The Hindu : New Delhi News : Human rights film festival in Delhi

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Friday, Dec 03, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Human rights film festival in Delhi

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, DEC. 2. The Capital may have lost the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) to the land of sun and sand, but this week will give the city's film lovers at least 18 `reasons' to not feel left out. Making its appearance in Asia for the first time, the Tri-Continental Film Festival will have Delhi playing the host to some of the best cinematic works on human rights.

A small beginning made by a group of Latin American film-makers two years ago as "Movimento do Documentalistas'', the travelling festival is now a campaign that hopes to shift the focus to human rights issues in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Being presented by Breakthrough, a human rights organisation that uses popular culture and education to get the message across, the festival will be travelling to Mumbai and Kolkata after Delhi where it will be screened in a popular venue and schools and colleges.

Featuring stories from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Venezuela and Peru, the films cover a range of topics such as AIDS, fundamentalism, nuclear explosion to even the life of street children, there are plenty of serious and interesting works to choose from at the festival. Apart from being shown in colleges like Delhi University Ramjas College, the festival's main venue in the city will be the Siri Fort Auditorium.

The opening film of the festival will be "Choropampa: The price of gold'' that tells the tale of a village that is transformed by a mercury spill into a hotbed of civil resistance. It will be followed by the film "The rockstar and the mullas'', a British production that has popular Pakistani band "Junoon'' guitarist Salman Ahmad challenging hardline Islam.

Seven movies will be shown on the second day of the festival, with one film each from India, Argentina, Ivory Coast France, South Africa, Pakistan and a joint US-Japan production.

From a five-minute film to a 105-minute documentary, the Director of Operations, Alka Khosla, pointed out that "the package includes films on a cross section of issues such as AIDS and globalisation that are relevant to current times. Our attempt is to use methods of mass appeal to reach out to the general public, specially the youth so they can sensitised to such issues''.

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