a work on educators in the Republican Democracy of Congo, in their attempt in reintegrating street children.
Out of competition, is the film La Forza del Ricordo by Davide Masi and Graziano Cernoia, about a trip to Auschwitz made by students and teachers in order not to forget the Holocaust’s horrors. Every year, the writer Carlo Lucarelli and Paolo Nori take part to the trip in order to report their experience together with the directors and the students. From the series Illegal and Wanted by Roberto Silvestri, the movies about prostitution Working Girls by Lizzie Borden and The Good Woman of Bangkok by Dennis O’Rourke give a direct contact with the everyday of a forced and rightless work. Whilst, Lavoravo a Strada by Alessandra Marolla brings the problem nearer, through a reportage on the life of prostitutes from all over the world, here on the sidewalk of our city, Bologna. Just shot, the short movie by Vito Palmieri, Se dobbiamo andare, andiamoci looks at the dynamics that take place in class 3A in Mameli secondary school in San Giovanni in Persiceto, province of Bologna.
Otherness, which is normal in our schools, is symbolically represented by young people in the football match Human Rights Nights against Racism Football Match , where teams from four schools, Fioravanti, Keynes, Rubbiani and the Youth Public Community of Bologna will compete for the 2009 Human Rights Nights against Racism cup. At the event, in collaboration with USACLI and Fair Trade which offer goals, balls and corner flags, will participate also the informal football teams of Parco 11 Settembre and of Giardini Margherita, and this, maybe more than other experiences, represents the spontaneous reality of true integration in the city.
HRNs cafè at Cinema Lumière, is the location par excellence where all these fragments mix up: between a beer and a coffee, a cous-cous plate or a Rumanian deliciousness, a ‘briscola’ game or a hip hop performance, the city of Bologna lives its new Bolognese essence, a new humanity filled with potential, just scarcely known. This year Tay Ethnic Group helps us to feed not only our guests’ spirits but also their energies, in collaboration with Centro Sociale Anziani ‘G. Costa’, opening their kitchens to the cooks of the world. But is not enough, they also open the dancing in the final Sunday day between Filuzzi and R’n B in a sounds and meeting metissage. They teach ‘briscola’ to new Bolognese people that don’t know it yet, while telling ‘zirudelle’, singing Bolognese songs and feeding us with crescentine. We are extremely grateful to Tay Ethnic Group and G. Costa Centre for their availability... and their food! Cafè spaces, furnished thanks to Freak Andò generosity, offer very soft couches to ‘polleggiarsi’ (take a rest), to meet the artists and directors of the festival, to listen to poems and to the encounters that spontaneously will be given hospitality during different evenings. An open mic waits for your shouts or whispers on the human rights, both being Aimè Cesaire poems or simply information on activities that, as solo or as associations, you carry out in town.
Keeping on with the spirit of a new Bologna takes place the appointment La spiritualità a Bologna, where city religious and spiritual communities meet each others to kwow themselves and to let other peole know them: Buddhists, Catholics, Muslims, Baye fall, Hindues and Baha’i discuss on the topic, and together reflects the variety of faiths and philosophies that enrich our society. In Bologna, at the Agraria Faculty, the New Poverties will be discussed, with Andrea Segrè, Mariagrazia Contini and Don Nicoli, at the DMS Auditorium we imagine post-futurism with Franco Berardi Bifo. In Forlì, together with Romagna Acque and the various departments and faculties of the Polo Scientifico-Didattico, the themes of water – the blue gold of the future -, contemporary Russia and, again, poverty, will be addressed. At Locomotiv Club, finally, a monologue by Simonetta Venturini, Gertrude, on the consciousness of a dying woman, aware of being tricked by whom she thought loved her...
I could keep on describing all the events present at the festival or I could try to imagine thousand different things that will happen during these 10 days, but maybe the most important thing to write down here is a huge thanks to the Human Rights Nights magic staff, and to all the angels and spirits that help us every year, this year more than ever, to work wonders to make the festival exist (resist)... the crisis hits everyone... but we don’t want to think about it, we don’t care... and keep on dreaming!
Giulia Grassilli
Artistic Director
Human Rights Nights
In the Art section, Lorenzo Burlando’s pictures in (soprav)Vivere photographic exhibition reflect the spirit of Human Rights Nights inside the festival itself. The takes visually reflect the best moments of last year’s edition, from the musical performances from Africa and India to Vicolo Bolognetti, to the socializing moments in Cineteca’s courtyard during the film festival. The photographic multi-gallery Imagi/Nation, spread in different spots of the city of Bologna, is an idea by Laura Frasca and Giovanna Fiorentini, who offer their pictures about the world for a charitable event. In the end, the works of the sculptress Nadia Burci, Senza fretta ma senza riposo (movimenti), is an invitation to peace, through faces and figures which seem to belong to the past, but that, in their plurality reflect the globality of the present.
Human Rights Nights Music , curated by Laye Gaye through AfricaBamba, reflects musical creative richness of our contemporary society – from Les Amis d’Afrique’ mandeg percussions, to Rumanian and Rumeno Fantastic’ Balkans sounds, from Teo Ciavarella jazz and Alma Jazz Orchestra solo artists, to afrobeat blues from Flavour Beat till Light Soliah vocals reggae. Concerts will take place in the evocative spaces of courtyard at Cinema Lumière alternating with cinema and other cultural and poetic events from HRN’s Cafè. We are specially honoured to have with us the most capable Djs in town; Pier Tosi, Mongardino Posse, Hawanna Dj, Dj Black and, for our final party at Cassero, Dj Trix and Lugi, featuring Big Gora, young emergent Senegalese rapper from Bologna. B-Boys from Bologna will performing hip hop both at Cortile and Cassero for the closing party. At Locomotiv the evening performance Sogno, Utopia e Ritmo wants to express the right to happiness with Minor Swing Quintet manouche group and Lucio Morelli & Musicians, an evening performance curated by Mago. As the last edition, meeting place for lunch at La Linea during the week end and at La Scuderia the rest of the days, in piazza Re Enzo and piazza Verdi, to taste the sound of Human Rights Nights’ evenings. Music is not just an expression of the strong creative plurality present in town but it helps in creating an atmosphere which allows an interaction of every frangment of the city, that can be found throgh the festival in different locations.