Festival Schedule - 2001

The Human Rights Film Festival was created in 2001 by a group of Johns Hopkins University Bologna Center students to advance public awareness on human rights issues using documentary films and lectures. The screenings were held at the Cinema Lumiere with the generous support of the Cineteca di Bologna.

The 2001 Festival represented the inaugural year for the program. It included six films and brought four international film producers to Bologna. The original festival lineup appears below.

Breaking the Codes

USA, 2001, 75 Minutes

Producer / Director Bryan Rich is a specialist on media and ethnic Conflict. Mr. Rich won a Nieman fellowship for journalism for his work supporting independent media in ethnic conflict in regions ranging from Russia to Angola and has been invited to speak at the Harvard University Law School, Tufts University, and the Fletcher School of Government. He was the subject of ABC Nightline's Voice of Hope and has also been featured on National Public Radio's All Things Considered and Focus on Africa on the BBC. Major funding for this project was provided by the Rockefeller Foundation of New York.

From Auschwitz to Rwanda, much is known about the horror of ethnic conflict and genocide from the testimony of survivors, but little has ever been documented from the perspective of those who actually commit such atrocities. Now, for the first time, an independent feature documentary has penetrated this wall of secrecy. Shot over 18 months in a country at war, Breaking The Codes is based on the disturbing confessions of four men on the front lines of the insidious war between Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups in the small African nation of Burundi, Rwanda's southern neighbor. In a high-stakes bid for redemption, these four men risk their lives - defying codes of ethnic solidarity - to describe the social and moral collapse that led them to kill former friends and neighbors in an ethnic war that has left over 200,000 people dead in the heart of Africa.

Us and Them

Russia, 1999, 30 Minutes

Ms. Ella Mitina, Ph.D., graduated from the Conservatory and the Leningrad Institute of Theater, Music, and Cinematography. She has been involved in television since 1993, working with Russia's largest central channels (ORT, RTR, REN TV) and the Russian Universities channel as a writer of scripts and documentaries. Working with the TV studio ROST, she created the children's program Volshebny Chemodan ("Magic Suitcase"). She has written and produced a number of films and documentaries for children and teenagers, one ("Andreika the Clown") of which won a number of awards at international TV festivals. As a writer and director at the channel REN TV, she worked on the programs Detsky Vopros ("A Child's Question"), Sovetskiye Skazki ("Soviet Fairytales"), and Akvatoria-Z. Under assignment from the Presidential Demographic Commission on Families and Women's Rights, she created a documentary series called Sovsem Drugiye ("Completely Different") about talented children in Russia. Her most recent work is the documentary Svoi-Chuzhiye ("Us And Them"), commissioned by non-profit organization Internews Russia.

Mr. Stanislav Mitin graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Theater, Music, and Cinematography. He first worked in the theater, directing around 30 plays, and has been working in television since 1994, with the TV channels ORT and REN TV. For three years, Mr. Mitin worked as a scriptwriter and director on the children's variety program Chunga-Changa on ORT. He was the director of the gala opening for the channel REN TV, in which numerous stars of Russian stage and screen took part.

As a director, Mr. Mitin shot the six-part documentary series Sovsem Drugiye about talented children in Russia, and also the films "Andreika the Clown" for Russian TV and "Us And Them" for Internews Russia. Mr. Mitin mixes his television work with work in Russia's dramatic and musical theaters.

Us And Them is a documentary about interethnic relations in Russia as seen through the eyes of children and teenagers. The children in the film range in age from five to fifteen. The film was shot in Moscow, an enormous metropolis in which the problems of interethnic relations are particularly acute. At the center of the film are two groups of teenagers studying at the same school. The group of skinheads, confirmed fascists, believes that all blacks, Muslims and Jews should be kicked out of Moscow, and that life will then improve for Russians. Another group - their classmates - believes that people of various nationalities, ethnicity, and religious affiliations can and must live together in harmony.

The position of the skinheads is as follows: "Hitler was right when he destroyed the Jews and we need to condemn those Russians who support Jews. There are drugs and AIDS in Russia because of the blacks, and Muslims only know how to make war, which is why we call them 'little beasts.'"

Apart from interviews with skinheads and their opponents, the film includes three vignettes. One was filmed at a Jewish school where children talk about their experience with anti-Semitism and how they only feel like themselves at their own school.

Another vignette is dedicated to child-refugees from Chechnya and Abkhazia, where wars and interethnic conflicts had recently taken place. We observe them during a psychological exercise at a center for child-refugees and forcibly resettled people. All these children, though they are Russian citizens, feel like foreigners in Moscow.

The third vignette tells of a black boy with the Russian name Lyosha Polyakov. His Russian mother abandoned him, and his father, a Tanzanian, returned home. In Moscow, Lyosha most of all fears run-ins with skinheads. He knows how much they hate blacks.

The film culminates with the skinheads engaging in open argument with a Cuban girl in their class, the daughter of diplomats. Elizabeth courageously fights for her dignity against the three embittered teenagers and we see how difficult a fight it is for her. The girl cannot bear the strain and weeps. Drawings by young children appear throughout the film and their voices can be heard behind the pictures. They talk about what nationality is and who "us" and "them" are.

Holocaust: Farewell, 20th century! Sorry�

Russia, 2000, 50 Minutes

Savva Yakovlevich Kulish is a cinema producer, a People's Artist of Russia, the chairman of the Moscow Union of cinema-makers, the president of the Moscow Guild of cinema producers, the chairman of the 'Culture Support Act'.

