16th International Human Rights Film Festival “Networking, Identities in Contact”
28 de MAY, 2015
The Instituto Multimedia DerHumALC (IMD) is proud to announce the upcoming 16th International Human Rights Film Festival, which will take place in Buenos Aires from June 17th to 24th, 2015, and is set to show films in more than 10 venues across the city.
The Festival will screen over 100 titles, including short, medium and feature-length films that will be part of the official competition and of non-competitive themed sections such as Gender Views, Childhood and Youth, Migrants, Panorama, Environment (FINCA), and Native Peoples. This year, the Festival will add a brand new section: Sports and Human Rights.
This edition also features a special core concept: "EnREDando, identidades en contacto" (Networking, Identities in Contact). This motto emphasizes how new communication platforms have acquired the dimension of a collective space for building individual identities linked through kinship and necessity, redefining both cultural and geographical distances.
Program Highlights
Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide
Exactly 100 years ago, the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Turkish government claimed the lives of over 1.5 million people. The Festival intends to raise the awareness of this genocide, silenced and dismissed from its very beginning, with a selection of films that will be the center of the Armenian Focus.
There will be several cultural activities to complement the program, including a play by Alejandro Genes dedicated to the victims of the genocide and their families, "La Negación" (The Denial) — which was one of the selected pieces at the season Ciclo Teatro x la Justicia and was granted the Tadrón Award — and musical performances by musicians from the community. The tribulations of the Armenian people will also be addressed in the seminar "Memoria Activa de los Pueblos contra los Genocidios" (Peoples’ Active Memory Against Genocides), which will draw a common thread between the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and Latin American dictatorships based on the perspective provided by the active memories of its survivors, who have come together today for the defense of human rights.
These cultural activities will have the support of the Haroldo Conti Cultural Centre for Memory, the Armenian Community Association in Argentina, and Argentina’s National Library.
Nordic Night
The Nordic Night is sponsored jointly by the embassies of Norway, Finland, Switzerland and Denmark, as well as the organizers of the festival. This event will be the inauguration of the Nordic Focus and the cornerstone of the collaboration of Nordic countries with the International Human Rights Film Festival. We expect to offer a night of cultural activities (screenings, panel discussions) focusing on the production of human rights cinema in the region and on projects developed together via social platforms (public and civil) for the improvement of living conditions in their communities and allied countries. More Focuses will be announced soon.
A Window to Other Festivals
This year, the Festival will present a Window to Guatemala and its selection of highly aesthetic films featured by the International Cinema Show of Memory, Truth and Justice of Guatemala — which this year takes place as an itinerant show hosted in foreign countries because of the censorship in its homeland.
The Window to Movies That Matter will include a selection of socially engaged films featured in the Dutch film festival of the same name, sponsored by Amnesty International, which shares a common goal with our own Festival: fighting for human rights and promoting the exchange of enriching ideas.
There will also be a Window with selected works from Mexico’s Ambulante International Film Festival, organized by Ambulante, a non-profit association founded by Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna and Pablo Cruz in order to find new ways of promoting documentaries.
Tributes and Retrospectives
This year, the International Human Rights Film Festival will pay tribute to Bolivian documentary filmmaker Humberto Ríos, who was a member of the Consultant Committee in previous editions of the Festival, and to poet and filmmaker Alejandro Haddad, commonly known as Ravi. Both of them were devoted to Argentina’s activist film-making and passed away in late 2014. The Ernesto Ardito and Virna Molina Retrospective will be dedicated to these children of the revolutionary Argentine cinema of the 60s and 70s. On top of creating and directing their own work, they also orchestrate its production based on three central themes: memory, ideals, and the value of truth.
Special Activities
Like in previous editions, this year’s International Human Rights Film Festival will hold several special activities, such as debates and discussions, art and photography exhibitions, a fair of sustainable products and socially-engaged associations, music shows, dance performances, and theater plays. These activities add to the debate kindled by the Festival’s film program and will emphasize networking as a collective way to work for culture and social causes.
Photography Exhibition by the International Human Rights Film Festival & SubCoop
Already a traditional event of the Festival’s special activities, this photo exhibit will include a selection of images from the Cooperative of Sub Photographers (SubCoop), a group of photographers with long-standing history of collaboration with the Festival. The photographs will include this edition’s official image as well as a selection to represent each section of the graphic promotional material, highlighting the core conceptual frame of the Festival.
Fair of Eco-Sustainable and Socio-Communal Projects and Products
On Sunday, June 21st, the usual eco-sustainable and socio-communal products and projects fair will take place, which each year draws in more participants and social organizations. Representatives of green initiatives, self-managed projects and socially responsible programs will be there to enjoy and share some music, cinema and culture.
Where will the 16th International Human Rights Film Festival take place?
The screenings and special activities of this year’s edition will take place in the following venues: Alliance Française in Buenos Aires, Espacio INCAA Km 0 Gaumont, Haroldo Conti Cultural Centre for Memory, Armenian Cultural Association, BAMA Cine Arte, Rector Ricardo Rojas Cultural Center, Mercedes Sosa Foundation Cultural Center of Popular Latin American Music, Mariano Moreno National Library, National Library of Congress, and Cervantes Theater.
What is the main objective of the Festival?
The objective of the International Human Rights Film Festival is to present the best productions focused on social problems related to the advocacy of human rights and the environment from diverse and unique points of view, promoting a critical cinema that contributes to social transformation.
What is the International Human Rights Film Festival?
The Festival seeks to generate a space for debate and reflection on human rights issues through artistic representations in the form of documentaries, animated films or fictional productions that are both critical and socially engaged. Conceived as an international cinematographic competition, this festival takes place every two years in the city of Buenos Aires, bringing together filmmakers, producers, and distributors from all over the world.
Since its creation in 1997 and for the past fifteen editions, it has encouraged steady initiatives in Argentina, Latin America, Europe and the United States aimed at generating, bringing together, selecting and archiving a large amount of audiovisual materials focused on a wide variety of issues concerning Human Rights, Development and the Environment (more than 5,000 audiovisual works to date).
The Festival is an initiative of the Instituto Multimedia DerHumALC (which stands for Multimedia Institute of Human Rights in Latin America and the Caribbean, abbreviated IMD), a non-profit association based in Buenos Aires which aims to promote the investigation, study, teaching and awareness of Human Rights through an active involvement and use of audiovisual resources and new technologies.
The International Human Rights Film Festival is a founding member of the Human Rights Film Network (HRFN) — which in 2014 celebrated 10 years of bringing together over 35 international human rights film festivals from around the globe — and of the Argentine Network of Festivals and Audiovisual Shows (RAFMA). RETURN TO NEWS ARCHIVE