Savva Kulish was born on October, 17th in 1936 in the city of Odessa. He graduated from the faculty of filming of the All-Russian State University of Cinematography. Kulish together with his co-student Fastenko produced a film 'From the ashes' ('Iz pepla') which became their graduation thesis. The film was based on the play by Remark 'The Last Stop' that was staged by the students of Mikhail Romm - H. Dziuba (Germany) and V. Kitaysky.

After the Kulish's graduation Mikhail Romm invited him to be a cameraman and a producer-probationer of the film 'Ordinary Fascism'. At that time Kulish entered the film-producing faculty of the Schukin Theatrical College. His teachers were famous actors and producers - students of Evgeny Vakhtangov.

In 1965 Kulish together with his Bulgarian colleague Kharlampy Stoychev produced the film 'The Last Letters' ('Posledniye pisma') based on the cinema documents of the German 'UFA' cinema studio. Mikhail Romm was the artistic supervisor of the film. This film has won such awards as the Grand Prix of 'The Gold Dragon' in the city of Krakov, the Grand Prix of 'The Silver Pigeon' in Leipzig, the prize of Italian cinema critics at the 'Festival of Peoples' in Florence and some other awards.

In 1968 Kulish produced his first film 'The Dead Season' ('Mertvy sezon') in the 'Lenfilm' Cinema Corporation. In the Soviet Union alone more than 100 million people have watched this film during its first 9 months.

Kulish is the author of scripts of such films as 'Entertainment for Old People' ('Razvlecheniye dlya starichkov'), 'Fuete' ('Fuete'), 'White Swans' ('Beliye lebedi'), 'The Tragedy in Rock Style' ('Tragediya v stile rok'), 'Iron Curtain' ('Dzelezniy zanaves'), a producer of theater and radio performances, artistic supervisor of young filmmakers.

Since 1997 Kulish is the chief producer, author and artistic supervisor of the '100 films in Moscow' project. Since 1999 Kulish has been working on the documentary 12-serial tragedy 'Farewell the 20th century! Sorry�'

Killing Time: Women Activists Awaiting Justice

Italy-USA, 2001, 27 Minutes

Killing Time co-Producer Todd Waller is the director of the documentary titled War Kids (1999), which is an account of teenagers' lives in Bosnia. The film tells the stories of Bosnian teenage survivors living in violent worlds - and their perspectives on race, ethnicity, religion, politics and their respective futures. Denver's PBS assisted with the post-production of War Kids.

Killing Time co-Producer Lorenza Fabretti worked for nearly two years with the International Commission on Missing Persons. As a result of living and working in Bosnia Ms. Fabretti developed strong ties with the women survivors and international relief workers in the region who are the key protagonist in Killing Time.

The short documentary addresses a number of political and sociological dilemmas confronting survivors and international relief workers in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina. At its most basic level the film raises awareness as to the atrocities of ethnic cleansing, which remain, unsolved in the Balkans. The project gives a voice to the voiceless and provides a sense of urgency for the international community to exhume more graves and bring those untouched war criminals to trial. The project portrays the injustices and false promises as told through the accounts of survivors as well as relief workers assigned to this daunting task. On a broader level Killing Time may offer insight on a range of issues such as how can genocide occur at the end of the twentieth century, should United Nations and NATO officials be held accountable for their debacles, and why are war criminals allowed to freely move about and conduct business?

The film follows four women and centers primarily on the crimes committed at Srebrenica and in the concentration camps nears Prijedor. In July of 1995, Serbian troops stormed the United Nations "safe area" near Srebrenica and within days 7,400 Bosnian men and boys were executed. In the Prijedor region of western Bosnia 7,000 others are believed to have been murdered and dumped in mass graves. The documentary follows women activists seeking answers as to the atrocities in these varying regions of the former Yugoslavia.

The following films were shown, but the producers and directors were not present.

Children of Shatila

Directed by Mai Masri, 1998, 50 Minutes

Shatila camp first became known after the horrific 1982 Sabra-Shatila massacre, which shocked the world. Located in Beirut's "belt of misery" the camp is home to 15,000 Palestinians and Lebanese who share a common experience of displacement, unemployment and poverty.

Fifty years after the exile of their grandparents from Palestine, the children of Shatila camp attempt to come to terms with the overwhelming realities of being refugees in a camp which has survived massacre, siege and starvation. Documentary filmmaker, Mai Masri focuses on the lives of two Palestinian children: Farah, age 11 and Issa, age 12. Given video cameras, the two express the realities of their daily lives and their history. The story of the camp evolves from their personal narratives as Farah and Issa articulate the feelings and hopes of their generation.

The Electronic Curtain

By Walther Grotenhuis, Netherlands, 50 Minutes

The Electronic Curtain is about the replacement of the former Iron Curtain by a new, highly sophisticated and invisible electronic curtain to curb illegal immigration from the East to Western Europe. Whereas during the reign of the Communist block refugees were welcomed and generously helped, today the Western world is less generous and an electronic curtain has been set up to control this flow of emigration.

In a very personal and cinematic style this revealing documentary takes us to Rumania from where we follow Nicu a young unemployed worker on his journey through the Ukraine and Poland to the West German border where he will try to cross illegally. At the same time we look at the policy from Brussels and we accompany a unit of the German border police at the Polish-German border who with their high-tech equipment catch 25.000 illegals from the East every year and we become aware of the booming economy on the Polish side of that same border where highly experienced local taxi drivers make a bundle smuggling humans across. After the long train ride from Rumania, it will be here that we will witness Nicu's attempt to get into Germany.